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{{tropework}}
'''''The ClueFinders''''' is a series of [[Edutainment Game|Edutainment Games]]s from the Learning Company in which the eponymous [[Kid Hero|Kid Heroes]]es have exploits which more-or-less fit into the [[Adventure]] show genre of [[The Nineties]], collecting [[Alphabet Soup Cans]] on [[Fetch Quest|Fetch Quests]]s since [[Only Smart People May Pass]]. The main characters are:
 
The main characters are:
* Joni Savage: [[The Hero]]. Specifically, a [[Fiery Redhead|Fiery]] [[Redheaded Hero]] and a [[Fearless Fool]], although the latter died down when [[Chickification]] set in.
* Santiago Rivera: [[The Lancer]], [[Mr. Fixit]] and a [[Weekend Inventor]].
* Owen Lam: [[The McCoy]] [[Surfer Dude]], who talks in a [[Totally Radical]] way.
* Leslie Clark: [[The Smart Guy|The Smart Girl]] given to [[Sesquipedalian Loquaciousness]]. Owen's [[Foil]]. They seem to be in the early stages of [[Unresolved Sexual Tension]], but, of course, we'll [[NotStatus AllowedQuo toIs Grow UpGod|never find out if it goes anywhere]].
* LapTrap: [[Robot Buddy]], [[Deadpan Snarker]] and [[Cowardly Lion]]. Has the form of a floating laptop.
* Socrates: [[Team Pet]], who only appears with any prominence in the fourth grade game. Amazingly, both an example of [[Remember the New Guy?]] and [[Brother Chuck]].
 
The games are aimed at kids aged 8 to 12, with specific games for third-, fourth-, fifth- and sixth-graders (having been a follow-up to ''[[Reader Rabbit]]'', another Learning Company series, which is aimed at kids aged up to 7). In addition, there are four other games devoted to mathematics, language arts, logic and miscellaneous subjects.
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== Tropes: ==
 
{{tropelist}}
* [[Adaptational Weakling]]: ''The ClueFinders'' generally has their founder and leader Joni as the tough one. She has a habit of being a [[Fearless Fool]] that rushes into situations without thinking, and doing most of the physical challenges. In the sixth grade game, Joni enforces this while offering herself as a hostage for the [[Anti-Villain]] plant queen in the third act. Joni admits that normally she would be the one going out to solve the problem, but as leader it's her responsibility to protect her friends, and she trusts them to carry out the task of {{spoiler|cleaning the water supply affecting the plant people}}. She takes {{spoiler|slowly being turned into a plant fairly well, ordering the team to not worry about her and keep finding the pesticide sources}}.
* [[Adults Are Useless]]: Nobody can solve the mysteries except for a gang of children.
** In 4th Grade Adventures, adults were befuddled by problems that the [[Clue Finders]]ClueFinders solve easily.
* [[All Myths Are True]]: [[Scooby Doo Hoax|Subverted]] twice, applied once, and [[Real After All|double subverted]] in the same two games.▼
* [[Aliens Speaking English]]: Several times over, both with aliens proper and with other things. Partially averted in 5th grade--{{spoiler|the aliens use [[Black Speech]], the written form of which is a [[Cipher Language]], but their computer speaks and understands English perfectly well.}}
▲* [[All Myths Are True]]: [[Scooby -Doo Hoax|Subverted]] twice, applied once, and [[Real After All|double subverted]] in the same two games.
* [[Alphabet Soup Cans]]
* [[And I Must Scream]]: {{spoiler|Malicia. She deserved it.}}
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* [[Beneath the Earth]]: 6th grade's setting, occupied by what amount to non-alien [[Plant Aliens]]. Visitors beware--it's also a [[Fisher Kingdom]] of the "physical modification" type, slow-acting but thought to be permanent.
* [[Big Eater]]: Owen.
* [[Bigfoot, Sasquatch, and Yeti]]: Thought to be the villain who stole [[ShamgriShangri La]]'s treasures in Math.
* [[Broken Bridge]]: All the time on a small scale. See also [[Closed Circle]].
** Lampshaded in ''5th grade'':
{{quote| '''Owen''': "Why is it that wherever we go, we always find large pits to cross?"}}
* [[Chickification]]: Joni, though admittedly this mostly involved her abandoning her [[Fearless Fool]] tendencies.
