I have finished the game; you should read part 1 here first.
Before plunging ahead and witnessing Frodo perform judo (really), I want to look a little more at the early history of Tolkien videogames. There are complications in asking “what’s the first Tolkien videogame” along with “what’s the first commercial Tolkien videogame”. It depends on what you think counts.
For any influence at all we might think about 1975 with Moria, one of the early CRPGs on the PLATO system, although that game is really just an adaptation of an earlier PLATO game (neither author was aware of the existence of the tabletop D&D nor had they read Lord of the Rings). Mines of Mordor (1979) similarly just does a namecheck, and seems to be an adaptation of the boardgame Citadel.
Hovering somewhere in the 70s is the game Nazgul, which is mentioned by Christopher Burke in a Quora thread as a “private” game he wrote for an ASR-33 where the player is trying to avoid a bunch of Ns on a grid. It is a re-skin of the game variously known as “Robots” or “Daleks” or “Chase”. I have trouble counting this as an actual Lord of the Rings adaptation.
+-----------+
|N N | 812
| | 703
| | 654
| NN |
| * |
| |
| N |
| |
| N |
| N |
| N N |
+-----------+
Enter move (0-8):
Staying with 1979, the Tolkien Games chronology lists Ringen, The Shire, and Middle Earth. Ringen was an adventure in Norwegian only preserved by being made into an area on a MUD and you can read about my playthrough on this very blog. The Shire was potentially a mainframe game, maybe on PLATO? Middle Earth is allegedly a wargame for the now-super-obscure North Star system by Dendron Amusements. (Cranston Manor Adventure had a now-lost North Star version, as did the GROW software, but those are the only times the system has appeared here.) That last game was technically commercial but both its existence and its content are ambiguous.
Ringen is solidly enough “real Tolkien” I’d give it credit as first we know of that tries to be a real adaptation, although it doesn’t take the commercial mantle. For a candidate we might try source code dated February 1981, by “P. & M. Hutt” and published by Kansas City Systems.
From the Museum of Computer Adventure Games.
I’ve gone ahead and played it and the gameplay is hard to describe. It’s sort of a cross being the previously mentioned Robots/Chase game and a trivia quiz.
You’re Frodo exploring around Shelob’s lair, and it is divided into floors where you are stumbling in the dark. The floors are represented in ASCII.
As you move around, a “nasty” marked with an N tries to find you (it takes about five moves trying to get to you, and if it gets seriously blocked, it disappears entirely and a new nasty appears). If the nasty gets to you it might be a dwarf, or might be Shelob. If it is Shelob you need to answer the next letter in the “spell”, that is, answer the trivia question appropriately.
There’s various doors that lead up and down floors, and the game implies some sort of final conditions to exit, but I never got that far. The Lord of the Rings credentials are extraordinarily tenuous.
Honestly the best part is this opening screen.
Kansas City Systems incidentally has only previously appeared on this blog in context of illegally re-publishing games from other companies (the case against them ended up being what firmly established software in the UK as being under copyright); although I wouldn’t say the theming is just a cynical ploy to sell copies, I would say it is a game more in the category of Moria with “elements inspired by” Tolkien without really being an adaptation.
Here I prove — by typing in the first letter of the name within 5 seconds — that I know who the “bear-man” in Tolkien is. So Shelob goes away, taking 1 gold piece, rather than killing me.
All this is meant to lead to the fact that — especially since it appeared in a January 1982 issue of Computer and Video Games Magazine, meaning it was really published late 1981 — Cracks of Doom is arguably the first actual adaptation of Lord of the Rings for commercial sale. As already highlighted, caveats are needed. However, even with the odd “alternate reality” of the mission just being Frodo, having to toss 5 treasures into Doom rather than just the One Ring, etc., there’s still some recognizable elements, especially upon picking up the One Ring. The game felt like an attempt to put the player in the part of the story rather than just namecheck Shelob.
The cover of the de-Tolkien-ized edition, from the Museum of Computer Adventure Games. Saruman is now Solbone. Shelob is now Shogra.
