Junior Detective Edition (1995)
The globe-chase rebuilt for ages five to eight, with spoken clues and picture icons in place of reading and typing.
Overview
Where in the World Is Carmen Sandiego? Junior Detective Edition (1995) is Brøderbund's CD-ROM rework of the series for very young players — ages five to eight, including children who can't yet read. Every clue is a picture or a spoken line, and the whole interface is voiced.
Gameplay
You chase V.I.L.E. for ACME through a talking gadget, the GizmoTapper 586-LC, narrated by an AI guide called DeeJay, helped by Zack and Ivy and by Stretch, ACME's crime-tracking dog (his first appearance). A magnifying-glass cursor glows over clickable clues; each clue is a simple icon standing for the next country, which you match against the pictures on a map. A photographer snaps pieces of the crook's face into a wanted poster. In place of the case clock there's a battery that travel and searching drain, and there are 14 cases to close; botch one and the crook escapes.
Reception
It won a 1995 Codie Award for Best Early Education Program and a 1996 Newsweek Editor's Choice. A note for the record: the in-game map of Asia draws Sakhalin as Japanese rather than Russian. This is a Windows and Mac CD-ROM title, archived here rather than browser-playable.