* [[Chekhov's Gun]]: It's a good thing that Laptrap yells at Owen for using him as a mirror in reading!
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* [[Closed Circle]]: 5th grade, 6th grade, and Reading have game-wide examples. 5th grade deserves special notice in that everyone on the island is trapped, having tried and failed to get off for generations--they say [[Genius Loci|it doesn't want them to leave]].
* [[Collective Groan]] / [[First Name Ultimatum]]: In the opening of 3rd grade:
{{quote| '''Fletcher Limburger:''' Well.... peanuts, anyone?... that's what folks are saying— and there's an old superstition about a monster and a lost city.<br />
'''Santiago:''' Superstition!<br />
'''Leslie:''' Lost city?<br />
'''Joni:''' Monster?!<br />
'''Owen:''' ...peanuts?<br />
'''All:''' '''''OWEN!''''' }}
* [[Does This Remind You of Anything?]]: In ''Search & Solve Adventures'', a villain forces [[Ridiculously -Human Robots]] to work as her slaves, keeping them in line by [[Denied Food Asas Punishment|denying them new batteries]].
** In Reading, the kids are told to {{spoiler|throw a magical amulet into a volcano, [[The Lord of the Rings|for only then could it be destroyed.]]}}
** LapTrap is a shiny yellow piece of technology whose trademark characteristic is constant worry. [[Star Wars|C-3PO]], anyone?
* [[Dawson Casting]]: Averted - actual kids do the voices of the kids.
* [[The Drag Along]]: LapTrap.
* [[Evil Is Not a Toy]]: {{spoiler|The fourth game's villain learns this the hard way.}}
* [[Evil Laugh]]: Parodied/subverted:
{{quote| "I swallowed my mint."}}
* [[Fan Nickname]]: Because nearly every game package shows Joni as pointing toward something, some people refer to her as "the pointing girl."
* [[Fearless Fool]]: Joni in the earlier games, played as a [[Running Gag]].
* [[Fetch Quest]]
* [[Five -Token Band]]: Joni is white, Santiago is Hispanic, Leslie is black and Owen is... [[Ambiguously Brown|something other than white which is never made clear]].
** Wikipedia describes him as Asian, which isn't incongruous with his last name and how he's drawn, but this was never really confirmed in-game.
** For what it's worth, two of the kids' adult relatives have shown up, Joni's uncle and Leslie's grandfather. Both spent the entirety of the game they appeared in needing to be rescued.
* [[GaiasGaia's Vengeance]]: 6th grade's plot comes about because of {{spoiler|waste dumped in the water supply.}}
* [[Generation Xerox]]: The apparent reason why the human residents of the island in grade 5 still act and dress like they're from the time periods when their ancestors wound up there.
* [[Gentleman Thief]]: Crime has caught up with the one in grade 5's game--he's in a stockade. He buried a lot of cryptiles in a patch of [[Man -Eating Plant|Man Eating Plants]], and given your need is willing to loan you the maps.
* [[Give Me Your Inventory Item]]
* [[GodsGod's Hands Are Tied]]: Of all the series to parody this . . . grade 4 introduces Egyptian gods towards the end, who provide the main characters with magical boons to help them [[Did You Just Punch Out Cthulhu?|defeat Set]]. Said gods would fight him themselves, but the passage leading to him is marked with a sign: "You must be under this height to defeat the forces of Chaos." (And the height is forty feet, no less!)
* [[Hijacked Byby Jesus]]: The 4th grade setting, though not as badly as in some other series. It helps that Set was fairly evil even in the old myths.▼
* [[Hey Its That Voice]]: Sir Alistair Loveless III? Voiced by none other than [[Super Mario Bros|Charles Martinet]].
** You can also hear the [[Naruto|Third hokage]] in the game.
▲* [[Hijacked By Jesus]]: The 4th grade setting, though not as badly as in some other series. It helps that Set was fairly evil even in the old myths.
* [[Hyperspace Arsenal]]: you can carry anything in "the backpack" -- including bridge planks in the 6th grade game.
* [[Lampshade Hanging]]: During the spelling catwalks challenge:
{{quote| '''Owen''': "Why is it that wherever we go, we always find large pits to cross?}}
** They also Lampshaded the use of [[Fetch Quest|Fetch Quests]] in ''Search and Solve Adventures''.
* [[Let's Split Up, Gang!]]: Every main game except 4th grade.
