Part nostalgia-bomb, part note-taking and part FAQ, what started in GameTrailers as a video game blog is now on Blogger. This blog is a look back at video games, both popular and obscure, from the video game industry's infancy all the way to the previous console generation.
2:48 - Get rid of the enemies down here first, then go further downstairs.
3:07 - The Time Room contains the time machine. You'll need a few parts to put it back together.
3:49 - Place your head on a hand, then step on the buttons with the body to reveal a moon beast. When you go through an opening, the beasts will shoot at you. Stand near the spaceship and avoid the blasts so they hit the spaceship. Once you destroy the spaceship, you'll get a time machine part.
6:25 - The Contact Room is a memory game. Step on the buttons in order. You'll start with three buttons, and on the final sequence, you'll have to step on eight. Completing the eight-button pattern gives you another time machine part.
8:47 - There is a healing fountain here near the steps if you need it.
9:01 - Place your head on a hand, then enter the small opening and leap on the satellites to get to the last part.
11:04 - Use the three parts at the time machine in the Time Room to fix the time machine.
Time Machine, Sewers
12:42 - We're back in the sewer village...sort of? Amazingly, the villagers do not see us as enemies. There is an opening in the nearby building in the center...
0:47 - When you fall into the nearby pit, you'll end up here.
1:07 - A green alien head is latched onto this creature. Help the little guys here fight this head off by attacking the creature to knock the head off and destroying the head before it has a chance to latch back on.
1:36 - When we enter the village of these sewer people, we find out that we are looked upon like a god. The village chief asks you to rescue the village's women. The nearby chest contains the Gold Shield, which is the best shield in the game.
3:13 - There is a healing fountain here. Also, one of the creatures here has a head on it. From there, swing at the yak-like creatures and lead it from behind into the nearby wall. From here, get close to the holes and attack the worm to free one of the five women in need of rescuing. The worms can clamp on you with their teeth and spit projectiles at you, but if you stay close to the walls, they can't hurt you.
4:54 - You have a villager and a yak who are possessed here. Once you take care of the green heads, lead one of the yaks into the breakable rock doorway to get...
5:45 - ...here. You'll have another woman to rescue. Also, keep the hand here in mind for later.
6:55 - Once you're done, climb up this ladder. Don't forget to go right for entering the nearby doorway for a Life Bottle. (I show it off at the end of the video.)
7:31 - Time to take another path, and we're taking this one. Fight of the two green heads.
9:36 - Put your head on the hand and explore the hole straight ahead to get the Chalice.
10:52 - Put your head on the hand and enter the door. Switch to the body to take out the two green heads, then leap from one pipe to another to jump onto the floor switch. Switch to the body and get your head back, then go forward, put your head on the hand in the next room and jump up the crates to enter the hole. Enter the pipe to your left.
12:40 - Switch to the body and enter the nearby room. There is a lever. By striking the lever, you can change the configuration of the pipes in the room where your head is. Travel forward through each pipe, and when you reach the end of a pipe, switch to the body and strike the lever. When your hand stands on the floor switch at the end of the path, you'll then be able to open up another path. Reunite your head with your body, jump onto the pipe and climb the ladder to get...
15:07 - ...here. Turn left and talk to Winston, then talk to The Spiv to get a poster. From here, go forward and destroy the worm creature to save the third woman. Use your Daring Dash
16:55 - Make some careful running jumps to fight the easiest of the tentacles. Stay near the hole and keep pressing X to rescue the fourth of five women. Drop down and destroy the three green heads, then climb up the nearby ladder and destroy the last worm to rescue the last woman.
21:00 - By entering the nearby pipe on the lower area, you'll take a shortcut back to the village. The village chief will give you 100 gold (don't forget to pick it up) and allow you to leave.
22:55 - Professor Kift is not here. Also, I read this book.
24:17 - The ramp with the door leads to Professor Kift's bedroom. After Sir Dan shows Professor Kift the poster, he learns about the Professor's time machine. As Dan insists it be rebuilt, the Professor mentions that the time machine is in the museum and that he and Palethorn used to be friends until Palethorn betrayed him years ago. He tells you that you can learn more by reading the nearby book, but you won't be able to do that yet.
You'll then go to the museum again, where Winston gives you the Magic Sword if you got the Chalice from the sewers. This is similar to the blue sword that you got in the first game, and is twice as powerful as the Broad Sword.
29:03 - Here's the Life Bottle from the sewers that I forgot to get.
For some reason, my initial playthrough of this game has a lot of views, but I thought it was a good idea to take a clip-on microphone, clip it to a spoon and use it like a desktop microphone. I rectify this by playing the game again.
If you grew up in the 1980s and 1990s - even if you did not necessarily have computer games - then it is more than likely you know who/what Carmen Sandiego is, and that the same could be said if you were alive during that time in general. For those of you who were born afterwards, consider this your primer for one of the most popular educational series of all time.
