Dossier lookups, game by game
The database that turns scattered traits into one name changes its face in every title, though the job stays the same.
Behind every warrant sits a lookup tool that cross-references recorded traits against a roster of dossiers — ten suspects in the original, sixteen in Europe and Time, fifteen in Space. It is never called the same thing twice, and the differences are a small tour of how the series re-skinned one mechanic for a decade.
The database by name
- Where in the World (1985): the Crime Computer, worked by highlighting a known trait — hair, for instance — and cycling through the possible values until the machine narrows the field.
- Deluxe (1990): the same idea handed to a character, Warren the Warrant Robot, who “analyzes your data and scans all of the gang's dossiers for any possible matches,” alongside an on-screen Official Interpol Map for the destination side.
- Where in the U.S.A. (1986): the Crime Computer again, checked through a Show/Depart pair of menus.
- Where in Europe (1988): the Crime Lab computer, fed through a Notebook of recorded traits.
- Where in Time (1989) and America's Past (1991): an Evidence Database, which checks notes “against all of the criminal's dossiers” and, in Time, hands a matched case to an automatic Capture Robot.
- Where in Space (1993): a Warrant Database queried through the ship's VAL 9000 computer.
- Junior Detective (1995): no database at all — the “dossier” is a wanted poster assembled piece by piece from a bumbling photographer's partial shots.
One rule survives every rename
Whatever it's called, the tool works the same way: it takes recorded traits and returns every dossier that still fits. Too few traits and several names come back; enough traits and exactly one does. The renaming is cosmetic, but it's also a useful marker of how each sequel dressed its setting — a Warrant Robot fits a CD-ROM remake's larger cast of gadgets, and a Capture Robot fits a time-travel premise, in a way a generic “computer” wouldn't.