Hurry, before she can steal spacious skies, amber waves of grain, and purple mountain majesties above the fruited plain!
Where in the U.S.A. is Carmen Sandiego? is the second installment in the Carmen Sandiego franchise by Brøderbund Software. The first version was released in 1986, a year after the release of the first version of Where In The World Is Carmen Sandiego in 1985.The premise and gameplay is basically the same as in its predecessor. As the title would suggest, the main difference is that it's focused on U.S. geography rather than world geography. Hence, you chase Carmen and her henchmen through a series of U.S. states rather than a series of countries.
The two World remakes both had a U.S.A. counterpart, once again consisting of a 1992 deluxe edition and a third 1996 version. And as with World, the 1996 version of U.S.A. featured Lynne Thigpen as the Chief.
These games provide examples of:
- Cardboard Prison: As usual. The original 1986 game starts with Carmen breaking out of prison in Europe, apparently to explain why she's on the loose again after having been captured at the end of World. Subsequent entries in the series don't even bother to explain how Carmen is once again loose at the start of every game.
- Coat Full of Contraband: One of the generic henchmen is a very sneaky, sleazy-looking guy who opens his trenchcoat to reveal sparkling, gleaming watches.
- Copy Protection: Horrible, horrible copy protection. Arguably some of the most frustrating of all time. You can play all you want, but to get promoted and even have a chance to capture Carmen, you have to enter certain words from certain pages of the included travel guides every few cases. At least with World, the reference was an Almanac; most of the information in one of those can now be found on Wikipedia. USA asks what the last word on page Y of the Fodor's travel guide was. Have fun guessing!
- Da Chief: Your orders were anonymous in the 1985 version of World, but the 1986 version of U.S.A. marks the first time that your boss is identified as someone named "The Chief." The character is The Ghost in the 1986 version but appears onscreen in the 1992 and 1996 versions, portrayed by Lynne Thigpen in the latter of those two.
- Impossible Theft: The thefts range from entirely possible like the hand crank to the first Model T, the recipe for Coca-Cola, and the Indianapolis 500's checkered flag, to the ones practical but for the sheer scale like the Red Sox's socks, the Delta Queen Riverboat's paddlewheel, and Time Square's billboard, to more ridiculous such as all of the hour hands from the American Clock & Watch Museum, all of the water in Crater Lake, and all of the sand on Waikiki Beach, to the absurd like Monticello, Abraham Lincoln's log cabin, and The Breakers, to the very absurd such as the Space Needle, all of the maple syrup in Vermont, and every lobster bib in all of Maine. Even above those, they somehow managed to steal the Mason-Dixon Line, a capitol's gold dome, and the entire city of Montgomery.
Tropes exclusive to the 1992 version:
- 555: As with its World counterpart, the phone numbers in the deluxe version of U.S.A. are all prefixed with 555.
- It's Raining Men: The intro animation shows a bunch of Carmen's mooks parachuting down to San Francisco—and one of them getting his parachute caught on the spire of the Transamerica Pyramid.
- Year X: When you win a case in this version, you see an image of the crook in jail. The jail cell has a calendar on the wall, but you can only see the first three digits ("199") of the year. The fourth digit is obscured by a bar.
Tropes exclusive to the 1996 version:
- Canon Immigrant: This version includes Lynne Thigpen's Chief and RoboCrook from the Where In The World Is Carmen Sandiego game show (though the latter is now a more generic cyborg criminal rather than the RoboCop parody he was in the show.)
- The Dragon: Robo-Crook, an Elite Mook of Carmen's based on a villain from the Where In The World? game show, appears in this game and is the only one in on Carmen's master plan.
- Epic Fail: The game will call you out if you attempt to arrest a thief without issuing the warrant. The thief is let off the hook and you don't recover the landmark.
- Excuse Plot: Logically speaking, Carmen's crooks should wear disguises the way she does and lie low rather than flying from state to state and risking jetlag. But then, the player wouldn't learn about all fifty states.
