When you were younger, were there any game shows that you religiously watched and wanted to be a contestant on?

Where in the World?

I'd have to say the only game show that I watched religiously was on PBS called “Where in the World is Carmen Sandiego?”  If you ever read the books or played the old school PC games of the same name, you would know what I'm talking about.  But for those who don't, WitWiCS is a detective story where you the reader is a junior detective in the ACME Detective Agency, and your main cases were to chase down Carmen Sandiego a mysterious woman mastermind of an elite band of Evil thieves out to steal the world's most famous landmarks and artifacts.

The books were like those choose your own adventure books where you get a case where one of Sandiego's henchmen (which were wild and crazy characters in themselves) stole say the Grand Canyon(yeah the items were that wild) and you went on a goose chase around the world looking for clues as to where that henchmen is, and where the Grand Canyon was.  You would interview people, go to places and get clues as to where the henchmen went next.  It was basically a race to catch up and find the henchmen before he got too far ahead.

Along the way as well you find clues as to which henchmen it was that stole the item.  And if you are lucky you would find and capture the head woman herself Carmen Sandiego.

Now when the game show started it was in the same vein of the books.  Kids would be contestants on the show, get a case from the Chief, and “travel around the world” to catch the henchmen.  They would get questions about the place they were in and they would get points for how many questions they answered correctly.  Then whoever had the most amount of points or whichever(I can't remember exactly, it's been a while) the final contestant would compete in the final round to match capital cities which were on big cards and match them to the country on a big map, and if they got all the cities matched correctly in 60 seconds they would “catch” Carmen Sandiego and win a trip to anywhere they wanted in North America.

It was an awesome show, and also very educational.  They also had “Where in Time is Carmen Sandiego?”  But it didn't last as long as the first one did.  I remember they had this thing where if you wanted to sign up as an honorary member of ACME Crime Agency mail them a letter and you would receive a newspaper from ACME about the show.  I do have that newspaper somewhere in my room.  I'll have to find it now.

So that's the game show I would've loved to be on.

Does anyone else remember the show?

Toodles

Steve Saylor “Snowball”

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