Where in North Dakota Is Carmen Sandiego? is a 1989 educational 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 in 1989. 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. 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.
History
Conception
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 early 1987, the Minot Public Schools system was looking for "an interesting way to teach students and educators the basics of using a database". After observing Where in the U.S.A.'s ability to hold her child's attention for hours, Bonny Berryman, an eighth grade social studies teacher at Erik Ramstad Junior High, came up with the idea of a special Carmen Sandiego program that would coincide with the state's centennial year. She felt the game could teach children how to "retrieve information from computers, rather than memorize it", an important skill given the abundance of available information in the computer age. She also knew that the franchise had achieved "great acceptance throughout [the] district and state" and believed the game could appeal to adults who would find it fascinating and informative. She deemed the Carmen Sandiego games a "novelty", allowing students to have fun while learning; she also liked the opportunity for randomness, and the graphics, color, movement, and sound that other media such as board games did not provide. She noted that the target market played video games every weekend and this was a franchise with which they were already familiar. She pitched the idea to Minot Public School System computer coordinator Craig Nansen, who was initially skeptical, describing it as a "pipe dream or pie-in-the-sky idea". However, he saw promise in the idea of stimulating research by encouraging students to use an encyclopedia or dictionary to decipher clues about their state, thereby adding a state-based component to the database project. Additionally, his goal was to represent "'cool' software [that] attract[s] the attention of board members, superintendents, etc. [while being] educationally sound". He subsequently contacted series developer Broderbund about the possibility of creating the game, a prospect they liked. At the time, the recent success of Carmen Sandiego Days had resulted in schools from many states asking Broderbund to make state-specific versions of their games to fit into their Carmen Days.
Development At the time, Broderbund CEO Doug Carston preferred to describe the series as "explorational" rather that "educational". In his opinion the term "educational... translate[d] into 'boring' in kidspeak". But when Nansen approached the company, he argued that while the series "wasn't meant to be an educational tool", it greatly appealed to educators and Where in North Dakota... should be developed for this purpose. Nansen recalled that "things fell into place and Broderbund was willing to do it", overcoming his previous skepticism. Subsequently, he contacted North Dakota's Department of Public Instruction. In March 1987 he was able to secure a $100,000 grant from the state legislature which also liked the idea, and appropriated the money to help fund the project. The game interested North Dakota's Department of Public Instruction because of its narrow scope compared with the previous Carmen Sandiego titles and its ability to teach computer skills. North Dakota's Department of Public Instruction employee Chris Eriksmoen would later speak highly of the collaboration which he compared to that of Crosscountry North Dakota. By March 1988, Broderbund had not spoken openly about the project, but Classroom Computer Learning had been informed that there was to be an "imminent" contract between Broderbund and the North Dakota Database Committee (NDDC), and that the project would be available to North Dakota's educators within six to nine months. The inter-business deal would give Broderbund rights to sell the retail version while North Dakota's Department of Public Instruction would sell the school version.
The Broderbund team agreed to publish the game but required local expertise to create the clues and write the text. As a result, Nansen created the North Dakota Database Committee with teachers who had taught North Dakotan topics in the past. It spent the next two years compiling facts with the help of school districts across the state. The "educators-turned-game-developers" came up with the pranks, selected locations, researched clues, wrote informational text such as the teacher's manual, created Carmen's imposters, and sourced graphic material. Afterwards, Broderbund's designers took the team's work, and programmed and tested the game using the interface and structure of its previous Apple II Carmen Sandiego titles. They also developed graphics, a user manual, and packaging for the retail version. While there were restrictions on how much the North Dakotan team could deviate from the Carmen Sandiego template, local nuances were added including using four-wheel drive vehicles for travel and changing the words "criminals" to "imposters" and "crimes" to "pranks" to add "a touch of North Dakota nice". The previous games in the series (World and USA) had been released with almanacs to help the player solve the game's riddles and clues; the state of North Dakota did not have an almanac at the time, so the educators wrote one.