Where in the World Is Carmen Sandiego? (1985 video game)

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This article is about the video game. For other uses, see Where in the World Is Carmen Sandiego?
Where in the World is
Carmen Sandiego?
Developer(s)Broderbund
Publisher(s)Broderbund
SeriesCarmen Sandiego
Platform(s)Apple II, MS-DOS, Commodore 64, Master System, Amstrad CPC, TRS-80 CoCo

Updated version
Macintosh, Amiga, Apple IIgs, MS-DOS, TurboGrafx-CD, Atari ST, Genesis, SNES
Release1985 (original)
1989 (updated)
Genre(s)Educational/strategy
Mode(s)Single-player

Where in the World is Carmen Sandiego? is an educational video game released by Broderbund 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] An updated version of the game was released in 1989 entitled Where in the World is Carmen Sandiego? (Enhanced), 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. This version featured additional animation and a reworked interface from the 1985 version. Some of the bonus features include: "digitized photos from National Geographic, over 3200 clues, music from the Smithsonian/Folkways Recordings, 20 villains, 60 countries, and 16 maps".[2] CD-ROM versions for MS-DOS and Macintosh were released in 1992, and a Windows version was released in 1994.

In the game, the player takes the role of a rookie in the ACME Detective Agency, tasked to track down crooks from the V.I.L.E. organization that have stolen famous works. They do this by using their knowledge of geography (aided by the Almanac) to question witnesses or investigate clues to track down where the crook has gone. Successfully solving these crimes increases the player's rank in ACME, leading to more difficult cases and eventually tasked to find the lead of V.I.L.E., Carmen Sandiego.

The game was initially developed as a menu-driven interface to replace the text-driven interface of adventure games like Colossal Cave Adventure for graphic-enabled computers like the Apple II. Along the way, the idea of introducing geography as part of the game and distributing the Almanac with the game shifted its approach. While it was not intended as an education game at release, the game proved very successful as an education tool for schools. By 1995, over 4 million copies of the game had been sold, and established the Carmen Sandiego franchise.

This game is not to be confused with the 1996 rebooted version sometimes mistakenly called the "Deluxe" version.[3]

Plot and gameplay

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.

A screenshot from the game, showing the options to the player at a given location. Carmen Sandiego's interface was designed as a graphic menu-driven adventure game to remove the ambiguity of previous text adventure games.

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 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" (the in-game equivalent of an Interpol "Red Notice") 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. 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.

Deluxe version

Where in the World Is Carmen Sandiego? Deluxe
Developer(s)Brøderbund Software
Publisher(s)Brøderbund Software
SeriesCarmen Sandiego
Platform(s)MS-DOS, FM Towns, Microsoft Windows, Mac OS
Release1992
Genre(s)Educational/strategy
Mode(s)Single-player

The Advocate[which?] explains that the 1992 "Deluxe" edtion of the game features "photos from locations around the world overlaid with animated sequences of the criminals in action, music and sound effects".[4] Each location contains three sources of clues: The user can question a bystander, search the area, or call "Crime Net".[5] Bystanders and "Crime Net" provide clues as to the suspect's location and, on occasion, additionally state something about the suspect. Searching an area along the perpetrator's path turns up an object that provides a clue as to the suspect's location. The Deluxe edition is the first in the series to feature dialogue spoken aloud, although most information still appears in written form and the dialogue of bystanders is not spoken but rather contained in speech balloons.

Development

The conception of the game began in 1983, though it did not start off as an educational game. Broderbund programmer Dane Bigham had played the text adventure game Colossal Cave Adventure, but found that players would struggle in trying to find the correct synonyms to use for the commands programmed into the game, a limitation of computational power at that time. With the Apple II home computer gaining popularity, Bigham believed he could write an adventure game for children, using the graphics of the Apple II to provide menu-driven commands to replace text commands. Bigham developed the game to a point where it contained enough locations and concepts to take it to Broderbund's "Rubber Room", the offices of Gene Portwood, a former Disney artist, and Lauren Elliott, as to start developing a more complete story and art for the game. Bigham's initial idea, based on the childhood game of cops and robbers, did not readily get Portwood's attention, but as Bigham pared down the concept, in particular focusing the game on catching one criminal at a time rather than multiple, Portwood warmed up to the idea.[6]

