JumpStart Animal Adventures/Pre-release and Unused Content

This is a list of pre-release and unused content from JumpStart Animal Adventures. They were only used during the E3 2001 event at the Los Angeles Convention Center.

Alternative Title
There is some evidence that the game's title was originally going to have been "JumpStart Animals" rather than "JumpStart Animal Adventures". An unused AutoPlay launch menu image uses this title (see below), and the game's digital menu displays the title "User Guide for JumpStart Animals".

Unused AutoPlay Image
The game disc contains a folder for graphics and audio files for the game's AutoPlay launch menu screen. Within this folder is an alternate version of the background image for the menu, which mainly features a different game logo.

(Click "Expand" to see a list of differences that the pre-release content has compared to the final release)

Tad and Wart Exploring
In the game, Tad and Wart are the only tadpoles who don't explore any particular habitat with the player. However, there is evidence that they were originally intended to explore the desert habitat, prior to it being scrapped (see below). 2D artwork of Tad and Wart appears in unused graphics for desert crafts. All of the other tadpoles each appear on a craft sheet that goes with the habitat that tadpole visited (ex. Polly appears on a tidepool craft because she explored the tidepool, Molly appears on rainforest craft because she explored the rainforest, and Wolly and Chad follow suit.)

Desert Habitat
A desert habitat was originally going to be featured in the game, indicated by several references within the game's cutscenes and digital manual, as well as some unused game files.

ani_habitat_menu.cxt
This file contains assets for an entire unused screen that would've displayed habitat icons, similar to the Habitat Printouts screen that appears in the final release. An icon for the desert appears in this file, along with an audio file that was intended to play when the mouse moved over it, just as the other habitat icons play sound effects when the mouse is moved over them.

The unused sound effect:



ani_crafts.cxt
This file contains assets for all of the craft sheets, and includes some unused desert crafts.

This file also contains sound effects and voice clips for the desert craft sheets.

A sound effect that would play when moving the mouse over the Egg Carton Horned Viper craft icon:

A sound effect that would play when moving the mouse over the Milk Carton Bird Feeder craft icon:



A voice clip that would play when moving the mouse over the Egg Carton Horned Viper craft icon:



A voice clip that would play when moving the mouse over the Milk Carton Bird Feeder craft icon:



A voice clip that would play after selecting the Egg Carton Horned Viper craft:



A voice clip that would play after selecting the Milk Carton Bird Feeder craft:



aor.dxr
This file contains an unused graphic with the name "sahara_640". It appears to depict what the entire desert habitat was planned to look like. Given how its width is much greater than its height, this seems to indicate that the player would have been able to scroll left and right through the habitat, similar to the temperate forest and savanna habitats.

Opening Sequence References
The game's opening cutscene contains several references to a desert habitat. A desert is briefly mentioned and shown in the magazine that the tadpoles read. The magazine also mentions "5 Great Animal Habitats" on its front cover, even though only four habitats are featured in game, alluding to the desert originally being the fifth habitat. The back cover of the magazine also features a fennec fox, a desert animal not seen in any habitats in the game. A camel also briefly appears in this cutscene, which was also presumably intended to appear in the scrapped desert habitat.

Digital Manual References
The digital manual image for the map screen depicts an icon with a camel in Africa, which presumably would've been used to access the desert habitat, also showing a few minor differences from in-game.

Unused Code
One of the game's files, "stickernames.txt", is a text file containing the names of all of the animal stickers that appear in the game. However, it also contains names for some desert animals that don't appear in-game. In the game, each habitat has 8 small stickers, 4 medium stickers, and 3 large stickers. The names in the file are listed in the same order that they appear in the sticker book. Based on this, the desert animal stickers would've been sorted as such:
 * Small: Dromedary Camel, Locust, Scorpion, Hedgehog, Oryx, Ostrich, Dung Beetle, Fennec Fox
 * Medium: Oryx, Dung Beetle, Horned Viper, Hedgehog
 * Large: Fennec Fox, Dromedary Camel, Ostrich

Another piece of code appears in the file "ani_shared.cxt", which contains text pertaining to the contest sheets. On the higher difficulty levels, instead of being given the names of animals to photograph for the contest sheet, each picture space will instead give a clue as to what animal goes there by describing one of its traits. This file contains lists of the possible traits each animal can have for each of the contest sheets, including a list for an unused desert contest sheet. According to the file, the animals that could appear on the contest sheet and their possible traits are as follows:


 * Dung Beetle (Scavenger)
 * Dromedary Camel (Vertebrate, Mammal)
 * Oryx (Vertebrate, Mammal, Ungulate, Ruminant, Bovine)
 * Scorpion (Arthropod, Arachnid)
 * Horned Viper (Vertebrate, Reptile, Snake)
 * Hedgehog (Vertebrate, Insectivore, Mammal)
 * Ostrich (Vertebrate, Bird)
 * Fennec Fox (Vertebrate, Carnivore, Mammal)

Arctic Habitat
Despite the JumpStart Habitat Magazine's front cover only mentioning "5 Great Animal Habitats" (the desert likely being among those five habitats), an arctic biome is briefly mentioned and shown in the game's opening cutscene. This possibly indicates that like the desert biome, it was originally planned to be included in the game, possibly as a sixth habitat, but was ultimately scrapped. Unlike the desert, however, there doesn't appear to be any graphics or audio associated with it in the game's files, so it appears to have never been developed. The cutscene may at the very least indicate that there was a concept to include it at some point.

Unused Habitats Screen
The file ani_habitat_menu.cxt contains graphics and audio for an entire unused screen that would've displayed icons for various habitats. Although this screen doesn't appear anywhere in the game in its original intended appearance, many of the assets for it were repurposed for the Habitat Printouts screen that does appear in-game. This file also contains the unused desert icon and sound effects.

Herd Activity Differences
The digital manual image for the "herd" activity in the Savannah depicts some differences from the in-game version. Curiously, the digital manual also implies that only zebras appear in this activity, when in actuality either zebras or wildebeests can appear.

(Click "Expand" to see a list of differences that the pre-release content has compared to the final release)