Where in the World is Carmen Sandiego?

"Exciting mystery game, high in nostalgia"

This is a port of a great PC game from back in my school days when computers were just monitors and floppy disk drives(games were very hard to play during this time). Anyway, it was somewhat educational and a lot of fun. The basic premise of the game is that you are a detective trying to catch various international criminals, flying all over the world and learning interesting things in the process.

GAMEPLAY PART 1

The game has a very simple, basically unchanging display system. You have a left pane with a picture corresponding to the city you're currently visiting. In the right pane, you have all of your information and four option buttons underneath that right pane.

The first button is your options where you can set what language the game is in and look at your current password in case you have to leave suddenly. Passwords, of course, are how you return to your current case, these are simple three letter jobs. Following that button to your right, you have a picture of an airplane, this is how you move from city to city. The city you're currently in determines which ones you can visit. I'll put more on that in the second section.

Your third button is a magnifying glass which is symbolic of you exploring your city. You get three areas in the city to explore and find clues for solving your mystery. Your final button is your computer which you use to read up on criminals and producing warrants when you've figured out which one you're chasing.

GAMEPLAY PART 2: PUTTING IT ALL TOGETHER

Here is a hypothetical example of a case, using no real details. For this example, we'll say your name is "Joe Sleuth." You'll start with a picture of a building of some kind in your left pane and your right pane will say "***Flash***" you press select and the right pane will give you details of the crime and the gender of the assailant. Then you'll automatically be in the city where the crime took place.

From there, you head over to your computer and mark the gender, then start exploring the city(from the magnifying glass button). The person you talk to in each of the three areas will give you information regarding A) Where your suspect went or B) Defining features about them(hair, car, personality, etc). Sometimes they won't tell you directly, like what color the flag of the place is(that's how they usually do it). They'll say something like "The person you are looking for said she wanted to see a giant statue of Jesus." and you'll be like "Oh! That's in Rio" and if you know who you're looking for, you'll head there right off, otherwise you'll look for clues about who it is. Sometimes you'll get lucky and they'll say something like "The person you are looking for said she wanted to see a giant statue of Jesus. She had red hair and a sweet tattoo." And you'll be able to plug in more information AND know where you're going next.

Once you've figured out who you're looking for or found out everything you can in that city, you'll hit your airplane button and choose from one of the cities you can visit there. There is only one correct city you can visit from your location, if you go to the wrong one all the locations will be like "I know for a fact that the criminal you're looking for has never ever been here. Ain't no statue of Jesus in Iceland" Then you have to fly back to your previous city and you're timed. But the good news is, when you do that, the areas in the city change and you can get more information.

As you chase your criminals, you'll see occasional animations in the right pane as you're on the trail and when you're at the final location, those animations will be attempts to kill you and the clues will be threats, then when you visit the right location in town you win. After you do a few cases, the clues will start to fit together in your head and you'll know the flag with the star and crescent is Istanbul, even though you've never seen it. When you start instantly putting the clues together, you'll feel like a real detective.

In conclusion, this game is a lot of fun and you should acquire and play it.

Reviewer's Score: 8/10, Originally Posted: 02/22/08

Game Release: Where in the World is Carmen Sandiego? (US, June 1993)