As Bigham, Portwood, and Elliott worked on this approach, Broderbund co-founder Gary Carlston suggested changing the game from an adventure to one focused on geography, recalling his own travels as a child in Europe in the 1950s. Bigham was not as thrilled with this idea, but continued on with the game focusing on refining the game's interface. To help write a narrative, Carlston hired in David Siefkin, and initially suggested to write a narrative around the Great Cities works from Time-Life Books, but later directed him to use the World Almanac, as Carlston had plans to ship the game with the Almanac with it.[6]

Siefkin wrote an early script for the game beside the swimming pool in Strawberry Canyon on the campus of the University of California at Berkeley. Siefkin was also inspired by Colossal Cave Adventure, transforming the cavern into a map of the world, where the rooms of the cavern become countries with real treasures, and the clues were based on the languages, culture, and geography of those countries that they could get from the Almanac.[6] In this initial script, the game would select a random village and a stolen treasure, and start the player in a randomly-selected city with a clue of where to go next via Bigham's menu interface. Getting the right answer would give the player another clue to the next location, and this process would repeat five to six times until the villain was caught and a new game started. Siefkin believed that children would learn about the world through trial and error as they played the game.[6] Broderbund approved of this idea for the script and incorporated it into the existing development.[6] Siefkin left the project soon after submitting the script to become a foreign service officer, serving as a diplomat in several of the countries featured in the game. He is listed in the game manual as a contributing author.[7][6]

Siefkin's script featured several villains, one of whom he named Carmen Sandiego. Siefkin adapted Carmen's name from the Brazilian singer and actress Carmen Miranda, as well as the name of a dog owned by his former roommates in San Francisco, as well as from the American city of San Diego, California.[6] Project manager Katherine Bird latched onto that name believing it captured something exotic and mysterious. Carlston also liked the name as they could design a female character for it, allowing young women to be able to connect with the game, as well as not having to worry about her backstory of why she became a crook. The name also lended well to the title Where In the World Is Carmen Sandiego? as it succinctly informed the player of the game's goal.[6] With this, they fleshed out two organizations: V.I.L.E. - Villains’ International League of Evil - and the ACME Detective Agency - with ACME joking considered an initialism for "A Company that Makes Everything". Some of the villains in V.I.L.E. were designed from other Broderbund employees: Carmen was modeled after Marsha Bell, the company's manager of marketing services, while the villain "Katherine Drib" was an anagram of Bird's name. Others were named based on puns, such as "Ken U. Sparadigm" for "can you spare a dime".[6] The game would now require the player to start as a recruit for ACME, and work their way up by locating the henchmen within V.I.L.E., until finally they were ready to track Carmen. As they worked their way up, they would have less in-game time to find the crook, and the geographic trivia would become harder.[6]

Bigham considered his relationship with this first Carmen game as one of "love-hate", as he had been more inspired to develop action games, and Carlston had denied him opportunities to work on these at Broderbund while Carmen was still in production.[6] Bigham was still not sure if the game would be successful, and once the game was complete by 1985, took a brief leave from Broderbund to work with Doug Smith during that summer. When he returned to Broderbund, he was surprised that Carmen was popular from a market area they did not anticipate, that being from an educational standpoint, becoming a core piece of software in many schools.[6]

Reception

In 2003, a journal article in Computers and Education wrote that the title was "by far the best-selling educational software in North America".[8]

Carmen Sandiego was Broderbund's third best-selling Commodore game as of late 1987.[9] 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".[10] The magazine gave it the 1989 Compute! Choice Award for Educational Software, stating that it successfully combined teaching and fun.[11] The game has sold over four million copies.[12]

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.[13]

Its sales had surpassed 250,000 copies by November 1989.[14] By 1995, more than 4 million copies of the game had been sold.[15]

Deluxe version

The game was given a rating of 4 out of 5 at MyAbandonware.[16] The San Diego Union said the "'Carmen Sandiego Deluxe' game is challenging, but still fun", adding that "Kids will be anything but bored".[17] Boston Globe said it was "for older children".[18] Pittsburgh Post-Gazette described it as a "fast paced detective chase".[19] The Los Angeles Times said "[Carmen Sandiego's] creators at Broderbund have remade her bigger and badder than ever in a terrific new CD-ROM release of "Where in the World Is Carmen Sandiego? Deluxe Edition", and gave the gave a rating of 5 out of 5 stars.[20]

