Where in the World Is Carmen Sandiego?

The Good
I grew up playing "Where in the World is Carmen Sandiego?". Adventuring around trying capture criminals using clues abuot geography is cool.

The graphics were par-for-the-course considering the time of the game, but then again, the graphics weren't all that important. The fact that it made kids (and adults) use their brains to figure out clues was the developers wanted in the first place.

I spent a few months trying to capture Carmen. And I'll tell you one thing... When you are 12 years old, and you finally capture the Sly Girl herself, there is a great sense of accomplishment to that one deed. And you learn geography too. What a sneaky way to educate a kid, huh?

And the replay value was huge. After you capture Carmen, you retire and start again.. trying to capture her. And since each time you go after a criminal the sites change, it's never the same game twice.

The Bad
Nothing... At the time, it was a ground breaking "edutainment" game. And it still is.

The Bottom Line
A classic game. If you (or your kids) have never played it, you are missing out on a ground-breaking "edutainment" game. A great way to have fun and learn at the same time.

The Good
Geography is one of my childhood hobbies (was always travelling with my finger over map). So, finding this game made a smile on my face. Geography quiz made into the game? Anytime!

In the game, you play a detective chasing a ring of robbers around the world. In every town, you can ask for indices, where robbers left, what can be their next stop. From indices you have to find out the correct city to go as next. After several successful travels from city to city, you'll catch a robber. After several successful catches, you're promoted and continue with more chases, until you catch a leader of the gang.

As game is educational, in every city you have some typical picture of the city and some basic facts about it so you also learn something new along the way, which is also nice and appreciated.

The Bad
Despite of very attractive basic idea of the game, there are also some negatives.

Number one for me is repetitiveness. I know it's geography quiz so hard to invent something new, but first chase, being identical to last chase, it's really a bit of overstretch. On every chase, it's just randomized stuff, like who is robber, initial city, following cities, indices, etc.. But there's absolutely nothing new on later chases. It's just randomize new chase, same the first one as the last one. That's it.

Another small negative point is graphics. Being it 1985 release, I was little disappointed, that game has only CGA graphics. As game consists mostly from static screens, I didn't mind even CGA composite mode (which I don't like very much), but still 16-color Tandy and EGA were widely available in that year, so graphics is far from top of what was available in those times.

The Bottom Line
Certainly worth a try and play at least few chases. Basic idea is refreshing. If you decide to beat the game, you'll meet lot of repetitiveness, but in the end, beating the game takes just few hours, so it's manageable.