The Carmen Sandiego games were always a bit of an anomaly to me. They’re games about tracking down and capturing criminals, but you have to use your wits rather than any heavy artillery. In fact, it’s also the only game that I’ve ever played that requires that you have access to an encyclopedic knowledge of just about anything… or just an encyclopedia. But that’s not even enough. You need to use the clues given to you throughout the case to identify the criminal, get a warrant, and find the stolen goods. Oh, and you have a fairly strict time limit. Catch enough criminals and you eventually have to try and track down the toughest criminal of them all, Carmen Sandiego… who happens to be a female. Yeah, a game featuring a female antihero that you have to defeat by merely using your razor-sharp wits? Yeah, I’d consider that an anomaly.
Each of the games in this series has a slightly different theme, but all that really impacts is the setting. This one, predictably, features you hopping through time trying to catch the bad guys. It only took one rental of this game to realize that I’m particularly bad at deducing things. Though I did think it was kind of interesting that I got a mini-encyclopedia to use along with the rental, I still did pretty horribly. I like to think that I’ve gotten better at deduction in the years since, though I’d probably have to play another game in the series to be absolutely sure.
Well, I have Where in the World is Carmen Sandiego… which may or may not work… if you’d like to try it.
We had that installed on the computer at the Museum when I was working there. I tried playing it on my break one day and did real bad.
But I have the Internet now! That’s like a real big encyclopedia. I may have to give that one a shot.