DOS-based Adventures in Middle Earth

I’m resigned to the fact that post-2001, computer games based on The Lord of the Rings will look to the films for inspiration. I recently watched the game trailer for Guardians of Middle Earth with a touch of sadness at this state of affairs. I like seeing different visual interpretations of Tolkien’s books, and now they’ve become a homogenous blend of John Howe and Allen Lee. More to the point, I have a kind of fascination with older Tolkien-based games and the wildly different styles between them.

When I was 12 I bought my first computer, and I didn’t have an internet connection until I was 17. However, I would drop by the school library at lunch with a floppy disk and download abandonware off Home of the Underdogs to play at home. I also had something of a Tolkien obsession, so when 13 year-old me stumbled across the Tolkien Computer Games page I ended up trying to get my hands on all of the games listed. Thus began my DOS-based adventures in Middle Earth.

I often at least attempted to play these games straight to the end, even the bad ones, and if I didn’t finish it usually had to do with glitches caused by running DOS games on a Windows machine. Why? I’m not sure, now, but rather than let all those hours spent playing go to waste I thought I’d review them all here.

Unfortunately, this is the best prose you could expect from a non-Infocom adventure in 1982.

The Hobbit (1982)

I believe this was the first commercially distributed game based on one of Tolkien’s books. It’s a rather charming little text-adventure with colourful (if heavily pixelated) illustrations popping up occasionally. You play Bilbo Baggins, and while the plot’s essentially the same, the game suffers a severe reduction in dwarves. I assume, at the time, implementing 12 of them would’ve been a nightmare, so Thorin is the only one left. In an attempt to imbue some personality in the non-player characters, the developers also gave them some rather crude personalities and had them go wandering off or refusing your commands. Gandalf is especially bad about this, true to form, he manically mutters to himself and disappears at the drop of a hat, especially when you need him, while Thorin will just grumpily refuse to do what you say until you’ve asked him far too many times. So yes, the game is crude, and has one too many frustrating mazes, but it’s a good adaptation of the book for all that and it’s pretty much a classic.

I think this image sums up everything wrong with “The Lord of the Rings: Game One”

The Lord of the Rings: Game One (1985)

Melbourne House, the same folks behind The Hobbit, also released this game, but I’m sure none of the development team involved in making The Hobbit carried over to make this one. The quality of the illustrations plunged, for one thing, the previous respect for the source material withered, and the parser just…doesn’t…parse. The one innovation of being able to choose which hobbit to play is mitigated by Frodo being the only character with whom you can actually finish the damn thing. It’s a frustrating game in almost all respects. It’s also absolutely bizarre.

You start the game at Bag End, and the first thing you notice is a bulletin board (?) pinned with photographs (??) of pigs. The denizens of Middle Earth have a strange sort of pig fixation, and you’ll find pig-themed decor from the Shire to the Mines of Moria. Beyond that, the mayor at Michel Delving has a gramophone (???), there’s a hard rock orc band in the Barrow Downs (????) and you’ll come across a Nazgul drinking orange juice in Bree (????? Okay I’ll stop now).

Like The Hobbit, characters act independently, though at least Sam, Merry and Pippin will follow you once you find them. That would be just fine, if the Nazgul didn’t also wander around the map on their own volition and instantly kill you if you happen to stumble upon them. They dog you all the way to Rivendell and the game’s “solution” has you searching for elf-stones that can evaporate them one by one. Apparently, that’s a temporary solution, since all nine appear again at the ford anyway. This means the first half the game has you looking for elf-stones in flower pots or held by the Lady of the Lake or, in one case, defended by the Green Knight—yes, that Green Knight—and aimlessly faffing around western Middle-Earth instead of trying to get the ring to Rivendell, which is what Gandalf tasked you with doing in the first place.

