Video game:Sherlock Holmes: Consulting Detective

Before video games existed to capture the imagination, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle published four novels and 56 short stories featuring the detective Sherlock Holmes. Between 1887 and 1927, the public waited eagerly for the next installment featuring the titular hero and his friend, Dr. John Watson. Today, Sherlock Holmes continues to captivate the world through film, television, and video games that present the opportunity for players to step into the detective's shoes and try their own hand at solving mysteries.

Melbourne House released the first Sherlock Holmes video game for the ZX Spectrum and Commodore 64 gaming consoles in 1984. A simple text adventure, Sherlock'' served as a stepping stone for future games involving Sherlock Holmes.

In 1991, ICOM Simulations released Sherlock Holmes: Consulting Detective'' for the PC. In this single-player story, gamers control Sherlock Holmes and Dr. Watson and try to solve three separate crimes. A short video clip featuring live actors introduces each crime, and players must follow through on the clues introduced in the clip to solve the crime in the shortest amount of time possible. The three stories in the video game do not come from any of Conan Doyle's original works; they are new crimes created for the video game itself.

Chris Lombardi, of the magazine Computer Gaming World,'' described the game as a ground-breaking product with whiz-bang technology that demonstrates the full potential of multimedia.' However, he and many other critics believed that the game had a limited life due to its lack of replayability. Players enjoyed the game, however, and ICOM released two sequels in 1992 and 1993.

In 2012, Zojoi, LLC released a remastered version of Consulting Detective'' for the iPad, Windows, and OS X computers. More than a century after his first appearance, Sherlock Holmes continues to be a mainstay in popular culture for reasons he would deem truly elementary.''