The game was given a press score of 6.3 off IGN,[21] and a Reader Review Average of 8.0, a GameFAQs Rating Average of 8.5, and a GameRankings Average of 6.2 off the website GameFAQs.[22] Nintendo Power gave the game a rating of 3.075 out of 5.[23] A review of the 1992 version of Where in the World Is Carmen Sandiego? by Gary Hartley for HonestGamers concluded by saying: "For the most part, this is a good game. It has its share of flaws, but you should find it above average overall". Hartley gave the game a score of 6/10 (Good).[24] Carole Stewart McDonnell for the website Guide2Games gave a positive review for the 1992 version of the game Where in the World Is Carmen Sandiego?, saying "this is a fun way of learning world geography". The game was given a Christian Rating of 5/5 (nothing offensive), a Gameplay rating of 5/5 (excellent), a Violence rating of 5/5 (none) and an Adult Content rating of 4/5 (barely present).[25]

A 5¼-inch floppy disk for the Apple II Plus personal computer.

Locations

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. ^ "Where in the World is Carmen Sandiego? (Deluxe Edition) for PC - G4tv".
  3. ^ "Eugene Register-Guard - Google News Archive Search".
  4. ^ "NewsLibrary Search Results".
  5. ^ In later games, "Crime Net" would be written as "Crimenet".
  6. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k l Craddock, David (September 15, 2017). "The Making Of Carmen Sandiego". Kotaku. Retrieved September 15, 2017.
  7. ^ The connection between Colossal Cave Adventure and Carmen Sandiego was first discussed by computer game historian and commentator Bob Clark on the site Game Design Advance. See [1]
  8. ^ https://flexiblelearning.auckland.ac.nz/ela/m3b_b/43/files/EducationVBReadings/computer_assisted_learning_may_not_enhance_education.pdf
  9. ^ Ferrell, Keith (December 1987). "The Commodore Games That Live On And On". Compute's Gazette. pp. 18–22. Retrieved 24 January 2015.
  10. ^ McCullough, Karen G. (February 1986). "Where in the World is Carmen Sandiego? For Apple". Compute!. p. 47. Retrieved 8 November 2013.
  11. ^ "The 189 Compute! Choice Awards". Compute!. January 1989. p. 24. Retrieved 10 November 2013.
  12. ^ "That's Edutainment". Billboard. 107 (19). Nielsen Business Media: 91. May 1, 1995. ISSN 0006-2510. Retrieved August 8, 2009.
  13. ^ "ProReviews". GamePro. No. 51. IDG. October 1993. p. 100.
  14. ^ Staff (November 1989). "Chart-Busters; SPA Platinum". Game Players (5): 112.
  15. ^ "Billboard Newspaper". Billboard Newspaper. May 13, 1995: 91. Retrieved 19 June 2015. {{cite journal}}: Cite journal requires |journal= (help)
  16. ^ "Where in the World is Carmen Sandiego? (Deluxe Edition)".
  17. ^ "ProQuest Archiver: Titles".
  18. ^ "Children's educational software still an exploding market".
  19. ^ "Pittsburgh Post-Gazette - Google News Archive Search".
  20. ^ "Los Angeles Times: Archives - Globe-Trotting Gangsters".
  21. ^ "IGN: Where in the World Is Carmen Sandiego?". Au.cheats.ign.com. Retrieved 2011-02-03.
  22. ^ Search:. "Where in the World Is Carmen Sandiego? for SNES". GameFAQs. Retrieved 2011-02-03.{{cite web}}: CS1 maint: extra punctuation (link)
  23. ^ "Where in the World Is Carmen Sandiego? for SNES". GameRankings. Retrieved 2011-02-03.
  24. ^ "Where in the World Is Carmen Sandiego? review (Genesis)". HonestGamers. 2009-03-20. Retrieved 2011-02-03.
  25. ^ "WHERE IN THE WORLD Is Carmen SANDIEGO? | a game review from Christian Spotlight". Christiananswers.net. Retrieved 2011-02-03.

External links

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