From that point on, the game becomes remarkably rushed. There aren’t any puzzles or obstacles until you get to the Mines of Moria, and you can bypass the mines entirely by finding the right way through the Redhorn pass (as you might expect, Gandalf dies in an avalanche if you do this). Seeing as the Mines of Moria inspired early text-adventures like Colossal Cave you’d think the developers might have put some effort into filling it with puzzles and various interesting things, but no, for the most part, the mines are simply a set of twisty passages, all alike. The one puzzle within involves pushing a statue to reveal a secret passage. I should also mention that the game has randomized combat (uninspired in its descriptions, as the loser always ends with a cloven skull), so you’re likely to lose a great deal of the Fellowship when the orcs finally get around to attacking. After that, you don’t really do anything except type “go east” as Gandalf (providing he’s still alive) faces the Balrog, and the dénouement in Lothlorien involves just walking around until the game ends. As a final insult, the un-named “taciturn elf” flashes a Vulcan greeting when you enter and even says, “live long and prosper” when he leaves.

Short version: the game is garbage, as far as text-adventures go, and I don’t know why I expended the effort finishing it when the parser itself wages war on you, and has the gall to make fun of you if you can’t formulate the exact needed command. Not recommended.

For some reason, the graphics became even MORE hideous with the sequel.

Shadows of Mordor (1988)

The sequel to The Lord of the Rings: Game One abandons the rest of the Fellowship and focuses solely on Frodo and Sam. While the engine’s the same, and the illustrations are the same monochrome monstrosities of the previous game, the developers this time actually seemed to care. The story adheres reasonably closely to the books this time, while also injecting quite a few fairly clever puzzles with multiple solutions—for instance, you have to get down a cliff at one point, and the way to do it is to lever a rock a few “rooms” up from the cliff to the edge so you can secure a rope to it. Gollum has some good characterization here though catching him, initially, proves frustrating indeed (there are some twelve steps involved before he agrees to lead you to Mordor), and some of the overheard conversations between orcs are pretty funny. Shadows of Mordor strikes a good balance of puzzles and plot and is more sophisticated than The Hobbit. Predictably, things end in Cirith Ungol with Frodo carried off by orcs. I’m uncertain why this one doesn’t just carry on to Mount Doom, considering what came next.

It takes some staring to figure out what’s being represented here.

Crack of Doom (1989)

I’m sure buyers felt a bit ripped-off if they paid for this one. Unlike The Lord of the Rings: Game One, which showed blatant disregard and even made fun of the book it was supposedly based on, Crack of Doom goes the opposite direction. It’s a slavish adaptation of the three Mordor chapters in The Return of the King, which conversely makes it an uninteresting game if you read the book already. The illustrations have taken a step up, now in colour, though oddly still inferior to those found in The Hobbit. The only real challenge here is that Mordor has become a bit of a non-linear maze you need to map, but otherwise there aren’t any puzzles to speak of unless you count getting passed the Watchers in the Tower of Cirith Ungol a “puzzle” (the solution is to type ”Brandish Phial”). Very slight on the game aspect, here, defeating the purpose of playing it when you could, conceivably, just re-read that bit in the book for the same experience.

Of this particular trilogy, Shadows of Mordor is the only one that feels worth playing. If you’re into playing thirty year-old text-adventures, that is.

Oooh, pretty! Pixelated, but pretty!

War in Middle Earth (1988)

Melbourne House didn’t just develop text adventures with their license on The Lord of the Rings, oh no. They also made a strategy game/RPG hybrid called War in Middle Earth that leaves you amazed at just how much you could fit on one low-density floppy disk. Even today, the backgrounds of War in Middle Earth are quite pretty, if pixelated to all hell. The PC internal speaker music is also catchier than it has any right to be.

Anyhow, the game takes place on two levels, a map where you can order around folks and 2D sides-scroller-style mode where you can watch Frodo and his pals walking from left to right and sometimes pick up objects that just happen to lie around. Fights also take place in the latter mode, though not battles; assumedly, that would’ve overheated your computer and made it explode. You start the game trying to get Frodo safely to Rivendell, stopping to chat with strangers you bump into along the way, and then the actual “war” begins.