Where In The World Is Carmen Sandiego? is an edutainment game that saw its origins on computers in the mid-1980s, and had you play a detective working for the Acme Detective Agency that had you globetrotting around the world catching criminals are returning stolen landmarks. Your job was to take the information left by the person you are tagging and use it to figure out where they went next. That information, being an edutainment game, consists of things such as a verbal description of the national flag of your destination or what currency they are converting their money to, and if you needed help, you had to consult the almanac that came with every copy of the game. You also have to collect information about your suspect, such as what gender they are, what color their hair and eyes are, as well as their hobby, and put it through the ACME computer in order to get a warrant. Not only must you have a warrant to arrest the suspect, but the information must be correct, and both of those criteria must be met or else the suspect will walk free. All this...and you had to get it all done before a certain deadline or else the case is a bust.
But was it any good?
You bet your sweet ass it was!
It ended up being so good that, thanks to its captivating gameplay that always it launched several computer game, console game and board-game spin-offs, such as Where In The U.S.A. Is Carmen Sandiego?, Where In Time Is Carmen Sandiego?, Where In Space Is Carmen Sandiego? through the next couple of years until Broderbund, which owned the right to the series, was bought out by The Learning Company in the late 1990s. There was an animated series, Where On Earth Is Carmen Sandiego?, that aired on the Fox Kids Saturday morning block back in the 1990s that, if I remember correctly, won a Daytime Emmy Award for Outstanding Children's Animated Program in 1995 (beating out Animaniacs and the animated series for Aladdin and The Little Mermaid in the process), which I admit I never really watched as a kid due to being big into video games at the time. Thankfully, I rectified that when the show appeared on Yahooligans! in the mid-2000s along with a bunch of other cartoons produced by DIC that I watched along with it, and I ended up enjoying it. There was also a game show based on the original game on PBS in America, as well as one that aired after it ran its course based on Where In Time, and I also watched both back in the day.
But we're going all over the place at this point. I think it's about time we played the game.
You start by entering the language you'll be playing in, then you will be inputting your name, your gender, and in the case of the consoles, your password in case you're playing from where you left off from last time. Press Start to start a new game. You'll get your case and you'll be told what has been stolen and from where, and you'll also be told the gender of the suspect reported at the scene of the crime, where you will start the mission.
You have four buttons here: "Options," which brings up the options menu, the plane that lets us fly to one of a few locations, a magnifying glass that lets us select from one of three locations to ask for clues, and the computer, which lets you put in info for the warrant and go through criminal dossiers. Whenever you fly in the plane, go to places for clues, or print out a warrant, that uses up some of your time, so you will have to use your almanac whenever you need to, memorize stuff and commit it to memory as you go along (and you'll be doing that with some things), and playing wisely. You also go to sleep near the end of a day of the week as well, which costs you about eight hours, and since you start at 9 AM on Monday and have to get results by 5 PM on the following Sunday, you'll have to play wisely - and obviously learn things - if you want to win at Carmen Sandiego.
The cases will always play out at random, so your cases will not play at all like mine. You'll get different missions at different points in the game, the locations you go to will always be different, the suspect will always be a different person. In other words, no case plays the same way twice.
I'll use my first case from my original Let's Play as an example. By scrounging up clues in Budapest, I find out that our suspect is writing a paper on volcanoes of the world, is interested in the history of Danish colonies, and is looking for Viking artifacts. We also learn that she arrived in a convertible, and that part about the convertible can be input into the "Vehicle" section of the warrant as well as her gender.
I decided to guess on the info I have and select Reykjavik, Iceland for my destination. Thankfully, when I go look for clues, I find a V.I.L.E. henchman, which means I am on the right track. If one does not show up, then that means nobody will give you clues and everybody will tell you that they have not seen your suspect, and if that happens, you have to go back to your previous location and then fly somewhere else...and that takes time. Thankfully, that didn't happen, and I get more clues for the next place I need to go to as well as more things to put in the warrant. At this point, I have three things about the suspects to place in the warrant, allowing me to narrow the suspect down to one person and create a usable warrant that will allow me to arrest that suspect at the final destination of the case. You'll know you've reached it when you see things such as an ax or a knife being thrown. When that happens, you will not get any clues when you use the magnifying glass menu, and if your warrant hasn't been filled out, you will fail, as you will not get any more details on your suspect here...so pay attention to what people say and fill the warrant out with the information when you get as soon as you get it.
V.I.L.E., by the way, is the main antagonist group set up by Carmen Sandiego, the master thief and the title character of this series. You'll be putting quite a few members of V.I.L.E. away before you can get your hands on Carmen.
The missions start out pretty easy and pretty short, but the fact that you will probably have never played this game before will even out the difficulty. As you get through the game, get smarter and get better, you'll rise through the ranks of the ACME Detective Agency and the cases will get longer, and while that feels like evening out the difficulty on paper, it does get harder. Sure, you'll know stuff, but there will be less room for error because you will be hitting more locations before you nab your suspect and one wrong move can be the difference between solving the case and not making the deadline.
