Tag: Hercule Poirot | A Banana Peeled

Tag Archives: Hercule Poirot

The perfect Poirot game, part five

Posted on July 2, 2025 by Minna Hong • 0 Comments

I have more to say about my perfect detective game. In yesterday’s post, I hard-swung to why it had to be a Poirot game. Poirot is my favorite detective, and there has yet to be a good game based on him. Whatever I think of the Sherlock Holmes video games (and I think they’re horseshit), the world thinks very highly of them. And there are so many of them. I just checked. There are nine. Not as many as I thought, but still a lot. I have played over half of them, but only finished…one I think. I hated them, and I ‘m not saying that lightly.

But there are many. And they are beloved. I have no idea why Agatha Christie detectives have not been as celebrated. (Cough, sexism, cough cough.) Granted, Poirot has had many successful movies and TV shows (moreso than Miss Marple, I fear), but I don’t know why he hasn’t been as beloved in the video game world as Sherlock Holmes.

It’s difficult to create the perfect video game because I just do not like the traditional point-and-click genre that has been dubbed as the only way to go with detective games. I don’t know why in this particular genre, people have decided that innovation is over–well, actually, I do. Or at least I have a theory.

Here’s my theory. It’s not well-thought out, so stick with me as I muse about it.

Point-and-click detective games are pretty niche.

Huh. I was just looking up the Sherlock Holmes games, and apparently the most recent game that I thought was a remake is also a sequel to Chapter One (the game before it). So, Sherlock Holmes The Awakened, released in 2023, is not just a remake. Apparently, Chapter One was a reboot of the series, and The Awakened would have taken place later because Chapter One was about a young Holmes. I don’t know what to think about that so I’m going to ignore it for now.

I was talking about how niche point-and-click detective games are. Detective Duck: The Secret Salami (Happy Broccoli Games), a recent detective point-andclick, sold roughly 150,000 copies across platforms. Thimbleweed Park (Terrible Toybox), released in 2017, sold about 300,000 copies. Sherlock Holmes Crime & Punishment (Frogwares), released in 2014, had about the same number of sales (300,0000).

In contrast, the best-selling Call of Duty game (Black Ops III, many developers involved) sold 43 million copies. Is that a fair comaparison? Probably not, but it’s underscoring my point that point-and-click detective games are niche. Ha, I originally wrote cliched instead of niche. Freudian slip?

Poirot in and out

Posted on May 15, 2022 by Minna Hong • 0 Comments

I am a Poirot fan, dare I say a stan. I have read all the books anywhere from five to fifty times. I have watched the series at least three times–in order. That’s not easy to do because the series is broken up in two, each half owned by a different entity.

Side Rant: I HATE that there are so many sub-subscriptions. Amazon Prime is nearly useless as a subscription on its own for movies and television. Anytime I find something I want to watch, there’s a sub-subscription I have to buy in order to watch it. I don’t think I’ve watched anything from Amazon in years. The last time I wanted to watch Poirot, I had to subscribe to two different subs. I did the trial for each in order to watch the series before cancelling, but it was annoying as fuck. Here’s the thing. I don’t watch much TV or movies in general so I don’t want to have to pay ten bucks to watch one movie or TV show.

Anyway. I’ve been thinking about this because someone in the weekend thread on Ask A Manager asked for people’s favorite adaptations and least-favorite. Several people mentioned Poirot, much to my surprise, and how they thought David Suchet was the perfect Poirot. That’s not as surprising because he embodies Poirot. So much so that the one time I heard Suchet doing the audiobook version of Death on the Nile, I couldn’t get over his very British accent.

I proposed a moratorium on British Poirot movies for more than one reason. First, David Suchet is Poirot. Period. Full stop. No one can do it better. Second, there is a lot of racism and classism in the stories. In the novels as well as the movies. Lower-class people are portrayed as slovenly, violent, loud, coarse, etc. People from Asian countries are portrayed as sly, inscrutable, untrustworthy, etc. And, what would be unforgivable now, the people of other ethnicities are just British actors with bad accents and bad makeup.

The Big Four is my favorite Poirot book and it’s rife with racist portrayals. Or at least national stereotypes. *Spoilers* for a really old book. I like the shock of Poirot dying in it and experiencing the grief through Hastings. Then, the appearance of Poirot’s twin brother! Shock number two! And, yes, it’s a tired old trope, but still a jolt to the system. And then, masssssssive spoiler, the twin turns out to be Poirot after all and he faked his own death to get the Big Four off his back.