Where in the U.S.A. is Carmen Sandiego? Enhanced

Where in the U.S.A. Enhanced: same case, new paint

Where in the U.S.A. Is Carmen Sandiego? came back for VGA cards as an Enhanced edition, and the copy on this site opens on a title screen dated © 1986, 1991. Under the paint it is the 1986 game. The cities sit in the same order in its data files, Montgomery, Anchorage, Phoenix, Little Rock and on down the list, and the gang is the same sixteen, Carmen plus fifteen, from Sven Galli and Gypsy Rose Lasagna to the Vanderbelt sisters, Brenda and Cobina. The credits keep Gene Portwood and Lauren Elliott on design, and the rank ladder runs from Gumshoe to Super Sleuth.

What VGA brought to Where in the U.S.A.

Every stop is a 256-colour painting now: a cowboy and his horse against a Montana sunset, a bronco rider for Cheyenne, the Space Needle lit up over Seattle, a carved totem pole for Alaska. The commands moved into a menu bar (Game, Options, Acme, Dossiers) and a row of buttons for connections, departures, investigating and the crime computer, with a mouse pointer to press them. The Options menu covers sound and the joystick, and the program carries drivers for the sound hardware of the day, AdLib and Sound Blaster among them, with the music and the sampled effects kept in files of their own.

Opening a case in the U.S.A. Enhanced edition

The case starts on a jailbreak: a prison tower at night with a hole knocked through the wall, then the front page of the Picayune-Times-Gazette with Carmen's picture under the headline. After that the clues read like the 1986 game's, with better pictures behind them. Arkansas sent Hattie Caraway to Washington in 1932, the first woman elected to the U.S. Senate. Rhode Island measures 48 miles by 37. Old Faithful is the most famous of Yellowstone's geysers and hot springs. The warrant and the clock work exactly as they did.

U.S.A. Enhanced is not U.S.A. Deluxe

The two names get mixed up, and they are different games. Enhanced keeps the 1986 gang and cities and gives them new graphics and sound. The Deluxe Edition of 1992 replaced all of it: a new gang, a new route, photographs instead of paintings. Brøderbund kept revising the Enhanced build too; a later copy reports itself as MS-DOS Version 2.3, © 1986, 1992.

Play Where in the U.S.A. Is Carmen Sandiego? Enhanced online in your browser

Where in the U.S.A. Is Carmen Sandiego? Enhanced runs right here in your web browser, free, with nothing to download or install. The copy here is the MS-DOS VGA edition, © 1986, 1991, with its menu bar and mouse pointer.

Anything the game writes to its own disk, from your detective's rank to a saved case, is kept in this browser, and in your account too once you sign in. Press Play in browser at the top of this page to open the case.