This Week in Retro: Where in the World is Carmen Sandiego? [1985]

September 1985: Carmen Sandiego Pits Books Against Crooks

by Diamond Feit

Forgive me if this all sounds familiar, but it's still "back to school" season in the United States (remember when that sounded innocent?), and I'm quietly shocked that two of the biggest edutainment computer titles of all time were launched more or less simultaneously 35 years ago. I wrote about The Oregon Trail a few weeks ago—a game that now defines a generation of Americans—but this week's column is about a titan no less important: Where in the World is Carmen Sandiego?

Despite their shared timeframe and cultural impact, the two games couldn't have less in common. The Oregon Trail had its roots in a decade-old text adventure designed by teachers to impart the basics of cross-country wagon travel during the 19th century to 20th-century children. Where in the World is Carmen Sandiego?, on the other hand, was an original creation not by a group of educators but by Brøderbund Software, a commercial video game publisher that had already published such hits as Choplifter, Lode Runner, and Karateka. However, the game did have an unexpected connection to text adventures: According to the book Break Out: How the Apple II Launched the PC Gaming Revolution, programmer Dane Bigham and "contributing author" David Siefkin were both motivated by their love of Colossal Cave Adventure when designing Where in the World is Carmen Sandiego? but wanted to make something more accessible and more inviting by setting their adventure in the real world. 

Speaking of "real world," The Oregon Trail is an American tale of American history, one that was meant to enlighten kids in the U.S. about what their own ancestors might have done. Where in the World is Carmen Sandiego? is, as its title suggests, global: David Siefkin is quoted as saying, "I had traveled around the world for nine months, having to learn about different currencies, languages customs, and landmarks. I wanted a game that introduced these things to young game players, and hoped it might inspire them to make similar trips." The Oregon Trail aimed to teach kids about the distant past, but Carmen wanted them to become curious about the world that existed in the present so they might decide to explore it in the future.

It is a lesson that American kids, both then and now, desperately need: Thanks to our spacious 48 contiguous states bordered by two oceans, many Americans live their entire lives without ever visiting a foreign country. In 1989, only 7 million U.S. passports were in circulation for a nation of then-nearly 250 million people; that's less than 3% of the population.

While the makers of Where in the World is Carmen Sandiego? certainly had younger players in mind, they weren't necessarily planning to make an educational game. The concept of having the player track down a criminal was the hook that gave the adventure its purpose, but the potential to teach kids a lesson along the way helped shape the final product. "Once we decided Carmen was somewhat educational," Dane Bigham told Smithsonian magazine, "we just wanted to stay as far away from that word as we could, because educational games at the time sucked."

The game did not suck. Every playthrough of Where in the World is Carmen Sandiego? starts the same way: Your detective agency learns of a great crime somewhere in the world as well as a potential suspect. The player must investigate random locations for clues to both the crook's identity and where they were headed next. Clues about the thief are necessary to obtain a warrant for their arrest (my first exposure to that word), while destination clues help the player choose where to go at the airport. Travel is always a multiple-choice selection, but a ticking clock prevents players from brute-forcing their way to the right answer; flying to the wrong city means jetting back to the previous one to get on another plane, wasting virtual hours in the process.

Successfully identifying the crook and catching them within the time limit earns the player a merit, which gets them promoted before accepting their next case. As their rank advances, so does the challenge of each case, forcing the players to cover more ground in less time. Once the player is ranked high enough, they will be tasked with hunting down the eponymous Carmen Sandiego herself. In order to do so, they must be able to deduce each destination from a single clue per city, or else time will run out (investigations, like travel, also advance the in-game clock).

One thing that does not move the clock in Where in the World is Carmen Sandiego? is actual research; every copy of the game shipped with a world almanac that had all the answers players could possibly need to track crooks across borders. If a hotel clerk in Moscow said the suspect had changed their money into drachmas, players would need to search the book to find out what that meant. This means that Carmen wasn't merely challenging kids to a social studies quiz but rather giving them an open-book test and letting them learn how to acquire the knowledge they needed. As Bigham put it, "It really wasn't a geography game that taught a ton about geography…What I always thought it taught was reference skills. 'How to look something up' sounds kind of boring and simple, but I think it's a great skill to realize."

Carmen Sandiego was a slow burn at retail, but the game eventually became a huge success for Broderbund, which led to sequel after sequel, each adjusting its focus to change the feel of the game. Where in the U.S.A. is Carmen Sandiego? was the first entry in the series I owned at home (rather than only playing at school), and it finally put my knowledge of state capitals to good use. Europe got its own edition, followed by the highly specific Where in North Dakota is Carmen Sandiego? My final memories of the series were with Where in Time is Carmen Sandiego?, although I was also a regular viewer of the 1991 TV adaptation of the original game, which ran for an astonishing 295 episodes.

Now, 35 years later, the name Carmen Sandiego is far-reaching, as multiple spin-offs and adaptations have made the one-time fictional crook into a household name. Kids today can enjoy a modern web version of the game embedded in Google Earth, which looks incredible—a far cry from the static pixel drawings of world cities I saw back in 1985. Unfortunately, the appeal of hunting crooks based on vague hints is greatly diminished today due to the lost need for reference skills. For kids of my generation, figuring out how to do research was half the assignment. When I was told to write a report on Vasco da Gama, my trip to the library started at the card catalog; how else would I know which book out of thousands was the book I needed? If my kids were asked to do a similar project, taking the first step wouldn't even require them to leave the couch. All they'd need to do is shout "OK GOOGLE!"

Lest this column descend into a cranky list of complaints about modern life, let me make this clear: Where in the World is Carmen Sandiego? poured gasoline on my already-burning interest in geography and lit a fire in me that will never go out. The Information Age may have rendered almanacs and the Dewey Decimal System obsolete, but teaching kids to learn about our only planet is always important. I don't know if Carmen Sandiego helped American kids as a whole expand their horizons—we are still notoriously bad at geography many years later—but for those of us who chased her, I'd like to think we're all still out here pursuing our goals around the globe, wherever they might take us.