If there was one game that genuinely defined my childhood it wouldn't be a game most people would associate with things like...fun or whatever it is video games are supposed to be. While I spent a good portion of my youth playing Super Mario World, Super Metroid, Mega Man X (and X2, the best of the X series), Streets of Rage 2 (the game that still has the single best first level song in all of video games bar none), and Super Empire Strikes Back, and while I could go on and on about how Chrono Trigger and Final Fantasy 6 doomed me to a life of being an unapologetic JRPG fan, all of those games are stories for another day. Or something.

The game that defined my childhood was Where In The U.S.A. Is Carmen Sandiego? 

Back when I was a little Fablet I was a daycare kid. Both my parents worked so I didn't exactly go to kindergarten, I went to daycare that doubled as kindergarten but wasn't really. And honestly what does anyone learn in kindergarten except how to scribble on paper? This daycare had a computer room which was full of crappy old Apple Macintosh's and mostly used for Kid Pix or Pinball or Tetris under the guidance of the staff. I was told that one game on the computer was 'too hard' for kids my age so naturally that just made me want to play it more. That game was Where in the U.S.A. Is Carmen Sandiego?

At the time I didn't know it was an educational game and while other kids would play Oregon Trail just to play the hunting game, every day I was playing this Carmen Sandiego game. For the first couple weeks I didn't know what the hell to do, I was just clicking and watching the little animations of interstate travel happen. It wasn't until one of the staff members helped me understand the point, that I was supposed to read and use clues to find where these crude little cartoon people went where I started to discover how incorrectly I'd been playing. 

So I kept at it, and I wound up playing it as intended: looking things up and learning. My profile on the game was tied to a specific machine and there was a notice put up for anyone using the machine that they weren't allowed to mess with my profile. I was just glad to prove people wrong who told me the game was too hard for me. Technically they were kind of right but even though I never actually got far enough to catch Carmen Sandiego, I did learn enough about the United States and about reading to impress the shit out of my grade school teachers - the the point where by like third grade they were letting me read [i]chapter books without pictures[/i]. 

I've gone back to play it in my adult years thanks to DOS-BOX but that is a game that is very much of a time and place. It [i]did[/i] get me to beg my parents to buy me "Carmen Sandiego's Great Chase Through Time" which was my first point and click adventure game and only helped make me even more of an annoying know-it-all shit kid well into grade school. 

Carmen Sandiego remains one of my all time favorite video game characters, though I guess she's more of a general 'fictional character' these days. One day I'll catch her again. One day.