Junior Detective's cast and crew
The Fox cartoon's voice cast, a Brøderbund team led by Ken Goldstein, maps from Magellan Geographix and a real photograph for every country.
Junior Detective Edition arrived while the Fox cartoon Where on Earth Is Carmen Sandiego? was on the air, and the box in this archive makes no secret of the borrowing: “Play along with Zack, Ivy and The Chief from the Emmy Award winning TV series.” The credits in the 1996 user’s guide bear it out.
The voices
The guide’s Voice Talent list is short and familiar: Rita Moreno as Carmen Sandiego, Rodger Bumpass as the Chief, Scott Menville as Zack and Jennifer Hale as Ivy, the same four who played those parts on the show (see Franchise legacy: TV & animation). The newcomer is Leilani Jones, credited as “Dee Jaye”, the talking face on the GizmoTapper’s control panel. The Read-Me says Dee Jaye delivers help automatically unless that is switched off, after which you call her by clicking “the red bar that forms her smile.”
Allgame’s synopsis adds Stretch to the ACME side as “ACME’s crime-tracking dog”, and the leftover cheat menu in CARMEN.EXE has an entry simply called “Stretch”, filed between “End Game” and “Kid Template Clues”.
The cartoon connection
The screenplay is credited to Janis Diamond, Ken Goldstein and Sean Roche, and Roche is the credited developer of the Fox series. DIC Entertainment, which produced the show, appears in the special thanks, as do Brøderbund’s founders, Doug and Gary Carlston.
The Brøderbund team
Ken Goldstein is billed as Lead Designer and Publisher. Leah Antignas produced, Louis Ewens programmed (with Ken Bull, Carol Spelman and David Braun assisting), Michelle Bushneff was art director and Stuart Lowder lead animator. Ralph Marsh and Jonelle Adkisson wrote the original music, and Marsh shared sound design with Haroon Tahir. Lance Groody and Leila Joslyn complete the design team, and Miryam Acevedo-Bouchard is credited for research.
Maps, photographs and a handbook
The maps are credited to Magellan Geographix of Santa Barbara, California. Every country is a real photograph, and the guide credits them one by one, from George Hunter’s Venezuela for AllStock to Craig Wells’s Pakistan for Tony Stone Images, with FPG International and The Image Bank among the other suppliers. The box also promised a printed Junior Agent Handbook “with hours of activities for children aged 5 and up”, its activity design and art credited to …the last word of San Anselmo, California.
The trophy shelf
A Business Wire release of March 22, 1995 names the game among four Brøderbund winners of the Software Publishers Association’s Excellence in Software Awards, the Codies, for Best Early Education Program. Brøderbund’s own awards page, as archived in 1997, dates that Codie to March 13, 1995 and adds a 1996 Newsweek Editor’s Choice Award (dated August 1995) and a Family PC Family Tested Recommended Award (July 1995). For the rest of the series’ shelf, see reception and awards, 1985–1997.