Carmen Sandiego

Carmen Sandiego is a series of American educational mystery video games that spawned an edutainment franchise of the same name. The game released in 1985, Where in the World Is Carmen Sandiego?, started off both the video game series and the franchise as a whole, which has continued up to the present day. Each game of the series has a particular theme and subject, where the player must use their knowledge to find Carmen Sandiego or any of her innumerable henchmen. This series was originally owned by Broderbund, but is now owned by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt. Since its initial release the series has won over 125 awards and accolades. Design Background In 1983, the founders of Broderbund Software, Gary and Doug Carlston, publicly discussed a plan to make edutainment one of their company's three focus areas. The character of Carmen Sandiego was developed by David Siefkin, who drafted the first script of the game for Broderbund beside the Strawberry Canyon swimming pool of the University of California, Berkeley in 1984. Siefkin combined the character's first and last names from the Brazilian singer and actress Carmen Miranda and the city of San Diego, California. Carmen Sandiego was just one of several villains in the original script. She was chosen for the title role by the early project manager Katherine Bird because her name suggested mystery and exoticism, as well as humor. Siefkin departed the project shortly after writing the first script to become a Foreign Service Officer for the U.S. State Department, and served as a press and cultural attaché in several of the countries featured in the game. Gameplay The first game in the series released in 1985, Where in the World Is Carmen Sandiego?, was designed and written by Gene Portwood and Lauren Elliott, and programmed by Dane Bigham. It established an original formula that was followed very faithfully in all Carmen Sandiego games. This formula involves a series of missions in which the computer player tracks and apprehends each of Carmen Sandiego's underlings. Each case begins with the player being alerted that a spectacular theft has been committed. Immediately transported to the scene of the crime, the player must find clues to infer the suspect's next destination and to create an arrest warrant describing the guilty party's attributes.