Developer: Knowledge Adventure Distributor: Knowledge Adventure Minimum System Requirements: PC - Windows Pentium 90 or higher Quad-speed CD-Rom drive Windows 98/95 with 16 MB RAM 15 MB hard disk space SVGA 256-color or higher graphics capability. 16-bit Windows-compatible sound card Mouse Macintosh 120 MHz or higher Power PC processor, Quad-speed CD-Rom drive, System 7.5.3 or higher with 16 MB RAM, 15 MB hard disk space, 256-color graphics capability # of Players Good for one player possibly two. But this game's primary focus is one on one player. Rating Suitable for all Audiences For Kids 4-6 Yrs. Game Genre Simple puzzle consisting of three "stations" which offer phonics type games. The main emphasis of this game is as it states "look" and "listen". Introduction Jump Start Phonics: The game starts out introducing you to several characters and introduces you to the theme of the game. "Look" and "Listen". The characters are not integral to some kind of narration that threads the game(s) together. Basically the game consists of four sets, a barn, a fire station, a birdhouse and a bandstand. The fire station is by far my children's favorite segment. It requires that they earn points by finding the appropriate rhyming word. It is a fun interface. The station that had little interest for my kids was the birdhouse. I think the frustration lies in too much time constraint to fulfill the task at hand. This station relies heavily on coordination with the mouse, which proved disastrous for encouraging the kids to stay and finish this segment of the game. The bandstand is a sing along area. Installation (Allows custom install in both cases) Standard double click on install icon to install game. For Macintosh Users Standard double click on install icon to install game. Graphics The graphics are quite simple, well drawn and clear. The set designs are fun. Sound This area is a little hit and miss. We've played a lot of games so I feel confident being able to say this. The canned synthesizer background music starts to grate on your nerves after awhile; although this is not true of every area of the game. One thing and I've said this before, is that I really dislike the voice characterization when it muddies the diction of the words. The reason I say this is that this is a game centered on phonetic sounding of words. More than once throughout the game I had to translate the poor enunciation so that my kids could continue the game. GamePlay The game retains their (the children's) interest enough. It is a little slim on content and it would be nice to see multiple levels of play to challenge different age groups. The game develops logical thinking, sound and letter recognition. There is a section where you can print pictures off the game. Unfortunately we could not take advantage of this feature (printlerless household). I can comment on them though. For a phonetics-oriented game it would have been nice to see printable pages that actually included some phonetic exercises to reinforce the concepts developed while playing the game. Overall this game has its good points. It retains the kids' interest but again, because it is very lean on content and the games are somewhat one-dimensional, once they have played each level their interest plummets. This game was a bit of a disappointment. It gets a fair rating from these hardened critics at Da GameBoyz standard of 3 out of 5 joysticks Jumpstart Phonics was reviewed by GameBoyz mom, Jules!