Where in the World Is Carmen Sandiego?

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.