Where in the World is Carmen Sandiego? (1996)

Where in the World Is Carmen Sandiego? (1996), version 3.0

By 1996 the World game had already been rebuilt once, as the Deluxe Edition. Version 3.0 started again. Its read-me is dated 24 April 1996, Brøderbund began shipping it on 26 August 1996 at a street price of about $40, it came out for Windows 3.1, Windows 95 and the Macintosh, and on Windows it needed QuickTime 2.1 for its movies and WinG for its graphics, both installed from the disc. Like the U.S.A. CD-ROM before it, it runs on Brøderbund's Mohawk engine.

Lynne Thigpen as the Chief on the videophone

Cases come from Lynne Thigpen, the Chief from the PBS game show, in filmed clips that play in a Videophone window; Brøderbund billed her as the first “real person” to play the Chief in the software. The ACME Good Guides are a button away on the same phone. Under it sits the ACME Babel-Link Translator, which asks your name at sign-in (“Translator is fully charged”) and holds the three things you can say to a witness: where did the suspect go, tell me about the suspect, thank you, goodbye. Travel is Fly by Night Travel, a plane circling a globe while it works out the flight time and the time zones crossed; leave the United States at 1:00 p.m. for China and you land at 1:30 in the morning.

Fifty countries and no dossiers in the 1996 game

The trail runs between countries rather than cities, fifty of them in the game's database, and every stop is a painted panorama that fills most of the screen and scrolls all the way round, the Great Wall at night among them. Clues come from the people who walk past, a tourist with a camera or a bearded man in a long robe, and from scraps of paper describing the crook. There are no V.I.L.E. dossiers to look a suspect up in, though the gang runs to thirty-nine crooks plus Carmen: you build the warrant from the description yourself, then pick the crook out of the bystanders at the last stop. The deadline is the battery meter on your Babel-Link translator; run it flat and the losing headline reads “Babel-Link battery bottoms out!” A right guess can earn a gag with Carmen's cat, Carmine, or the janitors Rick and Nick. The opening credits thank the National Geographic Society for the database reference material and the location music.

Who made the 1996 Where in the World

The credits roll beside a spotlight that holds Carmen first and then the whole V.I.L.E. gang: Bo Everson as lead designer, Todd Arnold producing, Louis Ewens as lead programmer, Marcela Pesqueira Evans as art director, Stuart Lowder directing the animation and Greg Rahn on music and sound design, with Ken Goldstein as executive producer. The copy here is version 3.0, installed from its own disc into Windows 3.1.

Play Where in the World Is Carmen Sandiego? (1996) online in your browser

Where in the World Is Carmen Sandiego? runs right here in your web browser, free, with nothing to download or install. The copy here is version 3.0 for Windows 3.1, installed from its own disc. The page starts Windows 3.1 first, and Windows starts the game on its own. Click inside the picture to capture the mouse, and press Esc when you want your pointer back.

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.