Where in the World is Carmen Sandiego?

Where in the World is Carmen Sandiego? is an educational video game released by Broderbund in 1985. It is the first product in the Carmen Sandiego franchise. The game was distributed with The World Almanac and Book of Facts, published by Pharos Books. An enhanced version of the game was released in 1989, which did not have the almanac copy protection but disk based copy protection. A deluxe version was released in 1992, and featured additional animation and a reworked interface from the original version. Some of the bonus features include: "digitized photos from National Geographic, over 3200 clues, music from the Smithsonian/Folkways Recordings, 20 villains, 60 countries, and 16 maps". CD-ROM versions for MS-DOS and Macintosh were released in 1992, and a Windows version was released in 1994.

In the game, the player takes the role of a rookie in the ACME Detective Agency, tasked to track down crooks from the V.I.L.E. organization that have stolen famous works from around the world. They do this by using their knowledge of geography (aided by the Almanac) to question witnesses or investigate clues to track down where the crook has gone. Successfully solving these crimes increases the player's rank in ACME, leading to more difficult cases and later tasked to find the lead of V.I.L.E., Carmen Sandiego.

The game was initially developed as a menu-driven interface to replace the text-driven interface of adventure games like Colossal Cave Adventure for graphic-enabled computers like the Apple II. Along the way, the idea of introducing geography as part of the game and distributing the Almanac with the game shifted its approach. While it was not intended as an education game at release, the game proved very successful as an education tool for schools. By 1995, over 4 million copies of the game had been sold, and established the Carmen Sandiego franchise. The game was later adapted into a PBS game show that ran from 1991 to 1995. This game is not to be confused with the 1996 rebooted version sometimes mistakenly called the "Deluxe" version.