Where in the World Is Carmen Sandiego?

Where in the World Is Carmen Sandiego? is the first game in the famous educational game series produced by Brøderbund Software. The game stars the renowned thief wearing a red fedora and trench coat.

This first edition of the game was published in 1985 for the Apple II and MS-DOS, while the Commodore 64 version was released in 1986. In 1988, there was also a TRS-80 CoCo port.

Carmen Sandiego and The Oregon Trail are the two games that defined educational gaming for an entire generation of American schoolchildren.

In the games, Carmen is a criminal mastermind, head of the V.I.L.E. organization. You work for the ACME Detective Agency, and your task is to find all the thieves until you can finally arrest Carmen. To catch all the thieves, you must follow their tracks worldwide. Good knowledge of geography will be necessary, as the investigations will provide clues about the thieves' positions. You will also have to fill out their profiles; otherwise, you won't be able to arrest them.

The game, designed by Gene Portwood and Lauren Elliott and programmed by Dane Bingham, was a massive hit for Brøderbund. It won hundreds of prizes and generated several sequels, including Where in the U.S.A. is Carmen Sandiego?, Where in Europe is Carmen Sandiego?, Where in Time is Carmen Sandiego?, and many others. There was also a deluxe re-release called Where in the World Is Carmen Sandiego? (Deluxe Edition) published in 1992, with 256-color VGA graphics. But if you want to experience the original, this is the game you are looking for.

Netflix made the character famous again with the T.V. series launched in 2019. In this case, Carmen Sandiego is a thief trained by V.I.L.E., but she works against them to prevent their thefts. Highly recommended (both the series and the game).