| Where in Time is Carmen Sandiego? | |
|---|---|
| Developer(s) | Brøderbund |
| Publisher(s) | Brøderbund |
| Year released | 1989 |
| System(s) | macOS, DOS |
| Series | Carmen Sandiego |
| Genre(s) | Education |
|---|---|
| Modes | Single player |
Where in Time is Carmen Sandiego is an educational video game created by Brøderbund Software in 1989 for Macintosh and MS-DOS. This game was released as a sequel to Where in the World is Carmen Sandiego?, the company's first Carmen Sandiego game.
Gameplay
The object of the game is to travel through time to find and catch V.I.L.E. henchmen who have stolen something from somewhere in the world of significant value. Occasionally, the stolen objects border on the absurd or the impossible.
To track down the thief through time, the player is given ACME Detective Agency's latest invention: the "325i Chronoskimmer." They are allocated a fixed number of hours to track down the thief, and file an arrest warrant before capturing them. The number of hours required to solve a case, and the degree of difficulty, increase with rank.
The player must collect clues about the henchman's whereabouts and characteristics by interrogating witnesses, asking informants, and scanning the area for additional details or objects, before jumping to the next country and point in time. The chronological spans in the game are all A.D. / C.E. and divided into four general spans: 300-1300, 1300-1700, 1700-1900, and 1900-present.
The thief's characteristics include the thief's gender (the first clue given for each case), their hair and eye color, favorite artist, and author. As the player catches criminals, they rank up and eventually will get the chance to track down Carmen Sandiego, the leader of the V.I.L.E. criminal organization.
Reference Book
The game was sold with a copy of the New American Desk Encyclopedia: a 1,375 page reference book that was essential to solving clues in the game. Just as with Where in the World is Carmen Sandiego, the game relied on a form of copy-protection paired with a reference book. Before each promotion to a new rank in the game, the player would have to type in the word on specific page requested by the game.
Promotion Codes
Now that this game is abandonware, the initial author of this article has taken the liberty of obtaining a used copy of the reference encyclopedia from eBay, saving the game at a critical juncture before capturing the thief, and replaying the case closure dozens of times to determine all the pages that Brøderbund selected from the Encyclopedia for copy protection.
The game will ask: "What is the boldfaced word at the top of page ____?"
Here is the list of page numbers and the corresponding boldfaced word. Note: capitalization and case do not matter; just the correct spelling of the word.
| Page No. | Boldfaced Word |
|---|---|
| 108 | Babbage |
| 155 | Bizet |
| 414 | Engine |
| 471 | France |
| 490 | Gandhi |
| 532 | Greco |
| 557 | Harlem |
| 661 | Japan |
| 876 | Nelson |
| 978 | Piano |
| 1302 | Violin |
| 1321 | Watt |