Where in the World Is Carmen Sandiego? (1985)

Where in the World Is
Carmen Sandiego?
Developer(s) Brøderbund Software
Publisher(s) Brøderbund Software
Series Carmen Sandiego
Platform(s)

Release date(s) 1985 (original)
1989 (updated)
Genre(s) Educational/strategy
Mode(s) Single-player
A 5¼-inch floppy disk for the Apple II Plus personal computer.

Where in the World Is Carmen Sandiego? is an educational video game released in 1985. It is the first product in the Carmen Sandiego franchise. The game was distributed with The World Almanac and Book of Facts, published by Pharos Books.[1] Where in the World is Carmen Sandiego? was included in some software packages with the Amiga 500.

An updated version of the game was released in 1989, that did not have the almanac copy protection but disk based copy protection. A remake, Where in the World Is Carmen Sandiego? Deluxe was released in 1992.

The chase

The goal of the game is to track Carmen's villains around the world, arrest them and ultimately arrest Carmen herself. The player begins the game by first going to the country where the crime took place and then obtaining hints from various sources on where the thief went next, leading to a chase around the world to find the thief before time runs out.

Each case begins with the user being alerted that a spectacular theft has been committed. Starting by first traveling to the scene of the crime, the player is given several opportunities to collect clues about the suspect's next location, which come in the form of pun-filled word play about the target place. There are thirty countries that can be visited in the game and each is identified by the name of a prominent city, though this city is not always consistent with the image of the country shown in the game. For example, Lima is given for Peru, but the game instead shows an image of Machu Picchu.

If the player travels to an incorrect location, they receive nonsensical clues and will have to backtrack to the previous location to try again. If the player travels to the correct location, a simple animation of an obvious but otherwise harmless V.I.L.E. henchman lurking across the screen is played. The gameplay continues to repeat in this manner as the player travels from location to location several times before catching up to the criminal.

The case will be lost if the user "runs out of time". Throughout the game, the time is shown as the hour accompanied by the day of the week and every action taken in the game (questioning a witness, traveling to another location, etc.) causes a few hours to elapse. At the start of the game a "deadline" is given by which point the crook must be arrested and, if that time is passed, the case is lost and the crook escapes. The times given in the game do not take changes of time zones into account.

The warrant and the arrest

The player will occasionally be given information on the suspect, enabling the player to exclude all but one of the suspects in Interpol's database of V.I.L.E. members. Once the player eliminates all but one suspect, Interpol issues an arrest warrant against that individual. If a player enters a combination of attributes that eliminates all possible members of the database, the game will inform the player to that effect and refuse to issue any warrant.

Once the player reaches the final location, the animation of the nearby V.I.L.E. henchman becomes more aggressive and implies imminent danger and any clues the player receives simply suggest that they should watch their back. Investigating further clues lead to a chase scene and the attempted apprehending of the thief which results in an off-screen fight, which will be successful if and only if a warrant for that particular suspect was issued. If there was no warrant issued, or the warrant issued is for someone else besides the suspect, the police will lose the fight, allowing the thief to escape and causing a lone remaining policeman to walk away defeated.

Each successful mission is noted in the player's record and they will occasionally go up in rank. Before being promoted, the user had to correctly answer a geography question with the help of a reference book that was included with the program. This was included as a form of protection against disk copying. Each rank gives harder assignments with more locations to travel to before arriving at the final one. In the final case, the culprit is Carmen Sandiego herself and apprehending her lands the player in the hall of fame.

Master System version

The Master System version plays quite differently to the other versions. Rather than the menu based system, when you land in a city, you move around a sprite based detective to the respective buildings, to get a warrant or back to the airport to travel. You will also need to duck or jump knife attacks from henchmen and gun attacks from Carmen's gang, the timing of which takes some getting used to. If you are hit you lose time recovering.

Reception

Carmen Sandiego was Broderbund's third best-selling Commodore game as of late 1987.[2] Compute! called Carmen Sandiego an example of Broderbund's "attention to detail", and added "that it helps teach research skills and fundamentals of geography as well seems almost too good to be true ... it's entertaining enough to disguise the fact that you might be learning something while you play".[3] The magazine gave it the 1989 Compute! Choice Award for Educational Software, stating that it successfully combined teaching and fun.[4] The game has sold over four million copies.[5]

GamePro gave the SNES version a positive review. They described it as identical to the earlier PC and Genesis versions, and praised the graphics and the strong edutainment value.[6]

Reception
Awards
PublicationAward
Software Publishers Association (1985)Best Learning Product
Classroom Computer Learning (1986)Outstanding Software Award
Software Publishers AssociationSPA Certified Platinum
Software Publishers AssociationCertified Diamond

Locations

A screenshot of the game

This is a list of the locations visited in the game, organized in alphabetical order by country. Note that cities are identified as they were in the game and that they are followed by the country that the city would have been located in at the time the game was produced.

Cities and Countries
Argentina Buenos Aires, Argentina Iceland Reykjavík, Iceland Peru Lima, Peru
Australia Sydney, Australia India New Delhi, India Rwanda Kigali, Rwanda
Brazil Rio de Janeiro, Brazil Iraq Baghdad, Iraq San Marino San Marino, San Marino
Canada Montreal, Canada Italy Rome, Italy Singapore Singapore
China Peking, China Japan Tokyo, Japan Soviet Union Moscow, Soviet Union
Comoros Moroni, Comoros Mali Bamako, Mali Sri Lanka Colombo, Sri Lanka
Egypt Cairo, Egypt Mexico Mexico City, Mexico Thailand Bangkok, Thailand
France Paris, France Nepal Kathmandu, Nepal Turkey Istanbul, Turkey
Greece Athens, Greece Norway Oslo, Norway United Kingdom London, United Kingdom
Hungary Budapest, Hungary Papua New Guinea Port Moresby, Papua New Guinea United States New York, United States

References

  1. ↑ 'CARMEN SANDIEGO'; Point of Reference
  2. ↑ Ferrell, Keith (December 1987). "The Commodore Games That Live On And On". Compute's Gazette. pp. 18–22. Retrieved 24 January 2015.
  3. ↑ McCullough, Karen G. (February 1986). "Where in the World is Carmen Sandiego? For Apple". Compute!. p. 47. Retrieved 8 November 2013.
  4. ↑ "The 189 Compute! Choice Awards". Compute!. January 1989. p. 24. Retrieved 10 November 2013.
  5. ↑ "That's Edutainment". Billboard. Nielsen Business Media. 107 (19): 91. May 1, 1995. ISSN 0006-2510. Retrieved August 8, 2009.
  6. ↑ "ProReviews". GamePro (51). IDG. October 1993. p. 100.
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