Middle-earth in video games

While an immense number of computer and video games owe a great deal to J. R. R. Tolkien's works and the many other high fantasy settings based upon his, relatively few games have been directly adapted from his world of Middle-earth. From the early 1980s to the present, several video game series have been developed based upon Tolkien's writings, including titles by Electronic Arts, Sierra and Melbourne House.

Official games

Early efforts

In 1982, Melbourne House began a series of licensed LoTR graphical interactive fiction (text adventure) games with The Hobbit, based on the book with the same name. The game was considered quite advanced at the time, with interactive characters that moved between locations independent of the player, and Melbourne House's 'Inglish' text parser which accepted full-sentence commands where the norm was simple two-word verb/noun commands. They went on to release 1986's The Fellowship of the Ring, 1987's The Shadows of Mordor, and 1990's The Crack of Doom. A BBC Micro text adventure released around the same time was unrelated to Melbourne's titles except for the literary origin. In 1987, Melbourne House released War in Middle-earth, a real-time strategy game. Konami also released an action-strategy game titled Riders of Rohan.

Other early efforts includede Shadowfax by Postern (1982), a simplistic side-scrolling action game for the Spectrum, C64, and VIC-20, in which Gandalf rides the titular steed while smiting endless Nazgûl. Suspiciously similar in appearance to Activision's Stampede.
The Lord of Rings: Journey to Rivendell was announced in 1983 by Parker Brothers for the Atari 2600, but was never released. The prototype ROM can be found at AtariAge.

In 1990, Interplay, in collaboration with Electronic Arts (who would later obtain the licenses to the film trilogy), released Lord of the Rings Vol. I (a special CD-ROM version of which featured cut-scenes from Ralph Bakshi's animated adaptation) and the following year's Lord of the Rings Vol. II: The Two Towers, a series of role-playing games based on the events of the first two books. A third instalment was planned, but never released. Interplay's games mostly appeared on the PC and Amiga, but later they did a Lord of the Rings game for the SNES, which played nothing like their PC games and instead was more like The Legend of Zelda.

Film trilogy revival

Thereafter, no official The Lord of the Rings titles were released until the making of Peter Jackson's The Lord of the Rings film trilogy for New Line Cinema in 2001-2003, when mass-market awareness of the story appeared. Electronic Arts obtained the licenses for the three films, Sierra Entertainment obtained the license to produce games based on the books from Tolkien Enterprises - this gave rise to an unusual situation: Electronic Arts produced no adaptation of The Fellowship of the Ring, but produced adaptations named The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers (video game) (which covered events of both the first two films) and The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King (video game), whereas Sierra only produced a game covering the first book of the trilogy, The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring (video game). While Sierra Entertainment's access to the book rights prevented them from using material from the film, it permitted them to include elements of The Lord of the Rings which were not in the films. EA, on the other hand, were not permitted to do this, as they were only licensed to develop games based on the films, which left out elements of the original story or deviated in places.

In 2003 Sierra produced an adaptation of The Hobbit, aimed at a younger audience: The Hobbit (2003 video game), as well as a realtime strategy game The Lord of the Rings: War of the Ring both based on Tolkien's literature.

Further spin off's from the film trilogy were produced: A real time strategy game The Lord of the Rings: The Battle for Middle-earth, and turn based roleplaying game The Lord of the Rings: The Third Age were released in 2004, and a PSP-exclusive title, The Lord of the Rings: Tactics in 2005.

In 2005, EA was secured the rights to both the films and the books, thus the The Lord of the Rings: The Battle for Middle-earth II incorporated elements of the film adaptions, and the original Tolkienesque lore. EA also began work on an open world console RPG called The Lord of the Rings: The White Council, development of the game was cancelled in 2007.

A MMORPG by Turbine, Inc., entitled The Lord of the Rings Online: Shadows of Angmar and endorsed by Tolkien Enterprises^{[citation needed]} was officially launched 24 April 2007. This game only covered the region of Eriador, from the Grey Havens to the Misty Mountains, and about as far north and south. It does not make it far enough South as to reach Isengard but eventually, the whole of Middle Earth is expected to be opened through annual expansion packs.^{[citation needed]} The game is based on the books and stays more loyal to the actual lore than any of the other games.^{[citation needed]} Although there are still a great many deviations from Tolkien's work (such as a new ring of power) it has revived major support from fans and positive reviews. They were unable to obtain the movie rights, though they tried. The first expansion to The Lord of the Rings Online was released on 18 November 2008, entitled "The Mines of Moria." The next expansion, "The Siege of Mirkwood" was released on 1 December 2009.^{[citation needed]} The third and latest expansion was Rise of Isengard. This went live on the 27th September 2011 and included the area's of Dunland, the Gap of Rohan and Isengard where the tower of Orthanc is located.

The Lord of the Rings: Conquest produced by Pandemic Studios using the Game engine used in Star Wars: Battlefront was released in early 2009 on consoles, PC and Nintendo DS. The console and PC versions received generally negative reviews, the DS version received average reviews.^[1] The game also marked the end of Electronic Arts license, which had already been extended some months so that the game could be completed. Subsequently the license, obtained via Tolkien Enterprises passed to Warner Bros.^{[citation needed]}

Lord of the Rings: War in the North is an action RPG that takes place in Northern Middle-earth. It is developed by Snowblind Studios and released on 1 November 2011.

