You can try to catch Carmen Sandiego in Google Earth's throwback to the original video game

Kevin Webb

Mar 17, 2019, 17:50 IST

Google Earth

Google Earth's "Carmen Sandiego" game is a fun throwback to the originals.

You can now play a minigame featuring Carmen Sandiego on Google Earth.
The game, "Carmen Sandiego: The Crown Jewels Caper," is an homage to the popular games of the 1980s and 1990s that featured the titular world-traveling thief.
Just like the original "Carmen Sandiego" games, "The Crown Jewels Caper" will test your knowledge of geography as you track Carmen around the globe.
The game is available for free with the Google Earth app.
Google says "The Crown Jewels Caper" is the first in a planned series of "Carmen Sandiego" games produced with Houghton Mifflin Harcourt.

Decades ago, the educational "Carmen Sandiego" games gave me my first excuse to mess with my parents' computer, which eventually led to me getting hooked on video games.

So naturally, the news that Google was releasing a new "Carmen Sandiego" minigame for its Google Earth app triggered waves of nostalgia.

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Earlier this week, Google unveiled "Carmen Sandiego: The Crown Jewels Caper," the first in a planned new series of "Carmen Sandiego" games coming to its mapping application. You can play the minigame for free on PCs and mobile devices.

For the uninitiated, "Carmen Sandiego" stars a legendary burglar known for leading a global criminal organization. Players use clues to track Carmen and her cohorts around the world, testing their knowledge of world places and landmarks in the process. The geography-based trivia of "Carmen Sandiego" is a great match for the global perspectives offered by Google Earth.

"The Crown Jewels Caper" stars the same animated version of Carmen Sandiego that you'll see in the the new TV series Netflix released in January. The games are being created in collaboration with Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, the primary publisher of the Carmen Sandiego franchise.

You can play "Carmen Sandiego: The Crown Jewels Caper" in Google's Chrome web browser on your PC, or with the Google Earth app on iOS and Android devices.

Here's what the game's like:

You'll play as an agent of ACME, a fictional detective agency, as you track Carmen Sandiego around the world.

The game gives you a short list of international destinations where Carmen might be found, starting with London.

While you explore important landmarks in each locale, witnesses will offer you tips about Carmen's next destination.

If you follow the clues correctly, you'll see Carmen as you arrive in your next city.

If you haven't checked out the new "Carmen Sandiego" Netflix series, you may be shocked to find that Carmen isn't a villain anymore!

In fact, you'll need to team up with her to catch the real mastermind behind "The Crown Jewel Caper."

Google says more "Carmen Sandiego" games will be coming to Google Earth in the future.

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