While attractively presented and quite fun, you can see the hardware limitations start poking through. Battles are pretty boring affairs where you only have a few check boxes to choose from before slaughter commences without your input (at least the battle descriptions that flash on the screen can be pretty lively sometimes). Character vs. monster battles are a bit more interesting because you actually get to see folks drunkenly waving swords at each other or else apparently humping each other to death. The monster designs are universally weird, sometimes delightfully so—this is probably the only place you’ll find purple orcs with heart-shaped shields, folks. Oh, and Gollum looks like a hairless mouse.

It also doesn’t take too long to realize there is no enemy AI whatsoever once the War of the Ring commences. You’re up against wave after wave of Haradrim, orcs and Easterlings, but they all come by pre-programmed routes. Since the main goal of the game is to get Frodo to Mount Doom, all you really have to do is have Frodo and Sam wait it out in the swamps while Sauron empties out Mordor and then waltz in when there’s no one around to care. If you’re really up for a challenge, you can try to murder Sauron by conventional means, which is entirely possible in this game and kind of defeats the purpose of the Council of Elrond in the first place.

It’s a good game, for all that, and was probably looked amazing back when it initially came out, so if you’re into this sort of thing I’d give it a whirl. Though, if I remember correctly, the game only plays off a floppy drive.

“Eat my arrows, Orcish scum!” The main reason to play this game, really.

Riders of Rohan (1990)

We’re finally off from Melbourne House and into other developer territory. Riders of Rohan came out from Konami. It’s a real-time strategy game that takes place during The Two Towers. We’ve finally moved into VGA graphics here and outside of the battle mode they’re quite pleasant; I quite like the orcs in this one and the various character interpretations except Legolas, who looks freakishly like Orlando Bloom (what prescience is this?!).

I’d say the non-battle, non-strategy portions of the game are the best things about it. You can have duels with orc and Dunlending leaders that, while insulting simple, are fun to watch. There’s a far more entertaining bit where you, as Gandalf, get to hurl crackling lightning-bolts at a black rider while standing on the edge of a cliff. My favourite mini-game involves sniping off orcs with a longbow. There are also extended conversation segments where you have to carefully make your dialogue choices in order to, among other things, persuade Treebeard to join you, or else convince Théoden to kick out Wormtongue, and the results will affect how many troops you’ll end up with willing to fight Saruman.

Unfortunately, the actual strategy and battle bits are a huge letdown after all that. Battles are painfully slow and simplistic, and this time two armies coming together really does look like a massive orgy viewed from overhead as soldiers rub together in entirely inappropriate ways. The enemy AI is downright terrible, too, so winning the Battle of Helm’s Deep doesn’t feel like much of an accomplishment. And the game ends far too quickly, with a promise for a sequel that never came.

When your game starts off with an image this epic, you just KNOW it’s gonna be good.

The Lord of the Rings: Volume I (1990)

Onward to Interplay and two Tolkien-based RPGs that are possibly the best RPGs I’ve ever played. Instead of going into embarrassing gushing, I’ll try to keep my comments brief. The Lord of the Rings: Volume I still looks great, even in pixilated, isometric glory; it’s colourful, a bit cartoonish, and sports some truly great character portraits. The game world is chalk-full of detail and stuff to do, though the Mines of Moria provides the highlight due to sheer size. Almost everything “feels” right, too, especially the content with side-quests. The game does deviate from The Fellowship of the Ring, sometimes significantly—the endgame takes place in Dol Guldur, which should tell you all you need to know about that. While some people might get annoyed at having to find various shards of Narsil in order to forge Anduril (which isn’t strictly necessary), or that Saruman’s servants have an underground fortress set up in the Barrow-downs, I quite liked the expansions to fit the book into the RPG format. They deepen the experience and make Middle-Earth feel alive in a game-like way just like the book did in a literary one.

