A review of the Lord of the Rings board game

by Michael Martinez, Sunday, May 6, 2001

Aelmer has graciously provided us with a review of the Lord of the Rings board game which hit the store shelves a few months ago. So, you want to be the Ring Bearer? Well, you can be in the new Lord of the Rings board game. The object of the game is simple. Take to One Ring from Bag End to Mordor, and destroy the Ring. Simple objective? Yes. Simple to accomplish? No. In this game you, and up to four other players, take the part of either Frodo, Sam, Merry, Pippen or Fatty Bolger. Yes, Fatty is present, but only in the five player game. Each of the hobbits are represented by miniature figurine in a color that matches the hobbit's character card. Each hobbit has a special ability defined on his card. Sauron is represented by an ominous looking heavy black tower with a red eye. The other members of the Fellowship are represented among the 60 game cards and 35 feature cards, that allow you to move along your journey and may also help you pass tests that keep you from being corrupted. The One Ring is large golden plastic ring. Read the full review here.

Tolkien tops the bestseller lists...again

by Michael Martinez, Thursday, May 3, 2001

Book Sense has announced that J.R.R. Tolkien's The Hobbit and The Fellowship of the Ring are dominating bestsellers. Tolkien-related properties are expected to be hot items over the next few years, but people who have been concerned that Peter Jackson's "Lord of the Rings" movies will overshadow the book now have a reason to celebrate. Book Sense says that The Hobbit and The Fellowship of the Ring are the number 1 and number 2 bestsellers in North America. The Two Towers follows in the number 5 position and The Return of the King follows in the number 7 slot. Read the Book Sense press release here.

Sierra wins, but will gamers win too?

by Michael Martinez, Thursday, May 3, 2001

Vivendi Universal Publishing's Sierra Studio to Release First Game, 'Fellowship of the Ring,' in Early 2002. TORRANCE, Calif., May 3 /PRNewswire/ -- Vivendi Universal Publishing (VU Publishing), a division of Vivendi Universal (NYSE: V), and Tolkien Enterprises today announced a long-term, exclusive deal calling for the development of interactive games based on J.R.R. Tolkien's worldwide best-selling novels The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings, a trilogy comprised of The Fellowship of the Ring, The Two Towers, and The Return of the King. Under the deal, VU Publishing's Sierra studio will develop and release multiple games based on the literary works The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings over the next eight years. The first game, "The Fellowship of the Ring," in development by Seattle-based WXP, Inc., will be released in early 2002 for a next-generation console system. "The Tolkien license, combined with our development, marketing and distribution strengths, is truly a formidable combination," said Agnes Touraine, Vice Chairman & CEO, Vivendi Universal Publishing. "It will reinforce our leading position in the games market, enlarging our offer to customers." "The Hobbit and Lord of the Rings properties are the pre-eminent fantasy works of our time and represent one of the strongest brands in the entertainment industry," said Hubert Joly, CEO, Vivendi Universal Games. "They provide a tremendous amount of rich material from which we expect to make some of the best fantasy games ever created." "We plan to release titles on all major gaming platforms in order to make the interactive versions of Tolkien's great works available to as many gamers as possible," continued Joly. Read the full press release here

Elrond and Galadriel spy photos!

by Michael Martinez, Tuesday, May 1, 2001

Imladris has scored a brilliant coup! Check out these latest images from Peter Jackson's "Lord of the Rings" movies. Elrond stands ready to do battle with the forces of Mordor in the War of the Last Alliance of Elves and Men, Galadriel stands before her enchanted mirror in her garden in Lothlorien. Imladris has larger scans you can view at their site. The War of the Last Alliance of Elves and Men will be portrayed in a visual prologue at the beginning of "The Fellowship of the Ring". NOTE: New Line Cinema asked that the photos be removed. Hence, our links are not working. We apologize for the inconvenience. But the Elrond shot was pretty good!

Brad Dourif interview from ICON-20

by Michael Martinez, Monday, April 30, 2001

TheOneRing.Net has posted an exclusive interview with Brad Dourif, who plays Grima Wortongue. The interview was conducted at ICON-20. Nothing new is revealed, but anyone who has missed previous Brad Dourif interviews will want to listen to the sound clips and check out his enthusiasm. for the movies.

E! Online updates Force of Hobbit

by Michael Martinez, Monday, April 30, 2001

Nothing monumentally bad or new to report, but John Forde talks with Sir Ian Holm, who returned to New Zealand along with many other cast members to work on dialogue. However, Holm reported that Bilbo did a couple of pickip scenes, and in at least one of them we get to see a young Bilbo. Our guess is that there may be a scene showing how Bilbo acquired the One Ring from Gollum (probably at the Council of Elrond). http://www.eonline.com/Features/Specials/Lordrings/index.html

Liv Speaks in Elvish

by Michael Martinez, Sunday, April 29, 2001

Liv Tyler recently appeared on the Conan O'Brien show and he enticed her to speak in Elvish. Both Tolkien Online and TheOneRing.Net have posted MP3 files of Liv's brief rendition of Tolkien's language. Members of the Elfling linguistic discussions group have attempted to decipher her words.

