Carmen Sandiego

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Image:Carmen sandiego.jpg Carmen Isabela Sandiego is the eponymous fictional character featured in a long-running series of educational games and television shows in the United States and Canada. As a criminal mastermind and villain, Sandiego was an integral part of the series, which originally focused on teaching geography and history (though the series later branched out into mathematics and English). The character later appeared in a series of books and on many licensed products. She is typically depicted wearing a red fedora hat and trench coat.

1 Game series
2 Carmen Sandiego in other media
3 Trivia
4 See also
5 External links

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Game series

Carmen Sandiego was originally conceived in 1983 by ex-Disney artist Gene Portwood, Dane Bingham, and Lauren Elliott at Brøderbund Software. The concept for the product evolved from a game the Carlstons (founders of Brøderbund) played as kids, using the world almanac to play quiz games. To inspire kids to learn geography, the creators wanted a female "heroine" whose name sounded exotic but was unmistakably simple to pronounce. The name "Carmen Sandiego" is somewhat of a play on Indiana Jones. The first software game, "Where in the World is Carmen Sandiego?," was released in 1985. This was followed by "Where in the USA?", "Where in Europe?" and "Where in the World...Jr. Detective Edition," all geography-based games. "Where in Time"/"Great Chase through Time" and "Where in America's Past" were the history-based games, "Word Detective" was the English-based game, "Math Detective" was the mathematics-based game, and "Where in Space is Carmen Sandiego?" was the space/astronomy-based game.

The first seven games were each awarded one or more SPA Excellence in Software Awards, particularly for their educational effort.

The series of games are now being released by The Learning Company, which purchased Brøderbund in the 1990s. The first title released by The Learning Company was "Carmen Sandiego's Think Quick Challenge", a quiz game.

In 2004, Bam! Entertainment released "Carmen Sandiego: The Secret of the Stolen Drums" to the GameCube, XBox, and Playstation2. It was the first 3D game for the franchise. It was also an action game, and while geographical facts were included, learning them was not necessary to complete the game.

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Carmen Sandiego in other media

Carmen's character has also appeared in three television shows, two of them game shows that aired on PBS and later on Nickelodeon. The first was Where in the World is Carmen Sandiego?, which aired from September 1991 to September 1996. It was followed by Where in Time is Carmen Sandiego?, which was on until September 1998. The third show was an animated series titled Where on Earth is Carmen Sandiego?, which debuted in February 1994 on Fox and ran for three seasons.

The World series, which was well known for a memorable theme song performed by Rockapella (who also gave clues to the contestants through song during the show itself), was hosted by Greg Lee, with the chief of ACME Detective Agency played by Lynne Thigpen. The game provided a prize of a trip to anywhere around the continental USA for the winner, later expanded to a trip anywhere in North America; unfortunately, the requirements for winning the final round increased as the show went on, making it harder to win the trip. The first and third (final) round required knowledge of geography; however, the second round required less geographical knowledge, instead requiring contestants to play a game of Concentration, fitting the geography-education theme by making the Concentration "cards" locations, people or ideas related to the object that had been "stolen" in that day's episode.

The Time series, hosted by Kevin Schinick, refocused the show on history, but was otherwise similar to the previous show's format. The final round of this show, however, involved answering various history related questions to open six "time doors"; if a question was answered correctly, the player walked through the door. If it was answered incorrectly, however, the player had to turn a crank, pull a lever, or some other task that ate into their 90-second time limit. If they got through all the doors, they received a personal computer as their prize.

In the Earth series, Carmen was voiced by Rita Moreno, and the series won an Emmy in 1995. Its episodes have subsequently been repeated on both the Fox Family Channel and the Pax network.

In addition, Carmen was the "spokesperson" for Amtrak in spring 1998. Also, she had a cameo role on the show Animaniacs during the "Acquaintances" episode.

A Carmen Sandiego movie is apparently in the works, possibly slated for release sometime in 2006 or 2007. There has been no official cast or crew announced as of yet.

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Trivia

In the computer game, "Where in the World is Carmen Sandiego? Treasures of Knowledge", it is revealed Carmen was a child prodigy, having won a substantial amount of money at a game show when she was ten years old.
In the Where on Earth? series, Carmen was a detective at ACME and built the "Chief" cyborg, as seen on the DVD of Where on Earth? subtitled, "Into the Maelstrom" and released by Sterling Entertainment, circa 2003.
Carmen Sandiego, it is rumored, was named after a 'madame' in Hawaii.
Rumors, spread through AOL chatrooms (circa 1994,) state that Carmen went "commando" under her trenchcoat, though, in the deluxe version of the Where in the World? game, a white skirt is shown under the coat as she runs through Chinatown in San Francisco. In more recent games, she's known to wear a catsuit, showing off her figure.
When "Carmen Sandiego" is typed into Google Images, an old "spec" test movie poster sometimes appears, with Catherine Zeta-Jones billed as starring in "Where is Carmen Sandiego?" motion picture. No further information exists about a movie with Ms. Zeta-Jones, and further urban myth has the movie poster originating from the Bonanza High School print-tech lab, circa 1996.
Previously, if "Where in the world is Carmen Sandiego" was typed into Google, "Cairo, Egypt" would appear as an answer that is separate from any search results.[1] This is a reference to the original computer game, where Cairo was the final location in which the player captures her.