So yeah I actually have the TLC re-release of the game that has The Learning Company Carmen Sandiego Autoplay page, and I found this at a Giant Tiger around the same time that Total Drama found it's way to the US, and while the TDI interactive site was constantly down in the US, and like I had previously said the Where on Earth pilot dvd led me back to the games shows and thus I found my fandom.

Gameplay and Story: Originally released in 1996, they updated this game a couple of times (one of the upgrades includes a computer that would have random facts for you to guess, guess enough right and Robocrook comes out to play, yes they actually did bring in at least ONE crook from the game show, speaking of games shows THEY GOT THE ACTRESS THAT PLAYED THE CHIEF ON THE GAME SHOW! though it kind of bugs me that they never had Greg Lee or Rockapella have some kind of presence in the games. Of course here we have to chase Carmen around the United States with a new group of bad name pun baddies. Of course Carmen has a master plan and we don't even find out what it is until....okay actually we find out in the intro what her master plan is we figure it out before we do catch up with her though.

Graphics: So it's perfectly clear here that this game had a different budget from the World games, and it's kind of obvious with the character designs, some of them were reused from the World games some are completely new. The way we move around is different we do some kind of 360 degree thing (that's not quite like Oregon Trail 4) We have footage of Lynne Thigpen as the Chief in all the QuickTime video glory. We also get 30 second long clips with narrations about certain locations.

Soundtrack: Sixty percent of the Folk Music used in this game was recycled from the last game, however some of the songs that were used in the mid 90s deluxe re-release, because I guess Mary McCaslin asked for too much money considering 3 of her songs were used in the Deluxe game, there was also an extra track that Jerry Douglas did, but at least they kept Blues for Vicky in....and Way Out West, there's a reason why I listen to the tracks before the work day begins and listen to it during massage therapy. Well at least they fixed the Black Mountain Mazurka track because in the other game it repeated after at least ten seconds, here we get more of the song. Here we get tracks that were either made by the Broderbund Staff or other people that apparently doesn't have a youtube auto-generated thing which is a shame I would love to hear a full version of The Dear Little Butterfly or Zhaavaronok (or however that's spelled) we get a nice looking juke box that shows off the tracks used in the game since there's no source information program here. The best part is they fixed the problem with this track Flee as a bird Clog, no scratchy game ending glitch, which is a good thing because we hear that track quite a bit in the Eastern Colonial states.

Addictive: I played this game quite a lot in the summer of 2008 when I didn't go to the library to watch whatever game show Carmen episodes were available online at the time (alot has changed since 2008, now there are like 11 episodes missing) but Carmen usually keeps me coming back.

Depth: So the 1996 releases had something new like when I brought up with the monitor, here we also get Good Guide tours, there are subject specific good guides though (and I'm pretty sure this was released after World 1996 was because I think three of the guides got makeunders, Rock Solid and Professor Nootix don't look the same way they do in the world game but I'll get to it when I get to it) we will have these good guides around for the next three games as well. Also unlike the World release the music actually stops when they are talking, Also they have explore mode so you don't always need to be working on the case in order to do the tours (all of which are on youtube).

Difficulty: Like I said in the Deluxe edition review since I don't live in the US, this game is a little bit more challenging for me but still worth it.

Post-review Follow up: This is a great addition to the franchise, and I do quite enjoy it, shame that this is the last version of Where in the USA that was ever made, I'm sure TLC would have loved to have made an adventure game version of this but since Treasures of Knowledge probably didn't sell well I guess that didn't happen.

This concludes my review, join me tomorrow when I review a random Sega Genesis game