Where in North Dakota Is Carmen Sandiego? facts for kids
Quick facts for kids Where in North Dakota Is Carmen Sandiego? |
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| Developer(s) | North Dakota Database Committee Broderbund |
| Publisher(s) | Broderbund |
| Director(s) | Craig Nansen |
| Designer(s) | Gene Portwood Lauren Elliott |
| Programmer(s) | Ken Bull |
| Writer(s) | North Dakota Database Committee |
| Composer(s) | Louis Ewens |
| Series | Carmen Sandiego |
| Platform(s) | Apple II |
| Release date(s) |
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| Genre(s) | Educational |
| Mode(s) | Single-player |
Where in North Dakota Is Carmen Sandiego? is a 1989 edutainment video game. It is the fourth game in the Carmen Sandiego video game series after World (1985), U.S.A. (1986), and Europe (1988). Having observed the popularity of the Carmen Sandiego franchise in the education of school children, educators were inspired to develop a North Dakota version to teach North Dakotans about their state's history and geography.
In contrast to the previous titles which were developed internally by Broderbund, North Dakota was largely developed for the Apple II by a team of fourteen educators led by computer coordinator Craig Nansen, concept designer Bonny Berryman, and co-chairwoman Mary Littler collectively known as the North Dakota Database Committee (NDDC) of the Minot Public Schools, who made the game idea a reality
This "franchise extension" is the only game in the series based on a U.S. state and was patterned after the previous games in the then-four year old series. Intended as a type of "pilot program" to test whether region-specific versions for the remaining 49 states were financially viable, the game was released in celebration of North Dakota's centennial celebration. Although 5,000 school copies were sold to schools in the region, the game has become extremely rare and only three retail copies are known to exist. There is disagreement as to whether or not they are complimentary versions offered to educators who worked on the project, or stock left for mail order at a North Dakota game shop. There is currently no proof that retail copies were ever sold in stores.
The game was "save[d] from the memory hole of history" by video game historian Frank Cifaldi and his archivist organization The Video Game History Foundation (VGHF). He believes the game is a great example of history that might have been lost had he not recovered documents for his archival non-for-profit organization.
Gameplay
Where in North Dakota is Carmen Sandiego? is a first-person history and geography-based edutainment game for the Apple II platform. The interface of Where in North Dakota... is similar to the other games in the series, World, U.S.A., and Europe. and is "instantly recognizable as a Carmen Sandiego game". Two design changes were made for this game. The language was softened—"criminals" are called "imposters" and "crimes" are called "pranks"— and a four-wheel drive vehicle is used to travel between locations instead of an airplane. Where in North Dakota ... includes 38 locations within the state, 50 famous people connected to it, 16 pun-named gang members, and over 1,000 factual clues.
Players begin in the office of the NoDak Detective Agency. They type their name into the crime computer using up to 14 characters and are informed about the case. Players are sent to the scene of the crime and tasked with capturing Carmen Sandiego and her cronies by questioning witnesses. Using these clues, players decipher the appearance of the imposters and follow their geographic trail to locations such as the International Peace Garden, Cando, and the Standing Rock Indian Reservation.
Players always have six days' worth of allotted time to track down the crook and create a correct warrant. Every time the player captures three imposters, they are promoted to a higher rank and the game's difficulty increases. More difficult clues provided by witnesses are added to the pool, and players must travel to more locations related to the case; the lowest rank requires the player travel to four different locations, while the hardest level has them travel to 14. They must advance 10 ranks before having an opportunity to catch Carmen herself. When they do catch her, they are placed into the North Dakota Roughrider Detective Hall of Fame, which contains 16 slots.
Solving clues requires research using sources other than the game, which at the time meant almanacs, maps, and biographical dictionaries focused on North Dakota. In doing so, players learn facts about the geography, environment, economy, and history of the state, as well as techniques for conducting research, using databases, and deductive reasoning. The teacher's guide also suggests the game can be used to teach students skills in: using maps, thinking, studying, comprehension, vocabulary, writing, and computer literacy. The teacher's guide notes that while skill is an important factor, luck is also very important. The elements of each case are randomly generated which means repeats of the same case can have vastly different results. It is also possible, albeit highly unlikely, for a game not to provide enough character clues for the suspect to be identified, so that even the most conscientious players may occasionally be unsuccessful.
Screens
The Main Playing Screen contains the location name, day/time, location description, and four other options that help the player progress. Notes are written in the Notebook, while warrants are issued in the Crime Lab. Choosing "Investigate" allows the player to discover Character Clues and Location Clues, while "Go To Gas Station" allows the player to travel to the next location.
