Rumours and news - future Tolkien games

Welcome to the Prancing Pony Inn where you will always be able to get the latest news and rumours about everyone and everything.

There are yet (January, 2002) no new games, even though the first movie has been released. Latest news (December, 2001) is that Electronic Arts have signed an exclusive contract for games based on the movies. I have yet not found out where that leaves Sierra, who used to have the license. There is an official press release at EA's home page.

Other interesting news are summarized below. Please note that not all games mentioned here may actually come into being. Many are hobby projects and people have a tendency of shifting priorities from time to time.

• January, 2000: Andrew Broad has now finished his conversions of the classic platform games Manic Miner and Jet Set Willy (both originally released for the ZX Spectrum in the 80's) into Tolkien games, and almost immediately plans are announced to convert the Manic Miner game to MS-DOS. See the respective game pages for ManicMiner: The Hobbit and Jet Set Willy: The Lord of the Rings for further information.
• January, 2000: There is a new trilogy of freeware games called Mines of Moria.
• January, 2000: Sergio Alvarez has presented his game-in-development to a Games Prize. The platform will be Windows 95/98 with Visual C++ 6.0 and DirectX 6.2 and it will be in the style of Dark Sun. Señor Alvarez now has a home page, although the games section did not work last time I checked.
• January, 2000: Someone who calls himself Kramer is developing a game based on The Hobbit in LTPB. There is a downloadable demo and an official project page.
• August, 1999: A person who calls himself Gandalf is developing several different Tolkien games. You can find more information, as well as a beta version of a text adventure, on his home page.
• July, 1999: Gurthaur Entertainment is creating a Warcraft II total conversion titled Warcraft II: War of the Ring.
• March, 1999: A piece of sad news reaches me. Interplay has apparently stopped production of new copies of their The Lord of the Rings series. Thus, we now see a clear break between the old generation of games (on licence from Tolkien Estate) and the new generation (from Sierra Studios through Tolkien Enterprises).
• February, 1999: New beta version of the Windows freeware game The Hobbit by Bryce Fitzsimons can now be downloaded from its own page (link above). The author says the final version should be ready before the end of 1999.
• December, 1998: The freeware game The Trilogy is changing development platform to Multimedia Fusion, which will allow much more advanced features. The game will be a RPG covering The Hobbit through The Lord of the Rings. A beta version is donwloadable from the page linked above.
• November, 1998: Matt Conner and a friend of his are planning a RPG similar to Final Fantasy. They, like the Polish group below, are looking for artists.
• November, 1998: A Polish group is working on a game which is going to be based on The Lord of the Rings. The focus of the game may change if the copyright matter cannot be resolved, however. The group (who is writing the first version in Polish) is looking for another artist. Email Peengiel@Progres.Zabrze.Pl if you are interested.
• September, 1998: Other freeware games are being designed by Felipe Rocha Machado of Brazil. The games will be based on The Silmarillion and the first will probably be some sort of adventure. The first version will be in Portuguese. At least two games are planned at the time of writing.
• July, 1998: Development on the roguelike game Utumno has stopped, possibly for all eternity. The last alpha version can still be downloaded from the official home page.
• June, 1998: Mark Burlison has plans for a Quake Total Conversion set in Middle-earth. See the official project page for more details.
• Andrew Robertson has created the engine for a new freeware game for MS-DOS in the style of Ultima 6. The game may include some 3-D sections.
• J. M. Persaud has plans of making a freeware Tolkien RPG with elements of Dungeon Master and Daggerfall for Amiga and PC. It will be set in the fourth age and development has yet not started.
• Robbie Baldock is working on a Java version of the old board game War of the Ring. Like with so many other games, copyright considerations may cause this effort to die an early death.
• There are always many new MUDs in the making. For further details about the ones I know of, see the section about MUDs not yet open on the MUD page.
• I hear many rumours about scenarios in development for commercial games such as Warlords II, Warlords II Deluxe, Warcraft II, Heroes of Might and Magic II and Civilization II. Check the respective pages or the changes page regularly for any new releases.
• Angband is constantly in development. My own page is forever doomed to lag behind on the latest information, but do take a look at Ben Harrison's official Angband page.

This page will be updated as soon as I hear something new. Have you heard any rumours? Do you have any information? Perhaps even planning a game of your own? Do not hesitate to contact me so that others can share your knowledge.

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