Jay Jay the Jet Plane - Jay Jay Earns His Wings Screenshots The Final Say! Gameplay 6.0 Graphics 5.9 Sound 7.3 Value 6.5 Jay Jay the Jet Plane: Jay Jay Earns His Wings - reviewed by Tory Favro Review Date: 31 October 2002 Review Score: 6.5/10  Distributor: GameNation

Jay Jay the Jet Plane - Jay Jay Earns His Wings is part of the PBS Kids interactive series. PBS is also behind the excellent Zoboomafoo series (also reviewed on impulsegamer). Jay Jay as you might have guessed is a little jet plane who helps kids learn basic maths skills in order for him to carry out jobs around the airport and other destinations.   Jay Jay the Jet Plane- Jay Jay Earns His Wings Features Discover & Learn Nature Science Addition Measuring Sequences Estimating Matching Comparison Number Recognition Pattern Recognition Following Instructions Deductive Reasoning Colouring and Creativity Critical Thinking Computer Mouse Skills   In this game Jay Jay needs to complete tasks in order to get parcels that must be delivered to the main airport. After signing into the game you need to choose your destination and play the little game that is there in order to collect your parcel to continue. The games are pretty basic and range from cover tops including colour recognition by putting the correctly coloured apples in matching baskets The game also supports a changeable difficulty level from 1 to 3, depending on your child's age. The title does have a number of CGI movies and cut scenes that one would expect to see in an adult title and this is nice to note that the time was taken for the children's title. However when playing in full screen, I did notice that the picture seemed very compressed and not quite as vibrant as I hoped for. Fortunately with a mouse click, these could be avoided unlike some other kids titles where you have to sit through every moment even if you have seen it before. This is a good move on the part of Riverdeep, the developers. I must admit that for the most part though I found this title to be very uninspiring and not much fun for the kids. I am aware of some of the other Jay Jay titles and the quality that is in them, so was surprised to find that this game lacked any real depth. Our little tester got bored quickly (we have a number of kids try all the children's productivity software out) and at one point he was a bit freaked out by the realistic looking faces on the planes. So by not relating to the characters, he did not find the rest of the game a lot of fun to play.

As you can see, the requirements to this title are pretty low and should work on most new and old systems which is always welcome.

A problem with the title is that there are some sections on the title that have been poorly coded and all they did was frustrate. There was one section where Jay Jay would have to call out numbers and the helicopter that was skiing down the hill would have to touch flags that corresponded with that number. On numerous occasions Jay Jay would call out a number as that flag had already passed, which of course made us think we'd made a mistake. I then sat in and had a turn and found that it was also happening to me. This in my opinion is just an example of a lack of proper testing.

The game if persevered with, does have some redeeming educational benefits and I did find that it did impart knowledge of basic maths. It just didn't have the sparkle that some of the other kids products do, including the other Jay Jay title that deals more with spelling and English (also reviewed on this site).

I would say to people interested in this title to try to find a demo of it first or even see if your public library has it in that you could borrow it first. The game is alright but does seem to have some problems with regards to general gameplay and inspiring kids to learn through this product.

- Tory Favro