Where in North Dakota Is Carmen Sandiego?

Where in North Dakota Is Carmen Sandiego?
Developer(s)North Dakota Database Committee
Broderbund
Publisher(s)Broderbund
Director(s)Craig Nansen
Designer(s)Gene Portwood
Lauren Elliott
Programmer(s)Ken Bull
Writer(s)North Dakota Database Committee
Composer(s)Louis Ewens
SeriesCarmen Sandiego
Platform(s)Apple II
Release
  • NA: February 23, 1989
Genre(s)Educational
Mode(s)Single-player

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[1] collectively known as the North Dakota Database Committee (NDDC) of the Minot Public Schools, who made the game idea a reality.[1][2][3]

This "franchise extension"[4] 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.[5] Intended as a type of "pilot program" to test whether region-specific versions for the remaining 49 states were financially viable,[6] 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,[7] or stock left for mail order at a North Dakota game shop.[8] 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).[4] 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.[9]

  1. ^ a b Cite error: The named reference :4 was invoked but never defined (see the help page).
  2. ^ North Dakota Education News, Volume 29, No. 8. 1995. Retrieved October 28, 2012.
  3. ^ Booth, Greg (January 30, 1992). "Carmen Sandiego Really Gets Around N.D. Version Developed in Minot". Grand Forks Herald. Archived from the original on September 27, 2013. Retrieved October 28, 2012.
  4. ^ a b "The Most Valuable Parts of Video Game History Never Made it Onscreen". Atlas Obscura. August 30, 2017. Archived from the original on September 25, 2017. Retrieved September 25, 2017.
  5. ^ Mattson, Jim (1988). "Student posse tracks outlaws with a computer". Daily News. Archived from the original on May 29, 2020. Retrieved February 6, 2019.
  6. ^ "A Look Back at Our GDC 2017 Display – Video Game History Foundation". gamehistory.org. March 7, 2017. Archived from the original on July 29, 2017. Retrieved August 26, 2017.
  7. ^ Cite error: The named reference SD Times was invoked but never defined (see the help page).
  8. ^ "What kind of activities do you specifically do with "Video Game History Foundation", a non-profit organization that tackles the movement to preserve the history of lost games?". GIGAZINE. Retrieved April 21, 2018.
  9. ^ VICE (March 7, 2018), Meet the Man Trying to Save Lost Video Games, archived from the original on March 26, 2018, retrieved April 21, 2018