Carmen Sandiego Junior Detective

Carmen Sandiego: Junior Detective
The box cover for Junior Detective
Developer(s)	Brøderbund
Publisher(s)	Selectsoft Publishing
Series	Carmen Sandiego
Platform(s)	Microsoft Windows, Mac OS
Release	June 1, 1995
Genre(s)	Educational
Mode(s)	Single-player

Review scores
Publication	Score
AllGame
PC Player	70%

Carmen Sandiego: Junior Detective (sometimes referred to as Carmen Sandiego: Junior Detective Edition, Junior Detective Edition, or Where in the World is Carmen Sandiego: Junior Detective Edition) is a 1995 education game in the Carmen Sandiego franchise developed by Brøderbund. Although not a version of Where in the World Is Carmen Sandiego? by name, it is essentially a simplified version of it for pre-readers. Allgame says the game "is geared for younger users, with only 14 cases to solve". The lead characters of the FOX animated series Where on Earth is Carmen Sandiego?, Zack and Ivy were included in the game, along with Stretch - "ACME's crime-tracking dog".

Although Zack, Ivy, the Chief and Carmen Sandiego seem to have the same voice actors as in Earth, Carmen's appearance is different from in the show. Aside from including these characters and the fact that the user is addressed as "Player," the game has little to do with the Earth show.

ACME's Stretch the Crime Dog and Stretch's nemesis Carmine, Carmen Sandiego's pet cat, are introduced in this game. According to the game manual, Stretch captured so many V.I.L.E. agents as a puppy that ACME gave him "The Golden Snout Award," its highest K-9 honor. Stretch later appeared in one episode ("The Remnants") of the Earth series.

Notably, this is the first post-Cold War version of the World game, meaning it is the first to feature Russia instead of the Soviet Union. However, the map of Asia used in the game inaccurately shows Sakhalin to be under the dominion of Japan. In actuality, the island is under the control of Russia and it was so at the time this game was produced.

The game is played on a device called the GizmoTapper 586-LC which includes DeeJay, an artificial intelligence who guides the user through the game. Each country visited consists of a stock photograph inserted in the GizmoTapper's monitor. The user moves the cursor over the monitor, where it turns into a magnifying glass and glows to indicate the user has found a clue. Presented to the user by Zack, Ivy or DeeJay, each clue is a simple icon that represents a characteristic of the destination country's culture or economy (e.g. coffee, cathedrals, snakes, gold). The user must match the icon to the icons on a map to determine where the crook went. As the game progresses, more and more icons are needed to determine the target location. After the final photographs have been taken and the wanted poster assembled, the user is presented to a final country, where he or she must simply find a single clue. Once a clue is found, the chase begins (see The Warrant and the Arrest) Instead of the "time limit" used in previous games, there is a "fuel limit". That is, the arrest must be made before the GizmoTapper runs out of power (which is expended by traveling between countries, finding clues, and assembling the wanted poster). Another change is that each location is identified by the name of the country rather than the name of a city within that country.