- Genie in a Bottle: Ann Tickwittee's capture animation has her using an oil lamp to summon a genie, who then grabs the thief.
- Hypocritical Humor: Completely unintentional, but a handful of times when you ask a passerby "what does the suspect look like?", they will give a descriptive statement that also applies to his or her own self.
- Landmarking the Hidden Base: At the end of this version, you not only capture Carmen but also discover the location of her secret base. It turns out to be under the U.S. Capitol Building. Perhaps she chose the location due to the convenient supply of crooks nearby.
- Mini-Game: You can click on a computer and answer trivia facts about a state. Filling the quota unlocks a Robo-Crook animation.
- Musical Assassin: Renee Santz fits this trope; when she comes in to arrest the perp, she's playing a toe-tapping tune on her saxophone, up until the musical notes sweep the perp off their feet and pin their hands and feet to the ground.
- New Work, Recycled Graphics: The 1996 version reuses the travel map from the 1992 version.
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Nintendo Hard: The later levels of this version turn into this, owing to how fuel usage increases with traveling and suspects. It can especially be frustrating in the last level when you think that you have enough fuel to catch Carmen, only for it to run out shortly after the Chief calls you with her "good news" that Carmen was spotted. Then she busts a few of her crooks out of jail thanks to your failure, and you have to solve them before getting to her again. - Paper-Thin Disguise: Subverted awesomely in the final level. Carmen is too conspicuous to go around in her trademark red outfit, so she wears a Latex Perfection disguise that makes her look like a harmless average-sized woman. You can only figure out it's her because of a rhyming letter addressed to Robo-Crook she gives in couplets to some of her henchmen, she describes how she's going to look different.
- Product Placement: Back in 1998
there was an Amtrak-skinned version of the 1996 version, titled Where in America...The Great Amtrak Train Adventure. It basically added in Amtrak-themed clues and Amtrak-dressed cartoon employees as additional witnesses. It also included a promo advert for Amtrak in the in-game database. - Replay Bonus: In the final case, you learn that Carmen has been wearing a Latex Perfection disguise that makes her look like an average bystander whose character model is reused from World except for the key difference of the hood she's wearing being Carmen's trademark color, red, rather than purple. This person, red hood and all, can be randomly encountered touring different states throughout the game in previous cases, so when replaying the game knowing how Carmen's disguise looks like you are now aware that whenever you encounter this particular tourist, you're getting information about one of Carmen's crooks directly from Carmen herself.
- Sore Loser: Charlie Horse, one of Carmen's goons, flat-out describes himself as this in response to his arrest.
- Swallowed Whole: One of Carmine's scenes involves her taking a goldfish out of its fishbowl to eat it, only for the goldfish to suddenly grow in size and open its mouth wide to eat Carmine whole, after which it then flops away.
- That Poor Cat: Carmine the Cat is a Butt-Monkey that suffers Amusing Injuries in each of her animations. One has her attempting to sing opera, only for someone offscreen to toss a can at her. Another has her trying to eat a goldfish, only for it to grow bigger than the cat and eat her instead.
- Token Good Teammate: While the ICK Janitors are cleaning up Carmen's trail and Robo-Crook is doing Offstage Villainy, Carmine is just...being a cat. That includes raiding the garbage for a meal, trying to eat goldfish, and giving a meowing opera.
- "Wanted!" Poster: Carmen tears down one of herself in the opening animation.
- What the Hell, Player?: Kids-friendly version; if you run out of fuel, arrest the wrong criminal, mess up the warrant, or forget to issue the warrant, cut to a newspaper decrying how you failed. Then the Chief calls and either chews you out or reminds you how to avoid this problem in the future.
- You ALL Look Familiar: As in its World counterpart, the 1996 version of U.S.A. reuses many, if not all, of the same character models for bystanders.
