The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring ROM

The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring is a 2002 action-adventure video game developed by WXP for the Xbox. It was ported to the Game Boy Advance by Pocket Studios and the PlayStation 2 and Microsoft Windows by Surreal Software. The game was published by Vivendi Universal Games under their Black Label Games publishing label. In North America, it was released for Xbox and Game Boy Advance in September. In Europe, it was released for Xbox, Windows and Game Boy Advance in November.

The game is an officially licensed adaptation of J. R. R. Tolkien’s 1954 novel, The Fellowship of the Ring, the first volume in his The Lord of the Rings. Although the game was released roughly a year after Peter Jackson’s film The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring, and several weeks prior to his The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers, it has no relationship with the film series. This is because, at the time, Vivendi, in partnership with Tolkien Enterprises, held the rights to the video game adaptations of Tolkien’s literary works, whilst Electronic Arts held the rights to the video game adaptations of the New Line Cinema films. EA chose not to publish a game based on Jackson’s Fellowship film, although they did incorporate some of the plot and footage into their 2002 Two Towers game, which was released a few weeks after Vivendi’s Fellowship game.

The Game Boy Advance version is different from the other three versions insofar as it is more RPG based, and is played from an isometric three-quarter top-down view. Gameplay focuses on turn-based combat, and at various points, all nine members of the fellowship (Frodo, Sam, Pippin, Merry, Aragorn, Gandalf, Legolas, Gimli and Boromir) are controllable, each with their own strengths, weaknesses and growth charts. During combat, the player has the choice to fully control each member of their active party (up to four characters), or instead, control only the main player character, and have the other three controlled by the AI.