Where in America's Past in Carmen Sandiego? - Tom Plays

It's Edutainment Month, and Tom figured he may as well participate (he can be a joiner sometimes). His favorite game in the venerable series by Brøderbund, 1991's Where in America's Past is Carmen Sandiego? is the subject for today's quickplay. Here's Tom with some memories, not told from the perspective of a scared detective on his first day as a time traveler: One of the first computer games I ever played was Where in Europe is Carmen Sandiego? Same Apple ][ computer labs discussed in the ANTcatraz video. Being in the first grade and only being vaguely aware of Europe, it's safe to say I was terrible. I remember seeing the terrible pun indicating that you flew to the wrong city repeatedly. Let's just say it involved a banana peel and the word *fruitless*. I later got a copy of Where in the USA is Carmen Sandiego? for the 286 we had for a few years. It got a permanent spot on the tiny hard drive that machine possessed. For a good long time, I spent every day after school and much of the weekend chasing down Carmen and her gang. Pretty sure I caught her as well. Fun Tom fact: the included reference book, Fodor's USA, helped hugely with a fifth grade assignment. We were to write the Chamber of Commerce of a given state and do a poster based on the information we received back. Fodor's had an address for Georgia's Department of Industry and Trade, and I wanted to write them instead of the CoC. After initially refusing, my teacher let me bend the rules and do so. The gamble paid off, as I got an insane amount of reference and tourism materials in the mail, including the complete Georgia article from the World Book Encyclopedia and a map poster. Those who wrote the CoC got jobbed. Around the same time, I saw Where in Time is Carmen Sandiego?, and was astonished. The graphics, the time hopping mechanic, and that damned coffee machine all sold me on this new take on Carmen. Check out Pushing Up Roses recent review here:    • Happy Edutainment Month! Where in TIME is ...   Soon Time joined USA on that tiny hard drive and a whole new chase was on, a chase put on hold by what I saw in an Electronics Boutique catalog shortly before Christmas 1991. These monthly catalogs were like pornography for a video game loving tween back then. Half was devoted to consoles, the other to computers. Before the internet, this was the best way to see what new games were out and what was on the horizon. It was there I found Where in America's Past is Carmen Sandiego? advertised, and I knew I wanted it. It became my favorite in the series quickly. The flavor images were beautiful. It took full advantage of our SoundBlaster card. The best part was the challenge. All the previous games in the series limited your destinations. For example, in USA one could only fly to one of four other cities from their current location, and one was typically the city you'd just come from. This allowed the player to narrow down the solution between the three remaining cities. While Time maintained this limitation, America's Past threw it out the window. Now one could travel to any region and any time period at will, so you had to know your stuff. Of course, some of the clue combinations were dead giveaways, but late in the game one needs to move as quickly as possible. Traveling based on a single clue is vital to complete cases in the allotted time. So brush up on your history knowledge and go catch Carmen! Next time, let's play a game this is somewhat educational, and very entertaining, but not really edutainment. I'm talking about classic criminal simulator Drug Wars!