Materials
Unlike previous Carmen Sandiego games, rather than including an almanac or reference work, the developers opted to use an online database to provide the clues. The North Dakotan educators wanted to include computerized materials in the game to allow their teachers to use the software as an instructional tool; this led to them "chang[ing] the Carmen Sandiego program" and adding 16 different databases to the title with topics like parks and minerals.
In the school version, the game's packaging consisted of a full lesson plan: a binder with a manual, a North Dakota state almanac, and the game on a double-side floppy disk. The binder included other information such as head shots of Carmen's henchmen, a map of North Dakota, and a page that asks the player to describe the game's final scene and mail it in to receive a prize. Other pages have a print version of the almanac and information about the cities in the game. A teacher's guide is also included. A second binder contains activities that correlate to the 18 database disks included in the package. A North Dakota centennial blue book and a booklet entitled Governors and First Ladies of North Dakota were also included in this binder. The retail version of the game was cased in a game box stylized like the earlier games.
Aftermath
North Dakota was the first state to adapt Carmen Sandiego into a state-specific video game. According to Education Technology News, the title was "picked up by several states and adapted to their needs". Though the game was heavily circulated in North Dakota school classrooms in the 1990s, it has become difficult to find in modern times. As North Dakota schools updated their computers, floppy disks became obsolete. This, coupled with the small production run, led to the title becoming rare. Cifaldi referred to it as "one of the rarest video games ever made", and openly encouraged citizens to unearth their copies of the game. A few school versions have survived; two are located at the North Dakota State Library while a copy was acquired by TanRu Nomad for his YouTube review. Nansen received an unprotected version from Broderbund after sales died off. By 2015 he and a group of students had digitized the game for play on Javascript emulators.
Frank Cifaldi is a digital archivist, who became fascinated by the game after being shocked by its existence when browsing Wikipedia entries on Carmen Sandiego titles. After conversing with game designer and collector Mike Mika, he discovered that although Mika apparently had every Carmen Sandiego game, he did not have this entry; Mika said its existence was "blowing his mind" since the project sounded like a joke and made no sense. Cifaldi also discovered that Where in North Dakota... was the only Carmen Sandiego game not to be represented in the National Museum of Play's Broderbund Software Collection. In January 2015, Cifaldi began conversing with Nansen after posting on Twitter requesting information about the game. As Nansen was recently retired, he offered to round up all the information on the obscure game and make it available; meanwhile Cifaldi offered to write articles using the material.
In anticipation of the game's upcoming digital archive, Cifaldi visited Nansen in Minot with a film crew from June 13–15, 2016. He interviewed those who worked on the project and recorded various locations used in the game. Valuable material such as photographs and internal documentation was also recovered (such as the authentic Carmen's North Dakota Almanac). Handwritten notes from the NDDC, messages between the developers and Broderbund, classroom worksheet extensions, imagery of development, various builds of the game during its evolution, and the manual were all recovered. During this visit, Nansen gave Cifaldi one of only three known surviving versions of the game boxed for retail sale. This version differed from the version that was sold to schools and was sold only through the Broderbund mail-order catalog. This meeting was filmed for S1E6 of the Redbull TV series Screenland, entitled "Eight-Bit Archaeologists".
The game was imaged and made available online, providing Cifaldi with a raw rip of the unused version. Players need to use an Apple II emulator or write onto old floppy disks and play it on an Apple II. Cifaldi's copy was later sent to the National Museum of Play to supplement other Carmen Sandiego materials donated to the museum by Broderbund founder Doug Carlston in 2014. Jon-Paul Dyson, the director of the International Center for the History of Electronic Games at the National Museum of Play, personally thanked Cifaldi for his endeavours. On July 23, 2016, the Apple II-focused KansasFest featured a Where in North Dakota is Carmen Sandiego? contest.
Cifaldi has since added his work to his new initiative Video Game History Foundation. It aims to preserve the video game industry's lost assets, such as Penn and Teller's Smoke and Mirrors. To help celebrate the launch of the foundation, IGN partnered to show off some of their recovered games, including Where in North Dakota... via a live stream. A playable version of the game was featured at the debut Retro Play area at the three-day GDC 2017 expo (along with Penn & Teller's Smoke and Mirrors, Bound High!, Sound Fantasy, and Alter Ego). The Video Game History Foundation, which was hosting the exhibit, decided to include the clue guide almanac, which had been successfully preserved despite years in a fourth-grade classroom, for the public to use. Ultimately four participants attempted the game and none were successful in catching Carmen. In April 2018, an original staged reading with the game's namesake was performed at AwesomeCon in Washington, DC.
