Tag: PC gaming

Where in the World is Carmen Sandiego? — Retro Gaming Essentials (No. 53)

“Where in the World is Carmen Sandiego?”

If you’re of a certain age, an earworm is navigating its way through your brain right now as if you were RFK.

Where … 

In the world … 

Is … 

Carmen Sandiego?

That song was the theme to the television show spin-off based on the original property, which originally was an educational game kids could play on their parents’ computers.

I frame it that way to differentiate it from an earlier entry in this list “The Oregon Trail,” which in my experience was primarily consumed at schools. Carmen Sandiego made it to schools too, but just as many people played it at home.

Yes, kids back in the 1980s and 1990s were supremely bored enough to want to actively engage with educational games at home. How do I know this? I was one of those bored kids. And no game was quite so pivotal to the “educate your kids while they play video games!” parenting impulse as Carmen Sandiego.

It essentially justified the entire enterprise of educational video games.

If you want to know how it did that – when so many other games had tried and failed dating back to the Atari golden age – you don’t need to overthink it.

This game was actually fun to play.

Where in the World is Carmen Sandiego? at a glance:

Genre: Educational
Released: 1985
Platform: PC
Member of World Video Game Hall of Fame
Continue reading Where in the World is Carmen Sandiego? — Retro Gaming Essentials (No. 53)

SimCity — Retro Gaming Essentials (No. 50)

We’ve reached No. 50!

At varying points throughout this countdown of Retro Gaming Essentials, I’ve had several “come to Jesus” moments where I’ve had to re-evaluate my ranking. 

Often, these internal conversations have occurred at noteworthy markers, such as when we hit the Top 20 with “Super Mario Kart” or the Top 30 with “Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater.” 

The conversations, such that they are, generally go something like this:

“Would I feel like a dumbass if this game wasn’t (or was) included in my Top (whatever)?”

That acts as a tie-breaker and helps me crystalize my recommendations. And when you boil it down, that’s really what this list is – a list of games I think should be experienced. Not just my personal favorites, and not just the games that seem important: Concessions on both points will be had, in the interest of providing a resource that is a little more worthwhile as a whole. 

And that resource is this: What games, at the end of the day, do I recommend people play (and why)?

Building off of that, if we’re saying to folks, “Hey, play these 50 games,” I don’t see how that list of 50 can be at all close to complete if we don’t talk about “SimCity” (and by extension “The Sims”).

Any reasonable approximation of the history of video gaming requires that conversation.

So, as we put a bow on 50 reviews of some of the best games in existence (with the intention of someday reaching a tidy 100), I say this with full confidence: 

Any gamer looking to play some of the all time greats should 100% include SimCity (or one of its sequels) on their to-do list.

SimCity at a glance:

Genre: Building simulation
Released: 1989
Platform: PC
“Game of the Year” from Computer Gaming Monthly
Continue reading SimCity — Retro Gaming Essentials (No. 50)