Where in Time is Carmen Sandiego? (1997)

This page details one or more prototype versions of Where in Time is Carmen Sandiego? (1997).

A one-case demo of the 1997 Where in Time is Carmen Sandiego? was put out before the game's release to drum up interest. The readme dates it at May 13th, 1997, exactly three months before the date in the final version's readme, and it's clear that there was still a lot of work left to be done at that point.

The game starts off with a few demo-exclusive live-action clips of Lynne Thigpen as "The Chief" summarizing the plot of the game, followed by the usual Time Tunnel intro sequence and the entirety of Case 1. After completing the case, a few more video clips preview other parts of the game and encourage players to contact Brøderbund for ordering information.

Sub-Page#

Chronopedia EntriesFind out how your elementary school teacher felt grading history reports!

General Differences#

• The demo is 32-bit only, but the final game expanded support to 16-bit Windows systems. The readme was greatly enlarged to accommodate this.

Demo
Final

• The final uses a different set of fonts from the demo. The demo seems to depend on existing system fonts, while the final version installs a set of fonts with the game.
• Most animations other than characters talking play significantly faster in the demo than the final.
• Loading times between screens are extremely short in the demo compared to the final.
• The Time Cuffs are very buggy in the demo. To give just a few examples: Once they're activated, the game will play the activation animation again every time they're picked up and released; picking them up while they're activating will cause a static image of the deactivated cuffs to get stuck behind the animation of the activated cuffs; etc., etc.
• The command text on the inventory bar is also buggy. When using items, it tends to flicker on and off seemingly at random as the cursor moves across the screen.
• The Chronopedia text, aside from being in an early draft state, is extremely poorly formatted. Sentences wind up repeated, cut off, displayed behind images, etc. This is probably part of the reason the game installs its own fonts in the final.
• The Time Tunnel graphics are uncompressed in the demo, but use standard Mohawk engine LZ compression in the final for some reason. There's plenty of room left over on both game discs, so perhaps the developers tried and failed to cram everything onto one CD.

Graphics#

Title Screen#

Demo	Final
Due to technical limitations on displaying animated GIF files of large file sizes, please click here to see the full-size animated image.

The demo version has a much more elaborate title animation. The final trades it out for a prerendered Broderbund logo sequence and a smaller, more polished Carmen animation.

Time Tunnel#

Demo	Final

The preview image of Egypt shown in the pre-case Time Tunnel sequence was redone for the final. Apparently the awkward resizing job to get the boatman in the frame was a no-go.

Demo	Final

Ann Tickwittee's Time Tunnel graphics are slightly, uh, off in the demo.

Demo	Final

Yikes.

Demo	Final

Ann's Time Tunnel exit sequence is just as unpolished as her entrance. Note that the animation shown isn't 100% accurate; Sir Vile's movements are much faster and jerkier in-game.

Demo	Final

The post-case review graphic isn't displayed in the demo, which is good since it's sorely lacking in looking like a sarcophagus instead of a filing cabinet.

Demo	Final

Renee Santz doesn't appear in the demo, but Time Tunnel graphics of her appear in the data files anyway. Naturally, they're mangled similarly to Ann's.

Demo	Final

Here's part of Renee's departure animation – the rest of it seems to have been removed from the demo. The final versions of the entrance animations are more elaborate but less unique.

	This prompt to play again looks like it should be used at the end of the demo, but isn't. Presumably someone realized that anyone who really wanted to play again could just relaunch the game.
	These graphics, which are just copies of parts of the previous animation with inverted colors, may have been meant to provide a smoother transition between the larger and smaller graphics. The similar "take another case?" prompt in the final game, which has identical yes/no graphics, doesn't use these; consequently, they're omitted from the mockup animation above.

Case 1#

Demo	Final

The graphic of the torch on the boat was redrawn and recolored for the final to match its appearance in the inventory.

Previews#

Demo	Final

The preview pictures from other cases shown at the end of the demo are possibly mockups, judging by minor differences in the positioning of characters, but this is the only one that really contains any changes of interest: a path was added to the mountains on the left side of the screen to make it more obvious that there's an exit there.

Music#

Title Screen#

The title fanfare was redone for the final to accommodate the altered logo sequence.

Time Tunnel#

The Time Tunnel background music was rerendered at a lower volume in the final version.

Case Previews#

This piece of music is exclusive to the demo, where it plays over the previews shown after solving the case.

Sound#

The crackling noises in the Time Tunnel were touched up a bit for the final. This effect was given a layer of delay.

This one was replaced.

Finally, this one was just scrapped outright.

Dialogue#

All of the spoken dialogue was re-rendered for the final with some additional processing to normalize the volume and suppress overly loud or crackly phonemes.

This is one of the more distinct examples. Notice how much more pronounced the "-ed" in "asked" is in the demo compared to the final.

For the most part, the dialogue itself is the same. Only a couple of lines were altered substantially:

The tail end of Ann's comment about the temple was snipped. Apparently, it's not such a perfect monument after all.

The end of this line was also cut, this time due to a blatant error – Osiris is the god of the underworld, not the name of it.

Text#

Chronopedia#

Despite only being a one-case demo, all the Chronopedia entries are in the game, most of them still in draft or placeholder form. See the sub-page for details.

Dialogue#

Though there are only a couple of changes to the dialogue itself, the subtitles were touched up for the final. The vast majority of the changes are simply due to proofreading. Generally:

• All capitalized occurrences of "Pharaoh" not used as a proper title (as in "Pharaoh Thutmose III") were changed to "pharaoh".
• Capitalization of "The Book of the Dead" was made consistent throughout the case.
• Most instances of capitalized "Afterlife" were changed to "afterlife".
• Someone attempted to make sure every period was followed by two spaces. However, this seems to have been a bad find and replace job; many sentences ended up with extra spaces, and some words that didn't need them got them anyway.
• Use of dashes was made regular: always a space, two hyphens, and a space (" -- ").

"Pharaoh" -> "pharaoh", fixed dash spacing.

Single space after period changed to double space.

"the book" -> "the Book".

Same as previous.

Since player dialogue isn't voiced, the writers were free to fiddle with it more. Generally, the dialogue is a bit more polite and natural-sounding in the final.

As above.

"The Book of the Dead" -> "the Book of the Dead".

"the Afterlife" -> "the afterlife".

"realm of the Dead" -> "realm of the dead".

Deemphasis of "his majesty", dash spacing.

"Afterlife" -> "afterlife".

"Afterlife" -> "afterlife".

Dash spacing.

"Afterlife" -> "afterlife".

"Afterlife" -> "afterlife".

Extra space added after "V.I.L.E.". Probably an accident caused by mass find and replace of periods followed by one space with periods followed by two spaces.

"Carmen note" -> "Carmen Note".

"Carmen note" -> "Carmen Note".

Same double-space-after-V.I.L.E. issue.

"Temple" -> "temple".

Dash spacing.

"Pharaoh" -> "pharaoh".

Period spacing.

"Afterlife" -> "afterlife".

"Afterlife" -> "afterlife".

"Carmen note" -> "Carmen Note".

Superfluous space added after the period (probably another find and replace issue).

Dash spacing.

"Pharaoh" -> "pharaoh".