SNES and Genesis: faithful ports, not the Deluxe cut

Genesis, 1992

The Sega Genesis conversion of Where in the World Is Carmen Sandiego? was developed by EA Canada and published by Electronic Arts in 1992. It offered a language-selection screen with five options — English, French, German, Italian and Spanish — making it one of the more broadly localised editions of the game (see Localised and international editions). Contemporary review coverage noted that visually it looked "almost identical" to the 1985 original rather than adopting the later Deluxe remake's art, and that it dropped some of the music heard in other versions, including the well-known Rio de Janeiro theme.

Super NES, 1993

The SNES version followed in June 1993, published by Hi Tech Expressions and generally credited to EA Canada as developer as well, though that developer attribution rests on secondary listings rather than the packaging-level confirmation the Genesis version has. Cartridge manufacturing codes on surviving copies date to 1993, consistent with the June release date, for both the US and PAL builds.

Same game, different generation of hardware

It's worth being precise about what these console versions actually are. Both keep the structure of the original menu-driven detective game — witness locations, destination and suspect-trait clues, an Interpol-style warrant — adapted to a gamepad rather than a keyboard and mouse. They are not console versions of the CD-ROM Deluxe Edition, which added digitised photography, spoken dialogue and a much larger world; that content stayed on computers. Anyone comparing a SNES or Genesis cartridge against Deluxe screenshots is comparing two different products built years apart from the same source game.