The Lord of the Rings: Journey to Rivendell

The Lord of the Rings: Journey to Rivendell was a video game scheduled to be released in the winter of 1983. Parker Brothers was set to publish it, and advertised it in their 1982 and 1983 catalogues as a game that would be released on the Atari 2600 and Atari 8-bit computers. The game was originally advertised under the name Lord of the Rings, and in one case as The Lord of the Rings I. It was described as an adventure of getting Frodo Baggins from the Shire to the door at Moria, a description which was later changed in the 1983 Parker Brothers Video Games catalogue to have Rivendell as the adventures end point instead. The same catalogue was first time the game was ever referred to as The Lord of the Rings: Journey to Rivendell, and was the last advertisement the game ever received. The game was never released, and it was believed that little or no work was done on the game's coding.

Almost twenty years after Journey to Rivendell was first announced, in the weeks leading up to the much anticipated release of the first live-action movie, a former Parker Brothers employee gave a prototype of the game to the operator of the AtariAge website. Surprisingly, the game was quite complex and seemed to be complete.

An Atari 2600 cartridge was donated to The Strong National Museum of Play where it was digitized for guests and researchers to access.

This game was never released; this is a prototype.