JumpStart Animal Adventures/Pre-release and Unused Content

This is a list of pre-release and unused content from JumpStart Animal Adventures.

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)

Herd Activity
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, although the former are pretty rare to come across compared to the latter.

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

Desert Biome
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.

Unused Desert Image
An unused graphic with the name "sahara_640" is present in the file "aor.dxr". 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)

Additional Factors
Since Tad and Wart are the only tadpoles in the game who don't explore a habitat, presumably they would've explored the desert had it not been scrapped.

Arctic Biome
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 6th habitat, but was ultimately scrapped. Unlike the desert, however, it does not have any animals associated with it, so this opens speculation on whether it was indeed cut from the game last minute, or never made entirely.