The Sad Past and Present of the Lord of the Rings Video Game License (But Mostly A Post On How Terrible The Boxart has been for the games)

E.A. and Sierra made okay games inspired by the Lord of the Rings films, and now Warner Bros. has the lease for the games as well. The most recent boxart for the new Aragorn’s Quest game from Warner Bros. has saddened me and forced my hand to call out the awful video games and boxart one of the most beloved stories has had to endure.

Before the live action movies rekindled a love for Tolkien and a new hate for Peter Jackson, many LOTR games had been made. All of them awful of course, and all of them, sans one, with disgusting art work that paid no homage to any aesthetic Tolkien would’ve ever used or liked.

Here is the exception - it’s a 1988 RTS game that came out for the ZX Spectrum, Commodore 64, Amstrad CPC, MS-DOS, Commodore Amiga, Apple IIGS, and Atari ST.

War in Middle Earth has absolutely exceptional boxart, and although the game probably wasn’t that great, I have to give major props to Melbourne House for hitting the boxart so perfectly.

The Sega Obsession Continues: Lunar Silver Star Story Boxart

After the Sonic/Sega carpet, I’ve been on a roll looking for Sega images. Here is one of the best ones I’ve found today.

I especially like how the lower right hand corner of the characters portrait says RPG.

Perfect.