The Lord of the Rings Vol. I

Year 1990, cold wind blowing outside, I've got a fresh copy of Tolkien on my desk next to a 486 humming away. Interplay released an adaptation of Lord of the Rings back then that breathed something genuinely rare into me — not a dungeon-crawler slapped together with elf names, but an attempt to capture the very tone of the literary source material.

The game covers the first part of Tolkien's saga — the journey from the Shire all the way to roughly Rivendell and beyond into the Fellowship. You play as Frodo, gradually recruiting more hobbits to your cause, meeting Gandalf, fleeing from the Nazgûl. Anyone who's read the book will recognize the terrain. Anyone who hadn't in 1990 was probably in the minority, at least in my circles.

It's an RPG with turn-based combat and a decent helping of exploration. Interplay had Wasteland under their belt by then and you feel it — the game treats the player like an adult. No hand-holding, no arrows. Middle-earth's map reveals itself slowly, dialogues have depth, and some situations can be solved in more ways than just swinging a sword. That wasn't a given back in the day. On the flip side, the interface is typically period — meaning clunky in places — and combat can drag on in ways that'll teach you to respect the quicksave button.

What holds up today is the atmosphere. Interplay didn't try to wring action out of the license at any cost. The chill of the Old Forest, the tension of fleeing the Shire, the weight of every decision — it's all there, wrapped up in four-color EGA graphics and Sound Blaster music. The graphics aged differently than the gameplay — naturally. Some mechanics feel a bit like busywork now, but the game's core is still solid.

Today it's mainly for those who want to see what a serious Tolkien adaptation looked like before the films and merchandise arrived. It's not a museum piece — it's a game with its own take on the source material. Fire it up in your browser without any fuss and the first few hours will either hook you or they won't. If they do, you'll spend an evening in Middle-earth, 1990 style. I've known worse ways to pass the time.