After you complete one mission, you are promoted from Rookie to Sleuth, and you'll have to complete four more to get promoted again. You'll also get a case-sensitive passcode to save for when you want to play the next case later. Be sure to write it down and keep it where you can find it.
Anyway, with each case, I will be adding more and more to all the information you will need for every location in the game. This list will be small now, but wait until I do more cases and add more blog entries to this series...it will be more all-encompassing.
By the way, Brazil no longer uses cruzados as its currency, had already stopped using them when this 1993 console port came out, and by the time this game was coming out, they were on the way to switching from the short-lived cruziero real to the real as part of the Plano Real to stabilize the Brazilian economy.
Athens, Greece no longer uses drachmas due to the whole Euro currency thing, obviously.
Game Girl is more or less a remake of the NES game, and basically has the same plot going on.
The Mall
Left and Right let you move around, Down lets you duck, A lets you jump, B lets you throw gems. By throwing gems at enemies, you can stun them to get away from them.
At the bottom are the amount of gems you have, your current health and the amount of stars you have. If you pause, you'll be able to see how many lives you have, how many flowers you have collected, and your current score.
Things to watch out for will include water jumping in and out of fountains you'll have to jump over as well as pools of water, said pools of water, waterfalls that come down from the ceiling, jumping sentient water drops. There will also be some platforming, but it's pretty easy if you're over the age of six as long as you remember to position the foot that is lower on Barbie's way down so that she lands on the platform you want her to land on.
The flowers give you bonus points at the end of the level. The bags give you gems to throw. The circle with the B can be thrown at an enemy with B to get rid of it, turning the enemy. The lightning bolt makes you invincible. The B icon is an extra life.
At the end of every stage, you get bonus points for all the . After a cutscene of Barbie looking at shoes, you'll play a card matching mini-game. You have seven turns, but if you can match two randomly placed cards successfully, you won't lose a turn. If you get all the matches, you'll get bonus points. There are three card-matching mini games, and if you know what you're doing, you can get through them easily.
Under the Sea
Barbie is a mermaid now. You can use the A button to move more quickly.
Things to watch out for will include scuba divers that move back and forth, falling planks of wood, and sharks complete with the Jaws theme playing when they appear.
The B blocks contain stars and other power-ups that you can pick up when you run into them.
Throw jewels at the boxes surrounding the circle with the B on it to remove them and get the circle.
The 1950s Restaurant
Things to watch out for will include sugar cubes jumping in and out of tea cups, flying bubbles with arms and legs. drink cups that shoot straws, soda streams pouring out of soda fountains, and seas of soda that you'll have to ride soda bottle platforms across.
The heart puts Barbie in 1980s aerobics gear and lets her do somersaults when you jump, and you'll keep this until you get hit.
Under The Sea Again
This time, you're in a maze. Thankfully, the maze isn't that hard, and by taking all the paths, you can collect a bunch of power-ups and also find two entrances to the boss area.
Some of the scuba guys can more towards you with little warning, so watch out.
For the boss, throw gems at the lock to free the king and queen crabs, and avoid the jellyfish. After throwing three gems at the lock, you'll free the crabs. You'll then get a cutscene where Barbie looks at a necklace.
Some Toyland or Something
The "XYZ" is a Super Mario World-style block snake that you'll have to move with in order to make it across. When it moves down into the bottomless pit, you'd better be ready to jump to the right.
Things to watch out for include kites flying around, upside-down helicopters flying around and beach balls that roll forwards.
The blocks in mid-air give you power-ups if you leap into them.
At the end is a door where the beach balls are coming out of. Throw gems at it from a certain distance until it closes.
A Music Level
For this one, you'll have to jump on the musical notes in order to get over the conveyor belts and make your way up to the exit.
Things to watch out for include slow-flying musical notes, small vinyl records with wings that fly around in circles and the conveyor belts themselves that will whisk you back.
The vinyl record platforms move you backwards, much like the clockwork gear platforms in the Castlevania games. The CD platforms fall down shortly after you land on them.
The exit is in the upper-right corner of the level. When you reach it, you'll face a boss. You'll have to jump on the three coins in the room quickly so that they are all spinning simultaneously while avoiding the musical notes that shoot out of the jukebox in the background. You'll have to be quick to get them all spinning quickly at the same time in order to end the level. The coins make musical noises the more you jump on them, and when the noise they make don't get any higher, they're spinning as fast as they can. They will eventually slow down, so make sure they're all moving so you can get out of here.
The Maze
Go to the door to the right at the start and press Up in front of it to enter it. Enter the door to the right when you drop down in the next room. Go right and down the stairs, and watch out for the wigs and the circular-flying clothes hangers as you avoid the pits on your way further to the right. When you can go no further to the right, enter the door that you see.
From here, make your way up and enter the door at the end of all the blocks you have to jump up. In the room that you end up in, enter the door all the way to the right. Go left and enter the door to the left of the lipstick Thwomp that tries to crush you, then jump to the door to the right and enter it. The exit will be to the left. You'll get the dress, then Barbie will dance with Ken. You've beaten Barbie Game Girl!