* [[Lighter and Softer]]: Interestingly, the grade 4 game is this even compared to the grade 3 game, and has much more of a sense of humor.
* [[Limited Wardrobe]]: Characters dress the same in every main game except grade 4 and Math.
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* [[Real After All]]: In the first game.
* [[Redheaded Hero]]: Joni.
* [[The Reveal]]: Every main game except 4th grade. [[Oddball in Thethe Series|Noticing a trend]]?
* [[Riddle of the Sphinx]]: 4th grade--can't have an Egyptian setting without one of these! Somewhat subverted in that the Sphinx talks like [[The Marx Brothers|Groucho Marx]], and knows you'll outwit him [[Breaking the Fourth Wall|because he's read the game script]].
* [[Totally Radical]]: Nearly all of Owen's dialogue.
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* [[Science Fantasy]]: It's never entirely certain what the series is, though it generally leans more towards [[Science Fiction]] (with 4th grade as a noticeable exception). Interestingly, all the games with proven [[Speculative Fiction]] elements also use [[Plausible Deniability]].
* [[Sesquipedalian Loquaciousness]]: Nearly all of Leslie's dialogue.
* [[Schizo -Tech]]: One can't help but wonder how grade 3' s "Numerians" built a computer a thousand years ago.
* [[Shout -Out]]: Some are intuitive, like [[Kaiju|Mathra]]. Some are less so, like a flower that quotes ''[[My Fair Lady]]''.
** Don't forget the musicals in 3rd grade math by the [[The Beatlestalking|plant quartet with British accents]],and the fact that they call their swamp home "Liverpuddle".
*** Not to mention the [[Yellow Submarinecolorful|animations of the musicals and design of the talking plant quartet]] as well.
* [[Take Your Time]]: A form of [[Gameplay and Story Segregation]] here; obviously you wouldn't want to get put under a time limit when you're trying to do Long division!
* [[Talking Animal]]: Several.
* [[Tech Marches On]]: The kids keep in contact with each other using "videophones" invented by Santiago. At the time the games were made, commercial camera phone did not exist in North America and regular cell phones were not widely used by children anyway.
* [[That's No Moon]]: 5th grade's island is a bit unusual, to say the least. {{spoiler|It's a spaceship, and the aliens have been [[To Serve Man|harvesting]] human [[No Brainer|brains.]]}}
* [[Trial and Error Gameplay]]: The vending machine in ''Search and Solve'' and the Gates in ''Reading''. This is actually the entire point; it's to test out your hypothesis. This doesn't stop it from being frustrating for people of ''any'' age.
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*** But once you know where the letters are, you can just hit them, even if the numbers don't match up.
* [[Unobtainium]]: Cryptiles in grade 5.
* [[Unwinnable Byby Design]]: Yeah, the games can crash on some computers and make it unwinnable...however, the mentioned [[Trial and Error Gameplay]] mini-games can be made unwinnable. If the jams in the vending machine puzzle are clustered to one area and your guesses are all on the other side...you run out of guesses and can't win that game. In the gates challenge, you can easily run out of guesses considering you know ''how'' many letters are in the right or wrong places...but you don't know ''which ones they are''.
* [[Xanatos Gambit]]: Malicia in ''Reading'' {{spoiler|tricked Joni and Owen into assembling the Amulet of Life for her, then when she tried to grab the completed amulet from them, got the wrong one, but she fortunately already had Leslie and Santiago imprisoned in her mountain so naturally, Joni and Owen would walk right on up and bring the amulet to her anyways to rescue their friends.}}
** The [[Big Bad]] of ''Mystery Mansion Arcade'' also has this, where {{spoiler|the mysterious villain, none other than ''Carmen Sandiego'' who has organized it all traps the villains after they fail, and the kids even ask, "Wait, did she want to catch us, or ''them''?}}
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{{reflist}}
[[Category:{{PAGENAME}}]]
[[Category:Edutainment Game]]
[[Category:TheVideo ClueGames Findersof the 1990s]]
[[Category:TropeVideo Games of the 2000s]]
{{DEFAULTSORT:ClueFinders, The}}
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