Back into the action! Regarding the Palantir that I was unable to cart all the way back to the cracks without Frodo losing it mentally…
…I found you could just pick up the “wolf fur” that was covering the Palantir and you’d be fine. No need to rush. I had noted a lack of “wrap” or whatnot as a verb but I guess you are implicitly covering the Palantir up, matching the lore that it really is only dangerous if you can see into it (and Sauron can see you back).
There’s also something I did right without being clear I was doing something right. There was a “mighty falcon” where I gave it a feather and it broke a “binding spell”. The idea is that you can take the falcon away now; before it says it has a spell and is stuck in place. So the falcon is useful for a confrontation later.
Picking up the falcon suggests something else that Rob mentioned in the comments as an idea: the NPCs aren’t the sort that stay in place and you interact with them, but rather you can simply pick them up. This seemed like an absurd idea (Halfing arms!) but then I was able to just wholesale grab Gollum, giving Frodo a serious workout. Gollum does not stay put but he moves somewhere better for him to be later, anyway.
Gollum cackles Stupid Halfling! Did precious think it could hold Smeagol and runs off.
In fact, I briefly was carrying both Gollum and Saruman the White at the same time. Saruman doesn’t let you just powerlift him. I had missed another aspect to the game, with the third dwarf at the Cave of Crystal Presence. It also wants a crystal cup, just like the dwarf I got a hat from. However, if you give the Crystal Presence dwarf the cup first, he’ll give it back to you along with Gandalf’s staff. If you instead pick the other dwarf first, you’ve softlocked the game.
With the staff in hand, then Saruman is paralyzed, and you can take him. Not only take him, but cart him all the way over to the Cracks of Doom and hurl him down. Yes, he’s one of the 5 anti-treasures. (By the way, the iron fist? Is not useful for anything. It can go down too.)
Shelob tries to catch you again at the cracks, so you need to BRANDISH PHIAL before practicing your judo toss.
Having the discards made is sufficient to trigger that message about the One Ring; in addition, for some mysterious reason, you can defeat the Balrog now. I had previously theorized the green fire would work, and I was absolutely right, but I was doing it at the wrong time. (IF you type HELP at the Balrog room, in addition to the “walkthrough” you get by saying “yes” to Gandalf, you can just get a contextual hint by saying “no” to Gandalf; you’ll be informed to “fight fire with fire”. I was heavily stuck because dropping the green fire did nothing.)
Past the Balrog is some red fog, and then a tower containing Morgoth the Dark Enemy. Here’s a rendition of Morgoth as he is usually depicted:
Via Guillem Pongiluppi.
In Cracks of Doom, your falcon friend is sufficient to scare Morgoth away.
Given the falcon was freed via a magical artifact of the original Eagle Lord, this doesn’t feel too absurd to me.
The falcon flies away, which is unfortunate, because you can find a “gleam” in the tower which is high up and clearly one of the anti-treasures we want. Going down the opposite way you can find Gollum hanging in a cell.
I never got “speak Gandalf” to do anything.
We’ll need Gollum in a moment. To get at the gleam, we need the falcon back; the falcon has wandered all the way back to the room we started the game in. (No clue or anything, we’re just supposed to hope we’ll find him and check the entire map.) With the falcon in hand we can get it to retrieve whatever that gleam might be.
We are now on a strict time limit. This part was really well done; we start feeling “depressed”, and then eventually the baleful eye is cast upon us.
I felt genuinely tense and thought I was going to need to reload a save and optimize my route to avoid being crushed by Sauron.
We need to scoop Gollum along the way to the cracks (he’s a lot easier to get from the cell at the tower than his starting place, this is why I said it was helpful he ran away). Then dropping the ring leads to a canon-adjacent effect:
Despite it suffering an almost equal amount of jank, I enjoyed this a lot more than Hitch Hiker’s Guide. I think, curiously enough, the odd effects and messages add to a general feel of oppression, and that mood fits a lot better hanging out at Mount Doom than it does traversing the universe in the Heart of Gold.
I also really, really enjoyed hurling Saruman the White into Mount Doom, despite the improbability. Maybe it was all that lembas bread.
Renga in Blue 
Who does not remember that great chapter that succeeded “Mt. Doom,” “Return without gosub error in 3300.”
Anyway I guess since Saruman is taken care of, the Shire doesn’t need scouring.
