Where in the World is Carmen Sandiego? (PC Engine) Playthrough - NintendoComplete
106A playthrough of Pack In Video's 1990 edutainment game for the PC Engine CD, Where in the World is Carmen Sandiego (カルメンサンディエゴを追え！世界編 / Chase Carmen Sandiego! World Edition).
This Japan-only, CD-enhanced version of Where in the World is Carmen Sandiego is a fun, odd, and *very* obscure novelty. It's the second game in the series released in Japanese, following the 1989 PC88 game "Carmen Sandiego in Japan," which was essentially a heavily reskinned version of Where in the World is Carmen Sandiego.
Thankfully, this exotic import makes for a nifty import thanks to an option that allows you to switch the in-game text to English. Convenient, huh?
Where in the World is Carmen Sandiego? had been around a long time when this was released. This early 1990s PC Engine release is a heavily enhanced version of the 1985 computer game, which was the very first game in the CS series. In case you are wondering, it feels as different from the 1993 SNES game (https://youtu.be/wnBi8d-FMWA ) as it does because the SNES game was instead based on the 1992 "deluxe" edition of the PC game.
So, if it's missing the glitz of a future big-budget face-lift, what does this early CD adaptation offer that you couldn't otherwise find on a 5.25" floppy disk?
Well, it starts off with one of the most absurd, unexpectedly awesome theme songs to ever grace an edutainment title. Seriously, Turbo CD games are widely known to have some of the most killer music in video games, but I never would've anticipated this, here, in my wildest dreams.
Beyond that, the game features a lot of updated graphics. The digitized photos don't compare to the quality of the National Geographic photos used in WitWiCS Dx (how is that for an acronym?), but for a CDROM2 game, the images get the job done just fine, and they look much nicer then than the crunchy 1985 graphics ever did. The sound has been spruced up a bit beyond the killer title screen theme, with short bits of themed Redbook audio peppered about to blast you every time you arrive at a new location.
One huge draw for this version, especially for 1990, was the game's inclusion of an in-game "encyclopedia." The disc contains a searchable database of all sorts of information relevant to the game, and it can be brought up at anytime you like. Not sure which country is the smallest European republic? Struggling to recall which city houses the Blue Mosque? The answer is just a few seconds of noisy CD drive access away!
It might not seem noteworthy now, but the CD format offered an unprecedented leap forward for mass storage media, and featuring a searchable reference volume like was included here was an important, and impressive, selling point. Of course, it won't do much for you if you don't speak Japanese, but that's beside the point.
If you ever enjoyed the game in a computer lab in elementary school, you might get a kick out of seeing this. If nothing else, it is funny to note just how hopelessly outdated the information is. Some of these countries don't even exist anymore.
Where in the World is Carmen Sandiego is a rarely seen bit of game history, so I thought it would be fun to share. Especially with that theme song! Woo!
(I wonder if the person that worked on music for the NES Rambo game had anything to do with this.)
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No cheats were used during the recording of this video.
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