In the intro you will see Carmen Sandiego at her logo taunting the ACME good guides and essentially screwing around with the lights during the opening credits

You will find yourself in San Francisco, California, and once you've signed in your video phone will go off and the Chief will be on the phone, oh but it's not just any Chief, it's the Chief from the game shows! (played by the late Lynne Thigpen) And she will tell you the mission objective of ACME Crimenet (keep in mind you will be getting a video phone call from her every time you sign in). She will tell you the details of your case. There are about 50 countries and cases however you will only get to do about forty of those cases (unlike the deluxe CD-rom games where you play about 50 before you catch Carmen)

Afghanistan: Khyber Pass

Argentina: Steps to the Tango*

Austria: Vienna Boys Choir Baton

Australia: Uluru

Bolivia: Fish from half of Lake Titicaca

Brazil: the plans for the next Carnival

Cambodia: The Silver Pagoda

Canada: The puck from the first Stanley Cup final

Chile: Strait of Magellan?

China: Keys to the Forbidden City

Cuba: All the Sugarcane

Denmark: Hans Christian Andersen's desk

Egypt: Entire Nile River Delta

France: The Gargoyles of Notre Dame *

Germany: the keys from Beethoven's first piano

Greece: The Olympic Flame

Guatemala: The Best Coffee in the Country

Hungary: All of the Goulash

Iceland: Geysir

India: Gandhi's glasses

Indonesia: The Island of Bali

Iran: Finest Rug in the presidential palace

Israel: All the salt from the dead sea

Italy: Sistine Chapel Ceiling

Japan: Snow from the top of Mount Fuji

Kenya: Nairobi's international Airport (wasn't there a better loot)

Mexico: Salsa Recipe

Morocco: Casablanca

Nepal: Yeti

Netherlands: The Dykes that keep the North sea in the North Sea

New Zealand: All of the Kiwi birds

Nigeria: The Delta of the Niger River

Pakistan: K2

Panama: Controls to the Canal

Peru: The Headwaters of the Amazon River

Philippines: Monkey Eating Eagle

Russia: Trans-Siberian Railroad*

Saudi Arabia: Middle of the Trans-arabian pipeline

Singapore: Statue of Sir Stamford Raffles

South Africa: Cape of Good Hope

South Korea: Recipe for Kimchi

Spain: The Bulls from Pamplona

Sweden: Drottingholm palace court stage

Tanzania: Ngoringoro Crater

Thailand: The King's Pet Siamese Cat

Turkey: All the Anchovies from the Black Sea

United Kingdom: Keys to the Tower of London

United States: Statue of Liberty's Torch*

Vietnam: All the Water from the Mekong River

Zaire (as it was known as at the time of the game release): Zaire River Ferry

*denotes that the loot was also used in the game show

and then the fly by night tab will open (clicking on the globe tab will open it) Once you arrive at the scene of the crime you will start questioning suspects about where they went and their description. Sometimes you will see a scrap of paper or a book on the ground that could help for building your warrant (no warrant no arrest). I would suggest when getting a description about the crook to stick with the clues on the ground because when asking for a profile the witnesses can repeat themselves and it can be so frustrating. You will know that you are on the right track if you see the Ick Brothers, the VILE janitor’s who’s only job it is to erase the crook’s tracks or if you see Carmen’s psychotic kitty Carmine however you will have officially caught up with the crook if you see Carmine at a location (or if you can see Stop Thief You’re Under Arrest greyed out at a location on the Babbel-Link) If you manage to successfully capture the thief a good guide will come along and assist you in trapping the thief and a Newspaper headline will appear about the successful capture. Once that’s done you will then get a briefing from the Chief and she will tell you about what went on in interrogation (once in awhile we’ll see a crook be interrogated by ACME and we’ll get some cryptic clues along the way, and this is going to serve a purpose because Carmen is going to be a little tricky to catch, but she will be wearing something that isn’t listed in the Digisketch warrant maker.) Though once in awhile you will get a promotion in rank.

It will take you about 39 cases before you catch up with the Big C herself. You will get promoted to different ranks along the way and as you go along, you suddenly won’t get those important scraps of clues in every country you go to. The further you get the more difficult things may be, like eventually you might see two of the same model for the tourists show up in your last country of the case, it might confuse you (but it was more of an advantage for me) as you can guess the crooks are just generic models so no point in doing a description of all 39 plus Carmen.


