Middle-earth in video games

Titles have been produced by studios such as Electronic Arts, Vivendi Games, Melbourne House, and Warner Bros. Interactive Entertainment.

[1][2] In 1982, Melbourne House began a series of licensed Lord of the Rings graphical interactive fiction (text adventure) games with The Hobbit, based on the book with the same name.

[9][10] 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.

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.

[26] EA also began work on an open world role-playing video game called The Lord of the Rings: The White Council, but it was put on indefinite hold in early 2007,[27] with no further information about its developmental or release status.

The game is based on the books and Turbine's licence explicitly prohibits them from including any story or design elements unique to the movie adaptations.

[34] The Lord of the Rings: Conquest produced by Pandemic Studios using the same engine used in Star Wars: Battlefront was released in early 2009 on the PC and all seventh-generation video game systems except the Wii and PSP.

Subsequently, the licence, obtained via Tolkien Enterprises, passed to Warner Bros.[36] After Warner Bros. gained the licence to publish Middle-earth video games, the first game to be published under this new licence holder would be The Lord of the Rings: Aragorn's Quest, an action-adventure retelling of the Peter Jackson film trilogy from Aragorn's perspective, on Nintendo and Sony video game platforms, with Wii and PlayStation 3 versions taking advantage of motion controls to simulate sword, shield and bow combat.

[38][39][40] Then Monolith Productions developed a two-game, non-canon Middle-earth: Shadow spin-off series, set between the events of The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings.

The main protagonist of these two action RPGs is a Ranger named Talion who bonds with the Elf spirit Celebrimbor, gaining wraith-like powers to deal with adversaries.

[45][46] An action-adventure game, titled The Lord of the Rings: Gollum and focusing on the titular character, was announced by Daedalic Entertainment in March 2019.

The story takes place during the Fourth Age and follows a company of dwarves as they try to retake their homeland Moria and restore the long-lost ancient kingdom of Khazad-dûm.