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Carmen Isabela Sandiego is a 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 other licensed products. She is typically depicted wearing a red fedora hat and trench coat.
Game series
Carmen Sandiego was originally conceived in 1983 by ex-Disney artist Gene Portwood, Mark Iscaro, Ed Guarnieri, 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 and maps 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 for the Apple II computer and subsequently ported to other systems. This game 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 Playstation 2. 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.
Carmen Sandiego in other media
Carmen's character has also appeared in three television shows, two of them game shows that aired on PBS. The first was Where in the World is Carmen Sandiego?, which aired from September 1991 to September 1996. This series won a Peabody Award and many other awards for children's television. 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 was staged in a slightly off-skew detective office, part of the ACME agency (which had its basis in the computer game). Lynne Thigpen portrayed The Chief. In her office, one might find a desk whose objects were inexplicably moving about, or a giant stalk of celery (the result of a celery dispute with other staff members), or a pretzel garden. Greg Lee portrayed himself, a detective in charge of training new recruits (typically, three teen-age contestants with unpronounceable names). Greg was helped in this training by various live and animated characters. Among the most popular were the members of the a capella house band and comedy troupe, Rockapella (also notable for the show's theme song). On any given day, members of Rockapella might be dressed as giant ears of corn, or as the Beatles. Rockapella member Barry Carl also portrayed a giant cockroach (named Kafka), a giant alien who hosted a similar television series in a parallel universe, or other odd characters. Other Rockapella members played similar roles. From time to time, special guests appeared as well, including dozens of celebrities including First Lady Barbara Bush, Walter Cronkite, Katie Couric, and many more. The game was played in three rounds: the first round was Q&A, and the two contestants ("gumshoes") with the highest scores proceeded to a second round. In this round, they had to find, in order, the loot, the warrant, and the crook (there were many animated crooks, including Vic the Slick, Robocrook, the Contessa, Kneemoi, Eartha Brute, Top Grunge, Patty Larceny, Double Trouble, and more). The winner of the second round won the right to run a giant map. As host Greg Lee shouted the names of places in, for example, Africa, the player had to run to place a marker on, for example, Cairo, Lagos, Capetown, and several other cities. A successful contestant would win a trip anywhere in the lower 48 states, later anywhere in North America.
The Time series, hosted by Kevin Shinick, 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 do some other task that ate into the 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. There has been no official cast, crew, or release date announced as of yet.
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.
- A portion of the title song's lyrics were modified in 1993 from 'Czechoslovakia' to 'Czech and Slovakia' to reflect the split of the eastern European nation.
- 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.
See also
External links
- MobyGames' entry for the Carmen Sandiego Series
- Watch episodes on Yahooligans
- TV-Series 1991-1996:
- TV-Series 1994-1998:
Carmen Sandiego | Fictional thieves | Supervillains | 1990s TV shows in the United States | Computer and video game characters | Educational computer and video games | Brøderbund games
"Carmen Sandiego"