The Lady in Red. The World's Greatest Thief. The Miss of Misdemeanor. She goes by many names, but most of us (at least, those of us who spent our formative years in the late '80s to mid '90s) know her as Carmen Sandiego. A criminal mastermind, the sassy Sandiego was the antagonist of a series of animated television shows and educational computer games, including Where in the World is Carmen Sandiego and Where in Time is Carmen Sandiego. Kids all over the world learned about geography, history and mathematics while staying hot on the heels of Sandiego, tracking her movements as she pulled off impossible acts of theft.
This weekend, Sandiego fans of Melbourne will have the chance to relive the crime-fighting nostalgia, with a real-life scavenger hunt around the city. It's called 'Where in Melbourne are Carmen and Diego', and it's part of Melbourne International Games Week – a seven-day conference for the gaming industry.
'Where in Melbourne are Carmen and Diego' is the brainchild of Pop-Up Playground: a Melbourne-based collective who design live games. One of their most recent venues was 'Small Time Criminals: Bank Job escape room' (which we busted out of earlier this year).
In this game, Carmen and Diego are hipster scientists who have stolen classified information from the CSIRO. They're on the run from the authorities, and it's up to you to track them through Melbourne. As hipsters, they're naturally frequenting many of Melbourne's lesser-known venues. You might find them drinking single-origin coffees in a hole-in-the-wall café or shopping for more black clothes from a local designer.
So here's how you get involved: visit the website, register for free, and receive instructions on how to play. The fun begins at 10am this Saturday (October 29) and runs until 6pm on Sunday.
Get to it, Melbourne: time is ticking.