Some things suffer, of course. There’s no sense of urgency to get to Rivendell or get the ring over to Mount Doom afterwards when you’re constantly off doing side-quests. The game even encourages you to temporarily forget about your main goals; after the Council of Elrond, you can head back to Bree or even the Shire to pick up new quests that weren’t available before. After Moria, you can open up the previously blocked Redhorn Pass and reach all the previous areas again. Galadriel will show you a secret entrance into Moria just in case you missed some quests over there, too. When you’re off searching for some obscure object in Green-Hill Country even though you were supposed to be in Lothlorien it’s easy to forget the main plot. It doesn’t help when the game encourages you to do this.

There’s also the wee problem of the game letting you fight people you really shouldn’t. If you’ve picked up a strong enough party, you can kill Nazgul and even slay the Balrog. This presents problems later on: if Gandalf survives Moria Galadriel and everyone else still acts as if Gandalf is dead, since the developers never anticipated that situation. Also, the game only gives you two save slots, which is just a tad bit annoying. Still, those are small flaws. As far as game adaptations of Tolkien go, you can’t get much better than this.

Hey, Frodo actually looks 50 years old in these games!

The Lord of the Rings: Volume II (1992)

I remember splitting up the files on this one so I could get it on two floppies since it wouldn’t fit on one. It was worth all the trouble, of course. The second game carries over all the good qualities of the first, and cleaves a bit closer to The Two Towers than the first game did to The Fellowship of the Ring. There are multiple plot threads, which should’ve been a difficulty, but the game handles those quite well, letting you spend good chunks of time with each character before moving on to the next one once you fulfill a specific plot point.

However, there was one thing that made me like this game a little bit less: the game-map is much, much larger (and understandably so), and isn’t jammed to the brim with content (not so understandably so). This means you spend a great deal of time walking just to get from place to place with little happening in-between. While the game has an automap, I didn’t really appreciate the sprawl. The first game was nice and compact in a way this one isn’t.

Still, we have improvements: the interface is more intuitive, there’s the aforementioned automap, significantly improved music, and the game now boasts more save slots than you could possibly need. While the Battle of Helm’s Deep isn’t as dramatic as I would’ve liked, that’s a minor complaint; there’s a lot to do, there’s plenty of interesting characters and places, and you actually get to explore the interior of Orthanc. What more could you ask from a RPG?

Unfortunately, it seems The Lord of the Rings: Volume II didn’t sell well enough for Interplay to bother with a sequel, and development on the final game fell through. I’m hoping that one day some fans would band together to complete the saga, but for now, I guess I’m content with just the two.

Other Games

There are other, non-DOS Tolkien-based games that I’ve played, but none of them were very good. A ROM of the unreleased Journey to Rivendell (1983) for the Atari 2600 surfaced on the internet some years ago. While the game is complete it’s incredibly crude, with your character moving from screen to screen before a black rider pops up out of nowhere and you have to RUN AWAY. And that’s the game, really.

Interplay also came out with a SNES version of The Lord of the Rings: Volume I (1994) but it’s nothing like the computer version at all. It most certainly isn’t a port, and has The Lord of the Rings: Game One levels of weirdness as well as virtually unmappable mazes. I doubt much effort went into it, and I since I would inevitably get killed by wolves while searching for the Gaffer’s glasses just to get Samwise Gamgee to join my party, I can’t comment further on it.

Lastly, there’s the Bored of the Rings (1985) text-adventure, which has you travel from Fag End on your quest to destroy the ring in the Microwave of Doom. It’s more faithful to the book than The Lord of the Rings: Game One, oddly enough, and quite funny at times (certainly funnier than the novel of the same name). However, the parser is sub-Hobbit levels of frustrating and I never felt compelled to finish playing it.

Final

And there you have another look into what I was doing when I was 13 years old. Not just writing stories about Vikings, but also playing text-adventures older than I was. I’m not sure what my fascination was; I tend to find myself equally interested by other games adapted directly from books just because it doesn’t happen often. The Lord of the Rings is likely the novel with the most cross-media adaptations out there, but that time seems over as focus shifts from the books to the films. It was an interesting run, all the same.

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