Where in the World is Carmen Sandiego? is playable on Google Earth right now

Jump onto Google Earth and you can play a special free version of Where in the World in Carmen Sandiego?

While not particularly lengthy, you can hunt down the international thief as she jumps around the globe on Google Earth (thanks, Rock Paper Shotgun). It plays just as you remember, and closes with the promise of more adventures to come.

Interestingly, despite the huge appeal of the Sandiego games - not to mention her Netflix series - historian Kate Willaert points out this is the only way to legally play an official Where in the World in Carmen Sandiego? Game.

"All of the previous games in the series are only still playable thanks to preservationists; and even then, there are a few later installments that might be lost forever," Willaert said. "The last in-print and playable Carmen game was on the Wii Shop, which was retired earlier this year."

"I think this highlights how terrible the video game industry is at keeping its legacy alive," added Frank Cifaldi, founder of Video Game History Foundation. "You literally can't buy a Carmen Sandiego game right now, the only legal, official one is this Google freebie. This is a franchise we all played, that has a current hit show on Netflix!"

This isn't the first time Google has given us a free game, of course. In September, a secret text adventure game was discovered in the source code of Google Chrome. A Redditor found the easter egg by typing "text adventure" into google.com and opening Chrome's javascript console. While not exactly complex, the game was enjoyable enough, setting you out on a mission to locate the missing letters of the Google logo by way of simple text directions.

Update: This article incorrectly cited Frank Cifaldi as the source of the tweet above, and not Kate Willaert. We've amended the article, and apologise for the wrong attribution.