So the anti-treasures were Saruman, the fist, the ring, the Palantir? and Gollum? I appreciate the nod to having Gollum take the One Ring in. It seems to me that Tolkien was making a specific point about the fated hero in a way, by having his heroes wind up somewhat incidental to the completion of their tasks–Bilbo learns Smaug’s weakness but Smaug gets killed by a fairly random guy who showed up a chapter or two before (after a little bird tells him what Bilbo found out), and Frodo falters at the last moment and loses the ring, whereupon Gollum immediately pratfalls into the fires of Mt. Doom. Apparently there’s a letter in which Tolkien says that the Almighty of his universe was behind Gollum’s fall, and there’s a subtle point about Frodo earlier issuing Gollum a command with the ring that dooms Gollum once he attacks him, but it’s very far from the big battle where the hero defeats the enemy.
“Return without gosub error in 3300” clearly is this universe’s version of the Scouring.
You wrote “he’ll give it back to you along with Gandalf’s hat”, rather than “Gandalf’s staff” :)
Thanks!
You’ve mentioned Cranston Manor for the Northstar as being lost.
Well, you may find it here http://annex.retroarchive.org/disks/ICF%20Disk%20Images/Northstar%20Horizon/
They have preserved several rare Northstar adventure games that I couldn’t find anywhere else, including Cranston Manor. Don’t know who it belongs to, but I’ve found it through a regular Google search so I guess it’s ok to share.
Wow, what a great find! It looks like the lost Middle Earth wargame that Jason mentioned is also in there.
As for the adventures, aside from Cranston Manor and Windmere Estate/Zodiac Castle, the others seem to be very unknown outside of their catalog descriptions, unless I’m missing something:
Gumball Rally Adventure (Is it really a text adventure? The catalog description is very odd sounding…)
Uncle Harry’s Will
Whembly Castle Adventure
Going through the Dynacomp catalogs on Internet Archive, I noted a bunch of other obscure titles lurking in there, most notably a series of “Beginner’s Adventures” for TRS-80 that I don’t think I’ve seen listed anywhere else.
uploads less than a year ago, wow
I’m trying to follow El Explorador’s instructions https://exploradorrpg.wordpress.com/plataformas/north-star/
but the two I’ve tried (Uncle Harry and Whembly) give me a TOO LARGE OR NO PROGRAM ERROR message, unf
had much better luck by loading Zodiac Castle, then following the instructions from there, I think there’s lighter and heavier versions of DOS
Uncle Harry seems to still be thinking the disk is in drive 1 so it gives me an error trying to run, but at least it’s making progress
got Whembly Castle going
YOU ARE AT THE END OF A ROAD LEADING NORTH. THERE ARE DENSE, UNPENATRABLE WOODS ON EACH SIDE. TO THE WEST IS A SMALL GATEHOUSE.
had to
1.) load Zodiac castle in drive 1, put Whembly in drive 2
2.) go through the El Explorador steps to load the basic file for Whembly from drive 2
3.) after (and only after) loading the BASIC file, switch Whembly into drive 1
4.) RUN
the main problem is Whembly is expecting the disk in drive 1 so can’t read the data otherwise
still having trouble with Uncle Harry, probably I just need to prep a disk like Zodiac but with Harry’s files swapped in (nevermind, Harry is just super slow, I set my DOSBOX cycles to max and there’s still a little wait time)
still don’t know what to make of gumball, you pick a car and there’s a speed meter
it really looks like this one wants the manual, but since it’s basic I could list and figure it out
but it seems to be a race-through-town simulator, not an adventure
Uncle Harry and Whembly are in a ’84 catalog but not the ’82 one I checked, so they seem to be either ’83 or ’84, both are regular adventures that seem to have not been indexed anywhere
https://archive.org/details/DynacompCatalogNo30/page/n71/mode/2up?view=theater
Uncle Harry is very weird and starts you driving around, there’s a bunch of freeway offramps and stuff, but it clearly is intended as an adventure game
Both games are listed in the Winter 82/83 catalog:
https://archive.org/details/dynacomp-winter-catalog-1982-1983/mode/1up
They’re both listed in the main “Adventure” section, while Windemere and Zodiac are under “Late Arrivals” (and the Apple II versions don’t show up until a later catalog), so I would guess that Harry and Whembly are ’82 games.