Unofficial games

Aside from officially licensed games, unofficial games have also been made. Some of the longest-lasting are Angband (1990), a roguelike based loosely on The Silmarillion, Elendor (1991), a MUSH based on Tolkien in general, and MUME (1992) and The Two Towers (1994), MUDs based on The Lord of the Rings.

Many Tolkien-inspired mods and custom maps have been made for many games, such as Warcraft III, Neverwinter Nights, Rome: Total War, Medieval 2: Total War, Warlords 3, Mount&Blade and Age of Empires II: The Age of Kings.

As well as maps in games, many lord of the Rings fans have made modifications for the popular The Elder Scrolls Series for the PC, including a total conversion as well as a range of items and armour.

The roguelike NetHack also has many allusions to The Lord of the Rings, with references to creatures and sayings (i.e. 'Elbereth').

List of video games

Title	Year	Publisher	Developer	Platforms
The Hobbit	1982	Melbourne House	Beam Software	Amstrad CPC, ZX Spectrum, Commodore 64, BBC (no graphics), Dragon 32, Oric Atmos, MSX, Apple II, IBM PC
Lord of the Rings: Game One (AKA: The Fellowship of The Ring)	1985	Melbourne House	Beam Software	ZX Spectrum, Commodore 64, BBC, Dragon 32, Apple Macintosh, Apple II, IBM PC
The Shadows of Mordor	1987	Melbourne House	Beam Software	Amstrad CPC, Commodore 64, ZX Spectrum, Apple II, IBM PC
War in Middle-earth	1987	Melbourne House	Melbourne House	C64, Spectrum, Amstrad CPC, Amiga, Atari ST, IBM PC
The Crack of Doom	1989	Melbourne House	Beam Software	Commodore 64, IBM PC
The Lord of the Rings Volume 1	1990	Interplay, Electronic Arts	Interplay, Chaos Studios (Amiga)	Amiga, IBM PC
The Lord of the Rings Volume 2	1991	Interplay	Interplay	IBM PC
Riders of Rohan	1991	Konami, Mirrorsoft	Beam Software, Papyrus	IBM PC
The Lord of the Rings Volume 1	1994	Interplay	Interplay	Super NES
The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring	2002	Vivendi Universal Games	Surreal Software	MS Windows, PlayStation 2
			The Whole Experience	Xbox
			Pocket Studios	Game Boy Advance
The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers	2002	Electronic Arts	Stormfront Studios Hypnos Entertainment (GCN)	PlayStation 2, Xbox, Nintendo GameCube
			Griptonite Games	Game Boy Advance
The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King	2003	Electronic Arts Aspyr (Mac OS X)	Electronic Arts,Hypnos Entertainment (GCN & Xbox) Beenox (Mac OS X)	MS Windows, PlayStation 2, Xbox, Nintendo GameCube, Mac OS X
		Electronic Arts	Griptonite Games	Game Boy Advance
The Lord of the Rings: War of the Ring	2003	Sierra	Liquid Entertainment	MS Windows
The Hobbit	2003	Sierra	Midway Austin	MS Windows, PlayStation 2, Xbox, Nintendo GameCube
			Saffire	Game Boy Advance
The Lord of the Rings: The Third Age	2004	Electronic Arts	Electronic Arts	PlayStation 2, Xbox, Nintendo GameCube
The Lord of the Rings: The Third Age (GBA)	2004	Electronic Arts	Griptonite Games	Game Boy Advance
The Lord of the Rings: The Battle for Middle-earth	2004	Electronic Arts	EA Los Angeles	MS Windows
The Lord of the Rings: Tactics	2005	Electronic Arts	Amaze	PlayStation Portable
The Lord of the Rings: The Battle for Middle-earth II	2006	Electronic Arts	EA Los Angeles	MS Windows, Xbox 360
The Lord of the Rings: The Battle for Middle-earth II: The Rise of the Witch-king	2006	Electronic Arts	EA Los Angeles	MS Windows
The Lord of the Rings Online: Shadows of Angmar	2007	Turbine, Inc., Midway	Turbine, Inc.	MS Windows
The Lord of the Rings Online: Mines of Moria	2008	Turbine, Inc., Midway	Turbine, Inc.	MS Windows
The Lord of the Rings: Conquest	2009	Electronic Arts	Pandemic Studios	Xbox 360, PlayStation 3, MS Windows, Nintendo DS
The Lord of the Rings Online: Siege of Mirkwood	2009	Turbine, Inc.	Turbine, Inc.	MS Windows
The Lord of the Rings: Aragorn's Quest	2010	Warner Bros. Interactive Entertainment	Headstrong Games TT Fusion	Wii, Nintendo DS, PlayStation 2, PlayStation Portable, PlayStation 3
The Lord of the Rings: War in the North	2011	Warner Bros. Interactive Entertainment	Snowblind Studios	PlayStation 3, MS Windows, Xbox 360

Parodies

• The Boggit
• Bored of the Rings (1985), based on on the parody adaptation of the same name (1986).
• Spitti's Search (Spittis Search) (1988–1989)

References

1. ^ Metacritic results : "Lord of the Rings: Conquest" (links) metacritic.com

External links

• J.R.R. Tolkien games at MobyGames