Depending on what country you are in you might see a computer screen that will lead to a mini game where you get a language lesson, and there's a multiple choice question of "How Do You Say" and yes some languages might be difficult. Once you filled the satellite link Robocrook will be exposed....and nothing will really affect the game (Don't worry if you don't get it right the first time around you have many chances plus the index tab will allow you to look up countries and there is a a tab in there where you can learn languages too)

If you wish to you can also get a guided tour from any of the good guides we met in the intro during the game (don’t worry this won’t effect the the time, however if you must call them for a tour, or ask them to double check your warrant for you it will cost you, you might be better off taking a tour in explore mode so you won’t see that pesky Tell Me More tab)

Ivan Idea: The resident Tech-net agent who invented most of the gadgets ACME uses, including the Babel-link translator, mostly what he does is talk about engineering feats in countries. He will guide you at tours in Australia, China, Egypt, France, Nigeria, Panama, and the United States

Herman Nootix: The resident ACME professor that normally teaches the other good guides, he mostly focuses on Languages and religious studies (he talks about Buddhism alot in his tours in this game). He’ll guide you in tours of Afghanistan, Indonesia, Israel, Japan, Nepal, Saudi Arabia and Thailand

Dee Plomassy: The resident Diplomat, her tours will include talks about how democracy differs, she’ll be your guide in Argentina, Canada, Cuba, Hungary, Morocco, Netherlands, Russia, Sweden, United Kingdom and Vietnam.

Renee Santz: ACME’s resident expert on art and architecture (and Nepo baby! Her father is a well known bassoonist and her mother is an architect. What does Renee do? She’s also the conductor of ACME’s Orchestra) She will guide you in tours of Austria, Denmark, Germany, India, Spain and Turkey

Rock Solid: ACME’s resident Nature expert (like he mostly focuses on Animals and Earth Science) He will be your guide in Brazil, Iceland, Kenya, New Zealand, South Africa, and Tanzania

Ann Tickwitte: ACME’s resident Archeologist and expert on Ancient civilizations she will be your guide in Cambodia, Chile, Greece, Guatemala, Iran, Italy, Mexico and Peru (interesting fact she does go to Peru with you in Where in Time)

Kim Yoonity: Acme’s resident anthropologist and sociologist (? socialite is not the word I would describe) She will be your guide in Bolivia, Pakistan, Phillipines, Singapore, South Korea and Zaire (as it was called at the time of the game’s release)

You can call the good guides back to help review your warrant but be careful, a phone call to them will eat up the babble-link translator battery, run out of juice and the game is over (you will also get a spinning newspaper headline if you lose) Arrest the wrong person or don't put in the right warrant or no warrant at all the crook will get away. Either way you get a call from the Chief about this.

When you do Catch up with Carmen she will attempt to give chase but all of the good guides will be there ready to catch her and just as the Ick Brothers are there to clean her track, she slips on their stuff, four of the good guides show up with Renee and Ivan jumping in and Rock Solid just standing there not doing anything except briefly taking Ivan out of the scuffle but puts him back then and then joins in the scuffle it stops with Carmen restrained with the good guides looking like a mess and we get a newspaper headline stating that Carmen has been arrested.

We then get a call from the Chief and she’ll congratulate us on catching Carmen and it turns out we got her just in time, as she had a master plan to steal ACME HQ, almost putting Crimenet out of commission. Then she’ll say that we made it to the Hall of Fame

If you fail to catch Carmen in case 39, Carmen will break three of her crooks out of prison and you’ll have to catch them again before you can take another go at Carmen

Once you've hit the hall of fame screen they will tell you to click to continue and you will be taken back to the sign in screen, and your name will be labelled as Retired, if you want to play again just hit delete player.


All of the good guides will return in Where in the USA is Carmen Sandiego

Nice guide! I've never played these games myself but maybe I should. Is having knowledge of the franchise/characters necessary or can you just start playing?

Furret : No Knowledge, the crooks change almost every game. I'm just sorry that more of the game show crooks didn't make it in (almost all of the game show crooks from Where in Time made it into Great Chase Through Time but I'll get to that when I get to that) This walkthrough is from the 3rd edition of the 96 game so I don't know if the 96 edition will have the language game. Oh yeah I think where I was going with this is you can play these through the VILE Box on the internet archive (it actually does work I used it when I wanted to work on a project regarding my most recent extras video maybe I'll share that one in the future)