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Where in North Dakota Is Carmen Sandiego?
Developer(s)	North Dakota Database Committee Broderbund
Publisher(s)	Broderbund
Director(s)	Craig Nansen
Designer(s)	Gene Portwood Lauren Elliott
Programmer(s)	Ken Bull
Writer(s)	North Dakota Database Committee
Composer(s)	Louis Ewens
Series	Carmen Sandiego
Platform(s)	Apple II
Genre(s)	Educational

Where in North Dakota Is Carmen Sandiego? (abbreviated WiNDiCS) is a 1989 state-specific Carmen Sandiego spin-off game that only reached the prototype stage. North Dakota became the first and only state to adapt Carmen Sandiego, creating software that has since become the least-known title in the Carmen Sandiego, and one of the most obscure and rare video games of all time. The history and geography-based edutainment game is played from a first-person perspective, and was released for the Apple II platform. It is also the only game in the franchise where Carmen Sandiego is hiding in a specific state. While thousands of units of the school edition were produced and sent to schools around North Dakota such as Washington Elementary School in Fargo, only three retail copies are known to exist (one of which owned by the game's lead designer and remaining unsold until 2016 when gifted to the National Museum of Play). According to the in-game copyright date and game lead Craig Nansen, the game was released in 1989, marking the 100th anniversary of the state (1889-1989). The game was released as part of the state's centennial celebrations.

History

Inspiration

Of the 20 U.S. states that have asked Brøderbund to make state-level Carmen Sandiego games, only North Dakota's proposal came to fruition. Jimmy Maher of The Digital Antiquarian suggests the game was a "prototype for a proposed series of state-level games that never got any further". In addition to becoming the only state-based game in the franchise, it became the only prototype product that Brøderbund ever attempted.

Where in North Dakota Is Carmen Sandiego? was developed by a small team of thirteen educators led by Craig Nansen, collectively known as the North Dakota Database Committee of the Minot Public Schools. The project was completed in 1989 on behalf of the state's Department of Education to help mark North Dakota's 100th year of statehood. The Brøderbund development team led by Janese Swanson also aided production through making their Carmen Sandiego interface readily available to the team; the game came about through the combined efforts of both parties. The game's inspiration came from educators identifying an opportunity for a game intended to teach North Dakotans about their state's history and geography. Having observed the popularity of the two-year-old franchise in their schools, North Dakotan teachers starting bringing up the suggestion of a state-specific version.

Development

Nansen saw promise in the idea and contacted Brøderbund about the possibility of creating the game. In addition, he contacted North Dakota's Department of Public Instruction and was able to secure a $100,000 grant from the state legislature to help fund the project". The fund was provided by Superintendent Dr. Wayne Sanstead and Director of Information and Resource Dr. Ron Torgerson. Brøderbund agreed to create the game, but required local expertise to create the clues and write the text; Nansen gathered a committee of educators from around the district (collectively known as the North Dakota Database Committee) who had taught North Dakotan topics in the past. The next two years were spent compiling facts with the help of school districts across the state. Brøderbund gave the team access to the interface and structure of its previous games, and all the data-collection and legwork was completed by Nansen and his fellow educators. While there were restrictions on how much the team could deviate from the Carmen Sandiego template, local nuances was added via the inclusion of four-wheel drives for location-based travel, and the change of criminals to "pranksters" due to the addition of "a touch of North Dakota nice." Shortly after development, Nansen proceeded to conduct seminars in schools across the state, in which he encouraged teachers to incorporate the game into their curricula, and gave them the tools to do so. At the time of the game's release, Brøderbund was the third largest developer of commercial computer software in the United States, and its Carmen Sandiego software (of which North Dakota was the latest release) and The Print Shop were considered "winners" at the time.

Response

Craig Nansen explained that other states approached Brøderbund after the North Dakota version was released and were quoted millions instead of the $100,00 their game was funded by. The game was described by The Digital Antiquarian as "strangely specific". It ended up selling approximately 5,000 copies; mostly to North Dakotan schools and was very popular within the state. Many North Dakotan students would end up spending a considerable amount of their computer lab time playing the game. In one case, the game had an effect on the future career of Zulafly software developer Grant Swenson; he later explained that the game was a part of his memories interacting with computers as a child, due to the carefully-designed packaging, pride-inducing floppy disk switching, and clue-solving with his teacher. InCider was puzzled by the specificity of the game upon its release. When listing the locations of various Carmen Sandiego games, it added that the crook was also "in North Dakota, of all places."

Though the game was heavily circulated in North Dakota school classrooms in the 1990s, the game has become rare. As North Dakotan schools started updating their computers, floppy disks became obsolete. This, coupled with the small number of units produced, led to the title being very rare today. According to historian Frank Cifaldi, who helped rediscover the game, there is currently no confirmation that the retail version was bought by any customers. Despite there being a school edition that was popular among North Dakotan school, three single retail copies are known to exist, one of which owned by the game's lead designer, Craig Nelson. 96.5TheFox notes notes that the game hasn't been uploaded to the Internet Archive’s Internet Arcade, which decreases the the chances of it being easily accessed by 21st century gamers. Similarly, Cool987FM warned its readers of the difficulty in locating original floppy disks of this game. The Gamecola podcast described Where in North Dakota... as a "weird old PC game" that could be dug up for family game night. Inforum addressed the game's obscurity by suggesting that even fans of the franchise would be asking why Carmen Sandiego ended up in North Dakota, adding that the game's existence might be hard to comprehend for anybody who grew up outside of the state. Cifaldi described it as "probably the hardest" Carmen Sandiego game due to having clues based on obscure North Dakotan historical trivia, which are sometimes impossible to solve via an internet search engine. Kris Kerzman, the writer of an Inforum article about the North Dakotan game's rediscovery in the mid 2010s, deemed it "a fascinating piece of the state's history and video game history."

