After the almanac: the spin-off era
How the franchise moved on from the witness-and-warrant loop into games for younger players and full adventures.
The classic witness-and-warrant loop carried the series from 1985 to 1993. After that, Brøderbund (and the owners who followed) widened the brief — chasing new audiences and new genres rather than new subjects.
For younger detectives
Junior Detective Edition (1995) rebuilt the geography chase for ages five to eight, replacing text with spoken clues and picture icons. It was the first appearance of Stretch, ACME's crime-tracking dog, and it leaned on the cast of the Fox cartoon. Other younger-skewing “detective” titles followed through the late 1990s.
Toward the adventure game
Two releases pointed the loop at a more story-driven future. Carmen Sandiego's Great Chase Through Time (1997) reworked the time-travel concept as a point-and-click game for Windows, and Treasures of Knowledge (2001) went all the way to a full adventure with a real plot — the last entry in the original computer-game line. For the broadcast spin-offs, see Franchise legacy: TV & animation.