Aside from those TRS-80 games I saw, there may be a few other unknowns tucked away in those catalogs, including in some of the multi-game compilation disks they released. I’ll take a look at them again later. The weird thing is that they were still actively selling most of these through at least 1988, so it’s odd that so many seem to have completely fallen into the abyss…
found that later, I also did some source checking and they both have author and copyright date
both by R.L. Turner
UNCLE HARRY’S WILL COPYRIGHT 1981
WHEMBLY CASTLE COPY™ 1982
I already had zodiac and windmere in their apple II incarnations but it’s still nice to have the other versions
Don’t know about Uncle Harry (that game’s weird, you all will see in … not too long) but Whembly got an Apple II port too, however I haven’t found it on the usual a2 archives
Gumball is listed as copyright 1980 by Novel Software but that might just be Turner again (there’s a Turner Motel, and there’s a relationship to the Harry game); while Gumball isn’t really an adventure I’ll show it off when I write about Harry
So, after the Dark Star situation, I decided to give Whembly and Uncle Harry a try, since I know you’ll be getting to them soon and I thought it would be fun to play along, as these games are so obscure and poorly documented.
I was able to get the Horizon emulator running in Dosbox, thanks Explorador’s instructions, but I’ve been running into the same problems you were. Everything’s either too big, or it won’t recognize that the files are there. Couldn’t get Zodiac going, either. I tried following your Zodiac-based solution to getting Whembly running, and the steps seemed to be working, but when the time came to swap the disk, I noticed that once you’ve hit “G” and are actually doing stuff in the emulator (listing files, loading BASIC), it won’t let you hit f7 to mount disks anymore! I must be missing something here, but what?
Sorry to bother you with emulation stuff again! Please feel free to just ignore this if you don’t have the time to get into it.
You need to Stop first in order to disk swap
When I get to it I will give thorough steps
Thanks, got them all running! It was the whole Stop/Go thing that I was missing. Too bad they run a bit sluggish, though.
Interesting to note that the Apple II version of Zodiac has a fatal bug, and that no one seems to have gotten all the way through that version of Windmere, so it’s good to have these originals to try instead.
Keep in mind Dosbox itself has a speed crank. I got it running reasonably upping the cycles a bit.
Yeah, I tried that but didn’t notice a difference for some reason. Is there an exact formula you’d suggest trying, based on a totally “clean”, untweakwed version of Dosbox? I had it lying around on my hard drive already, but pretty much never use it.
I assume you’re starting with Uncle Harry, right? I’ll try to start orienting myself to it today. Whembly looks like pretty standard stuff, but this one seems weird. All I can think of is that SNL “Californians” sketch where everything they talk about ends up being driving directions…
Please disregard the dumb speed question. Something had gone weird with my version of Dosbox, so I downloaded a new copy and the speed crank works fine.
I can see that mapping Uncle Harry is going to be a real joy. The catalog says “over 300 locations”, but I’m guessing 200+ of them are road intersections. Did this same guy do Gumball Rally? If so, I think I’m seeing a pattern here…
I’m pretty sure the same guy did Gumball Rally
I’m going to write about Gumball first but not as a full post
Did a little magazine searching, and here are a few bits of info that might be useful:
Gumball Rally – earliest ad: 12/81
Uncle Harry – earliest ad: 2/82
Whembly – no ads found
Windmere/ Zodiac – earliest ads: 9/83
Overall, Dynacomp was kind of weird about what they chose to put in their ads and when. They obviously relied heavily on direct catalog sales, as they were flogging all of these titles there until at least 1988. Gumball and Harry got dropped from their magazine ads by late 82, Whembly never made it in at all, and Windmere/Zodiac were only advertised briefly during the autumn of 83, when the Apple II versions were already available, so you can kind of see how these Northstar versions became so obscure. Curiously, their version of Cranston, which came out earlier in 81, was kind of their evergreen, as they never really stopped advertising or selling it, so it must be more due to the unpopularity of the Northstar system itself that it remained lost for so long.
More extensive digging will be required to see if any of them actually got reviewed anywhere. I kind of doubt it, although some of their non-adventure titles did receive write-ups in the era.
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