Google Earth helps answer the age old question: Where in the world is Carmen Sandiego?

Google Earth has released a new Carmen Sandiego game that melds together the old school graphics of the original game and Google’s powerful database.

For all you ’80s children, Google Earth is making our dreams come true with the release of a new Carmen Sandiego game: The Crown Jewels Caper. Together with Houghton Mifflin Harcourt and Google Earth, players have to track down this wily thief by interviewing witnesses, piecing together clues to track Carmen Sandiego around the world.

It’s a delightful game that melds nostalgia and current technology. For those of us who grew up playing Carmen Sandiego on our computers in the 1980s, it will satisfy those with its old-school graphics. It is very much a nice throwback to the old game with its 8-bit graphics on one-side with point and click options. However, the left side brings the strength of Google Earth’s images. You can use your cursor to explore the city that you are in and see it in a 2D as well. It’s neat to see Google’s rendition of the Tower of London and Rio De Janeiro’s Copacabana beach. Plus, the animations of Carmen Sandiego swinging by are a nice touch, reminding us all of what was so much fun about the game.

At the same time, it was neat to still be able to learn a little bit about geography from the game. For example, I learned that the dirham is the currency of the United Arab Emirates, so good job there in teaching us a little bit more about the world!

The Carmen Sandiego game along with the Netflix series starring Gina Rodriguez (and recently announced season 2) seems to be part of a larger trend of bringing back lots of old school franchises. (Take the Chilling Adventures of Sabrina show, for example.) There’s even a live-action Carmen Sandiego movie in the works at Netflix — which tell us, clearly, nostalgia sells.

As someone who has grown up with many of these series, it’s a very welcomed trend. It’s great to see how these series have evolved (in the case of the comic books) or stay true to the best parts of the originals.

We are looking for the next installment of the game! Let us know what you think about Carmen Sandiego: The Crown Jewels Caper in the comments.