04 Commercial, unlicensed p1 (Tolkien theme games)
Description
This article is from the Computer games and MUDs with a Tolkien theme FAQ, by Fredrik Ekman ekman@lysator.liu.se with numerous contributions by others.
04 Commercial, unlicensed p1 (Tolkien theme games)
These games are (or have been) commercial, but they were not licensed.
They could thus (with exception of the parodies) be considered to
violate copyright. To my knowledge, legal action has not been taken
against any of them.
*Lord of the Rings
Year: 1981
System: TRS-80 Model I
Type: Text adventure
Shadowfax
Produced by: Postern
Author: Mike Singleton and Sean Logan
Year: 1982
System: VIC 20, ZX Spectrum, Commodore 64, BBC B
Type: Arcade action
Comment: You are Gandalf. Ride Shadowfax into battle and zap the Black
Riders, which come riding towards you in a never diminishing
stream. Quite ridiculous, almost, but still kind of fun.
*Cracks of Doom
Distributor: Supersoft
Year: 1983
System: PET
Type: Text adventure
*Lord of the Rings
Year: 1983?
System: Microbee
Type: Text adventure
Comment: The title may not be correct for this entry.
Colossal Adventure
Produced by: Level 9 Computing
Distributor: Level 9 Computing (original), Firebird (Jewels of Darkness
in the USA) and Rainbird Software (Jewels of Darkness in the rest
of the world)
Author: Pete, Mike and Nick Austin, after an original by Willie
Crowther and Don Woods
Year: 1983
System: ZX Spectrum, Spectrum 128, Sinclair QL, Oric-1, Lynx, Nascom,
Memotech, Commodore 64, BBC, Amstrad CPC, Amstrad PCW, Apple II,
Atari 400, Atari XE, Atari ST, Amiga, MS-DOS, Macintosh, MSX
Type: Text adventure, Jewels of Darkness has illustrations
Comment: This is Level 9's adaption of Crowther and Woods' original
Adventure (aka Colossal Cave). The original was strongly influenced
by Tolkien, and this version emphasizes that even more. Together
with Adventure Quest and Dungeon Adventure, it came to form The
Middle-Earth Trilogy. Later, Rainbird published the whole trilogy
in one package and renamed it Jewels of Darkness, and in doing so
they also changed all references to Tolkien (except at one place
in the manual where they forgot to replace Amon Sul with Mount
Sewl). Jewels of Darkness was not released for Oric-1, Lynx,
Nascom, Memotech and Atari 400, while the original trilogy was
probably not released for Spectrum 128, Sinclair QL, Atari ST,
Amiga, MS-DOS and Macintosh.
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