Mark Trinidad appeared on an episode of Carmen Sandiego in 1992, when he was 12 years old. CONTESTANTS WERE RECRUITED FROM NEW YORK AREA MIDDLE SCHOOLS. Part of their decision came from a recent National Geographic study showing that one in four Americans couldn’t locate the Pacific Ocean on a map. THE SHOW WAS INSPIRED BY A STUDY SHOWING HOW LITTLE MOST AMERICANS KNEW ABOUT GEOGRAPHY.įollowing the success of the Carmen Sandiego computer game, two PBS affiliates decided to make a trivia show based on the game. But here’s what you may not know about Carmen and all her incarnations.
WHERE IN THE WORLD IS CARMEN SANDIEGO LOGO TV
The games resulted in several spinoffs, including Where in the USA is Carmen Sandiego? and a PBS kids’ TV game show where real-life middle schoolers won prizes for successfully answering questions about geography.
with clues like “she’s learning Portuguese” (head to Brazil!) or “she changed her money to rubles” (next stop: Russia!), they also learned about geography and history. (Villains’ International League of Evil) hopped around the world, trying to steal landmarks like the Leaning Tower of Pisa.Īs kids followed Carmen and V.I.L.E. One of the most successful of those attempts was Where in the World Is Carmen Sandiego?, a game where the player was a detective for the ACME Agency, chasing a rogue agent-turned-red-fedora-wearing criminal named Carmen Sandiego. In the 1990s, the rising affordability of home computers brought about the “edutainment” trend, where companies tried to use computer games to teach kids-and to convince their parents-that technology wasn’t evil.