[08] Hit it, Rockapella

For years, computer game companies and computer stores tried to sell more games by adding a little bit of "educational" content and then claiming that it was really educational software made fun.  More often than not, they were just lying through their teeth.  But sometimes, they did it right.  Every now and then, a company would make good on this "edutainment" market.

Take, for example, the company Broderbund.  Founded in 1980 by brothers Doug and Gary Carlston, they often tried to be the clean, pure company in comparison to the wild and crazy competitors such as Sierra.  But competition in that time was friendlier -- at the same time each one would try to outsell the other, they also went on vacations together, rafting trips, and the like.  And there was an unspoken gentleman's agreement to not step on each other's toes so much.

So Broderbund later diverted their attentions more to educational titles, while Sierra pumped up their games.  They both still did a little of each; Sierra taught us a lot about sea life, for example, and Broderbund polarized the adventure gaming community with the non-standard interface and design of their best -selling adventure.

Not a great game, but real nice to look at...

I'm not entirely sure which Carmen title I played first, but it was very likely on the library computers in elementary school.  There was about 6 Apple IIe systems there, from the time when Apple smartly decided to get people hooked on their computers by making sure every student got their hands on one at some point.  Even now, they offer student discounts for that reason, so while I can't stomach using a MacBook for more than a few seconds, many university students only know the milky-white system as the only computer for them.

I do remember, in either 4th or 5th grade, later going to my classmate Keith's house, where he had one of the games on his system that we played at times, when we weren't illegally driving a golf cart around his back yard.

Broderbund, in releasing the first Carmen game (Where in the World is Carmen Sandiego?) didn't focus on the educational market.  They thought it was just a game, even though they packaged it with a specific almanac to use as a form of manual-based copy protection.  It was only later that he game started to make its way to that market, and when they realized what was happening, they took advantage right away.  

For this visit down memory lane, I loaded up both the World and USA versions in DosBox, since those were the only ones I had played.  They both play basically identical, except the later USA edition has a bigger collection of criminal images and better sounds, although that's a relative term when speaking of the monotone PC speaker.  This is one of those rare times when emulation makes something better; the speaker in most PCs I ever used was so distorted from system sounds and lousy placement, and the emulators end up going to nice, amplified speakers.  (Other emulations are not good at all, for example, if I didn't own an MT-32, I would likely never use the emulators out there, because they all just sound wrong.)

My goal was to play one of the games through to a win -- which means to catch the elusive Carmen Sandiego.  I read that the World game required a dozen or so cases to reach that point, but I decided to play USA more instead, because I wanted to see how much I knew.  It turns out, though, that I should have done my research.

Table from StrategyWiki page on USA

It seems that I would have to play at least 34 rounds to get there.  Sounds easy, right?

I grew up near a lake like that...

So, away I go.  Each time, the generic police force I work for, ACME, tells me about something ridiculous getting stolen from a state by a masked man (or female).  I go off to ask different people about the perpetrator, they tell me things such as how the man asking about fishing on Lake Okowachee and was carrying a spanner.  I have to do two things with this: first, figure out his next stop, and second, build up a few personal characteristics to identify the felon and get an arrest warrant.  In this example, carrying a spanner (which is a term not commonly used in America, mind you) implies that he likes auto repair.

Since both of these come from a database, sometimes they get mixed in humorous ways.  For example:

I saw this more than once -- and not just the mixing of sports.  The randomness of the states the criminals visit was not quite random.  Montana, Tennessee, and a couple others appeared in nearly every playthrough.  The state of Hawaii appeared just once, and there's some I never visited at all.

When you catch up with the crook, the game tries to knock you off.  Then, you finally get to the suspect.

So after doing this over a dozen times, I got bored.  Really bored.  That's when I found that chart above and decided to fix the problem a little...

Hex editors are very useful with older games

I opened up the player status file, which I identified because it was the only file with a recent modification time, and used an online hex editor to change my ranking and number of cases solved.  So I leapfrogged the next 20 wins to become a Master Detective.  So, according to the chart, I'll keep that ranking until I finally find Carmen and then become a Super Sleuth.

That was my goal, except the game becomes not fun at this level.  The repetition, going from state to state seeing the same clues over and over... and in one case, the game had me go from Nashville to New York, back to Nashville, and then... back to New York.  Ugh!  Worse yet, it's a gamble -- there's barely enough time to visit enough sources to get clues about the suspect's identity, so if you visit all 3 locations in each city, you'll run out of time before long.  But if you do the minimum (most cities only require one clue and some Google action), you might not get a warrant.  It's challenging.  And loses luster after a while.

Another issue: some clues are no longer valid.  At the time the game was released, the Statue of Liberty was considered part of New York.  Some years later, New Jersey stole it with a lawsuit, and is no longer considered part of the Empire State.

As I write this, I have given up.  I wanted to see Carmen, but I've played so many rounds of this that I know my neighbors have tired of hearing the teletype clack sounds through the apartment walls.  So, I forfeit.  

But I won't quit as easily with the next game stop -- and we will be travelling to another state to do this, so it feels right.

Research notes: seriously, the histories of both Broderbund and Sierra are a fascinating read -- check out a book I recommend time and again, Hackers by Steven Levy, for the earliest of histories of these companies.  

As for today's topic, The Digital Antiquarian wrote up a great post on Broderbund and their classic titles of the time, and then linked to an exceptionally-researched case study on the Carmen Sandiego games written for a graduate course.