While EA produced some sweet Lord of the Rings games based on the movies, there have been others based on the books. One of them was The Lord of the Rings Vol. 1 for the SNES back in 1994.

The game is based on the book The Fellowship of the Ring. You start out as Frodo Baggins and gain characters like Gandalf, Sam, and Legolas in your party as the game continues. It was an action-rpg that played a little like Zelda. It all ends with a battle of the Fellowship vs Balrog making it not very true to the book.

The game wasn’t well received either with its awful graphics, boring fetch-quests, and dumb A.I. allies. The bad retro reviews I saw many years ago didn’t exactly make me want to go find it. Despite it be a Vol 1, no sequel was made. You could say this was the one Lord of the Rings game to rule the trashcan.