Almanac research tactics — Carmen Sandiego guide

The bundled reference books were part of the game. Here is how to actually use them.

The classic games are as much research exercises as detective games, and Broderbund leaned into that by shipping a real reference book in every box. Knowing which book belongs to which game, and how to use it, is a genuine advantage.

What shipped with each game

Where in the World (1985) included The World Almanac and Book of Facts.
Where in the U.S.A. (1986) included Fodor's USA travel guide.
Where in Europe (1988) included Rand McNally's Concise Atlas of Europe.
Where in Time (1989) included The New American Desk Encyclopedia.
Where in America's Past (1991) included What Happened When: A Chronology of Life & Events in America by Gorton Carruth.
Where in Space (1993) dropped the printed book and built its reference in: the VAL 9000 computer on your ship answers questions about space.

How to research a clue fast

Identify the clue's category first, currency, flag, language, landmark, a historical date, then go straight to the right section of the book. An almanac has a currency table and a nations index; an atlas has a place-name gazetteer; the encyclopedia is alphabetical. You are looking up one fact, not reading a chapter.

The books doubled as copy protection

This is well documented: the games occasionally demanded a specific word from a specific page of the bundled book before promoting you or letting you continue, so a player without the book was stuck. For Where in the U.S.A., for example, the check could ask for the last bold word at the bottom of a given page of the Fodor's guide. Modern in-browser versions usually pair the game with a scanned copy of its reference for exactly this reason.