Rediscovery

Despite sinking off into obscurity, the game was never forgotten and was referred to at various times on web forums and discussions. A sense of nostalgia hangs over games such as Carmen Sandiego, and according to Inforum the growing recognition of video games as cultural artifacts has led to WiNDiCS gaining new attention. In 2006, anecdotal evidence suggested a women who works for an edutainment company still had boxed Apple II copies. Also that year, a Minot Public School webpage was published about Apple II game emulation, with images of the Carmen Sandiego title. Nansen said in 2008: "Brøderbund turned over an unprotected version to us when the sales died off. I have that copy, and we have digitized it for emulators.” In January 2015, he explained "We still have copies of the program, but also have been able to get it to run under emulation on current Mac OSX machines...We have a ROM image & can run it on a javascript emulator." In 2015, a review and Let's Play both were released on YouTube; this along with a Wikipedia article created a renewed interest in the 25-year-old game. The official Carmen Sandiego social media accounts posted statuses about the game in February 2016. According to the review, "The game has been imaged and is available now through the Asimov Apple II FTP site"; Destructoid added "Recently Where in North Dakota is Carmen Sandiego was located and preserved on Asimov's Apple II FTP along with many other obscure edutainment titles." Players either have to use an Apple II emulator, or write onto old floppy disks and play on an Apple II console.

New developments

In January 2015, California-based historian Frank Cifaldi was researching the Carmen Sandiego franchise on Wikipedia and became bemused by the entry on the North Dakotan game, wondering "Why the hell did they make that?". After discovering the article, he subsequently tweeted about the game to his 12000 followers and soon began conversing with Nansen, who had put an emulated version online. Nansen has also conversed with the creator of the Wikipedia article who had used "scraps of material from the web" and had requested further sources from Nansen. As Nansen was recently retired, he offered to round up all of the information on the obscure game and make it available. Meanwhile, Cifaldi offered to write an article using the material. Due to the sustained curiosity about the game among his obscure-game enthusiast Twitter followers, Cifaldi visited Nansen in Minot with a film crew "to learn more about it...for a series on screen culture that will stream online". The project is related to a proposed Red Bull TV documentary. Nansen gave some documents to Cifaldi, who wishes to explore the game further in future publications. According to Inforum, "Among the materials Nansen gave Cifaldi was one of only three known surviving versions of the game boxed for retail sale. This version differs from version that was sold to schools and was only sold through the Brøderbund mail-order catalog. It now is on its way to the National Museum of Play in Rochester, N.Y." where it will supplement other Carmen Sandiego materials donated to the museum by Brøderbund founder Doug Carlston in 2014. Cifaldi later flew to North Dakota to retrieve an unused retail copy and was able to archive it. Jon-Paul Dyson, the Director of the International Center for the History of Electronic Games at the National Museum of Play, posted a tweet thanking Cifaldi for tracking down a copy of the game and preserving it at the museum. Cifaldi openly encouraged North Dakotan citizens to unearth their copies of the game, due to being "one of the rarest video games ever made". A playable version for the web browser is the new goal, as Cifaldi has "heard from a lot of people who want to play it or even use it in the classroom again". Cifaldi reached the stage of the game where he was able to provide a Carmen Sandiego warrant, but decided that instead of becoming the first person to complete the game since its rediscovery, he would "stop this, reload, and livestream the first time this game gets beaten on the internet". A livestream was created on May 30, 2016. On July 23, 2016, the Apple II-focused KansasFest featured a contest of WiNDiCS. in July 2016, an article about the game's developments was published in Grand Forks Herald, Particle News, Dickinson Press, and Inforum.

Packaging

Players were given a binder which had a copy of the manual, a North Dakota state almanac, and the game on a double-side floppy disk tucked in the front plastic sleeve. Inside the binder were miscellaneous bits of information such as headshots of Carmen's henchmen, a map of North Dakota, and a page that asks the player to describe the final scene of the game and mail it (to receive a prize). Further pages have a paper version of the almanac, and information about the individual cities included in the game. A teacher's guide is tucked into the back plastic sleeve. A second binder contains activities that correlate to 18 database disks that were included in the package. A North Dakota centennial blue book, and a booklet entitled Governors and First Ladies of North Dakota were included later in this binder.

Gameplay

The game interface is similar to the other Carmen Sandiego games released in the DOS era of the franchise (approximately 1985-1990). Inforum noted that it is "instantly recognizable as a Carmen Sandiego game" due to having the player advance in rank as they catch criminals and follow clues to locations such as International Peace Garden and Cando.

It starts by asking the player's name, and proceeds to inform them of the next case. Two design changes were made for this specific game: The characters were pranksters instead of criminals, and travel between locations was done by a 4-wheel drive instead of an airplane. Players get promoted through ranks as they catch the pranksters until they have a chance at catching Carmen herself. When they do catch Carmen they receive the Roughrider Award.

The game requires a "understanding of this very specific slice of the American Midwest".