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That's where the Jumpstart series of games come into play. My children enjoyed the Jumpstart games on their computers years ago. Today your children can play Jumpstart games on the Wii, making it easier for you to watch while they learn.
The Jumpstart folks have asked me to review for you their latest release, Escape from Adventure Island. I'd not played one of these educational games for quite some time and expected a simplistic set of learning tools. However, I was in for a surprise!
You start out by creating your own avatar - hair, face, eyes, clothes. You have a restricted amount of items you can use and you learn immediately that if you want a particular hairstyle you need to earn sand dollars to obtain the changes you want.
You start out on a beach and are introduced to a local, who tells you about your treehouse that you can decorate and other things you can do. I didn't find my house right off, but went straight to exploring. Along the beach are entrances or portals to different types of games. Enter one and you'll find that there are series of games that you can play in this portal. There are lessons, with curriculum levels set at Easy. Medium and Hard. I found that the Hard level is the same lesson type, just with more in-game obstacles.
For example, your child's goal may be to target the written word "eleven" from the vocal clue "Find the word that spells eleven." Your child moves the avatar through the field of obstacles (sometimes having the capability to shoot the obstacle) and through the card that reads "eleven". If "Hard" is the chosen level, there would be more obstacles to shoot to get to the word "eleven".
Other fun things included riding a mantra and shooting shapes or colored targets, or squasing punk punks to get to the target. As you complete lessons you earn those sand dollars to buy more items for your avatar.
This style of game makes learning fun for children. They get to practice their skills, while enjoying fun game play along the way!
There are a lot of areas to explore. There's a DDR-type of dance game that's cute. You can ride the slide and go underwater and be part of the fashion clothes show beneath the surface. There are plenty of learning games both underwater and on the beach.
Don't forget your house! When you find your treehouse you can decorate it as you like. I liked having a house, but tired of it quickly, because it was only exterior decorations. I didn't find that you could actually go inside and arrange furniture or the inside of the house. Too bad - that would have expanded on the game nicely.
Some things I would have like to have seen done differently:
* You have to earn more sand dollars but it never says how many more you need to get particular items. You just have to play and keep checking back as you get more.
* The treehouse customizing is only external - would have loved to decorate inside as well
* In one game I had to shoot colors and their yellow looked like olive-green so much so that I couldn't actually find the yellow colored cards. It's not like yellow wasn't displayed properly elsewhere on that same screen.
Things I really liked:
* The RPG-ish-ness of the game (avatars, quests, squashing beasts, shooting obstacles, riding mounts)
* Wii remote technology - good use of the remote+nunchuk
* The fashion show - you can try on a bunch of different clothing styles on your character, even though you can't afford them yet
* That there are worlds both above and under water
* That there was a LOT to do. There were lots of areas to explore, and each was full of lessons of different difficulty.
The kids can really get a lot of playtime from Escape from Adventure Island, and lots of practice on their basic skills as they progress. Learning really is fun!
Learn more about Escape from Adventure Island at Jumpstart
