A World Traveler Broadens Her Horizons

The one true animated superstar of the digital world, so far, is Carmen Sandiego.

Created in 1985 for a disk software game, Carmen has weathered all the recent ups and downs of digital entertainment--the tentative early years, the boom in the mid-1990s as CD-ROMs flooded the market and then the shakeout as the realization dawned on the industry that not everything in life could be successfully wedged into a digital format.

Carmen has survived, while many other digital characters have gone on to the printed circuit in the sky. And she isn’t even a heroine--Carmen is a clever, enemy secret agent who hops from country to country around the globe to avoid detection. Kids playing the basic game, “Where in the World is Carmen Sandiego?,” have to answer questions and solve puzzles in order to track her down, and in doing so, they learn about geography and about the people who live in the countries she visits. Several versions of the game have been released for various age groups, and there is even a spinoff PBS television show.

Now, Broderbund, the company that publishes the Carmen games, has moved their star character into new territory. Two new CD-ROMs--”Where in Time is Carmen Sandiego” and “Carmen Sandiego: Word Detective”--retain the secret agent format, but instead of world facts, they aim to teach lessons about history and word usage. Soon to be joining them is a Carmen math game.

Judging by the first two non-geography Carmen titles to be released, the transition will be a smooth one. These CD-ROMs are entertaining, challenging for their target age groups (and even, at times, for adults) and lively without getting a case of the cutes.

“Where in Time” is a two-disk set for the 9-and-older crowd that has Carmen using a time machine to plant her associates at key junctures in history. Her aim is to influence history by keeping important events from ever happening. Your job as the player is to follow her evil buddies back in time and set the course of history on its correct path.

The first locale visited is Egypt in 1490 BC, during the reign of Queen Hatshepsut (I admit it, I had not heard of this ruler before playing the game). Your aim is to help her workers find the instructions, stolen by one of Carmen’s associates, for preparing a mummy.

You then go on to aid the Vikings in their first voyage to what later became known as North America; the first known novelist, Murasaki, in Japan; William the Conqueror and so forth on up to 1961 for the spaceflight of Yuri Gagarin. As you can see by this list, the voyages hit a diverse variety of cultures, and several U.S. events are also visited, including the writing of the Declaration of Independence and the exploration of Lewis and Clark of the Pacific Northwest.

Players who have Web access can visit a Carmen site to get more information on the cultures visited in the game. One of the most fascinating essays I accessed was about the pilgrimage in 1324 of Mansa Musa, who once ruled over the Mali empire in West Africa.

He didn’t exactly travel solo to Mecca. Musa’s caravan of 60,000 men, hauling tremendous riches in gold and silk, caused a sensation that introduced much of world to the wealth and sophistication of Mali.

Another plus for “Where in Time” is the on-screen presence of actress Lynne Thigpen, who brings a winning presence to her role as the chief of the detectives seeking Carmen.

“Word Detective,” for ages 8 through 14, teaches lessons about grammar, vocabulary and spelling. The plot, which is not as cleverly integrated into the game play as in the history CD-ROM, has Carmen using a science-fiction device to steal language abilities from the agents who are chasing her.

Your task is to restore the agents’ abilities to speak by solving word puzzles. Each puzzle can be played at three levels of difficulty. “Word Detective” comes with a vest pocket version of a Merriam Webster dictionary.

These games are both playable in either the Windows or Macintosh platforms, and they each retail for about $35.

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* Cyburbia’s e-mail address is david.colker@latimes.com.