Red Herring publishes Sierra's sordid details

by Michael Martinez, Sunday, April 29, 2001

Middle-earth online has been the talk of the online gaming world for over two years. It just hasn't been there to enjoy the talk. In September 1999, Sierra On-Line stunned the online gaming world by disassembling its Middle-earth franchise, throwing "Orcs: Revenge of the Ancient" to the winds and firing around 100 employees, most if not all of whom were involved in the then more-than-year-old project called Middle-earth Online. Since then, Sierra has been silent, except to say it was still developing the game. But word on the Net was that Sierra had a major falling out with Tolkien Enterprises, which had granted the company the original license to develop Middle-earth computer games. Except for Xenite.Org's investigative reporting (see list of stories below), for more than a year, the online world has been treated to a smattering of rumors and false alerts. Now, Red Herring has unveiled some of the secret history in their April 15 print edition. The tale begins in 1999, when Sierra underwent a change in management. Havas Interactive, now a division of Vivendi Universal (which also owns Paramount and the Star Trek franchise), acquired Sierra On-Line and sister properties. The new management looked at the state-of-the-art 3D graphics and extremely faithful-to-Tolkien game design and said, "We want something with more mass market appeal". The game designers pointed out that their market research indicated about 100,000 people were waiting to sign up for the massively multiplayer online role-playing game. That was not enough for Havas. So, the whole project was tanked and the staff fired on September 22, which has become known as Black Monday, and not coincidentally coincides with the birthdays of Bilbo and Frodo Baggins (in our calendar -- technically, their birthdays fall on another day). At this point, the gaming world was taken out of the loop. Red Herring reports that Sierra asked Tolkien Enterprises for an extension on the license through 2001. Tolkien Enterprises reportedly balked at the request, so Sierra allegedly slapped together a proposal for an interim game based on outdated technology. Tolkien Enterprises at that point deemed Sierra to be in default of their contract and issued noticed that the contract was terminated. Sierra responded by filing a lawsuit against Tolkien Enterprises in February 2000, alleging breach of contract. At the same time, it now appears, Sierra contracted with MM3D under a veil of absolute secrecy to develop a new Middle-earth Online. But Tolkien Enterprises responded swiftly to the lawsuit by contacting former Sierra developers and acquiring depositions from them concerning the slaughter on September 22, 1999. During this time, Electronic Arts approached New Line Cinema about acquiring the rights to produce video games based on Peter Jackson's upcoming "Lord of the Rings" movies. New Line Cinema was already looking for merchandising opportunities, and Tolkien Enterprises reportedly had been pressuring Toy Vault to surrender its action figure license almost two years before their contract expired. Lawyers were rattled in their sheathes and Toy Vault's production schedule entered a veil of secrecy (two more action figures, probably the last in the line, were released in late 2000). In June 2000, rumors started circulating that Electronic Arts had acquired the license from New Line Cinema to produce a massively multiplayer online game, but the promised announcement never appeared. Rumors hit the print media in late 2000, but Electronic Arts never confirmed the deal. Early this year New Line Cinema announced an Electronic Arts contract but Electronic Arts quickly admitted that the contract had not been finalized. Within just the past week, news broke that MM3D had filed a lawsuit against Sierra, alleging breach of contract. Sierra reportedly had refused to pay MM3D the $10 million that MM3D said it had cost to develop the new game. Within a few days, however, Sierra and MM3D reached an agreement and MM3D withdrew its lawsuit. But the long rumored game's existence had now been confirmed. Other articles Xenite.Org has published concerning the online gaming battle and action figure licenses since June 2000: Sierra Talks to Middle-earth Stratics...sort of -- March 12, 2001 Electronic Arts isn't looking so LOTR-like -- January 12, 2001 New Line on the financial defensive over film budgets, licensing? -- December 24, 2000 Middle-earth online cancelled? -- December 15, 2000 Sierra gets its game? So says PC Gamer... -- November 13, 2000 Could PC Zone be more wrong? -- October 23, 2000 Gaming rumors: much ado about darned little -- October 12, 2000 Gamespot picks up Sierra lawsuit story -- August 28, 2000 Sierra On-Line President acknowledges lawsuit in interview with The Vault -- August 25, 2000 Sierra lawsuit against Saul Zaentz/Tolkien Enterprises appears to be real -- August 8, 2000 Sierra On-line suing Tolkien Enterprises? -- August 4, 2000 Middle-earth.Com Web site IP address confusing curious gamers, fans -- August 1, 2000 Toy Vault not talking about LOTR action figures license -- July 22, 2000 More news from Dragoncon -- July 4, 2000 Toy Vault still retains its license to distribute action figures -- June 18, 2000 More confusion about LOTR-based computer games erupts on Net -- June 15, 2000 Collectors wondering if Toy Biz license means end of Toy Vault line -- June 13, 2000 LoTR Movie News archive from May 30, 2000 through June 9, 2000 LoTR Movie News archive from May 19, 2000 through May 29, 2000 Note: Because we now carry regularly updated headlines from Tolkien Online and TheOneRing.Net, Xenite.Org has not devoted as much attention to these issues as it once did. With our news providers covering the press releases from New Line Cinema and Electronic Arts, we have tried to avoid redundancy. Some gaming related news is also reported at TheOneRing.Net's Gaming Havens.

One Night at McCool's multimedia on your desktop

by Michael Martinez, Friday, April 27, 2001

The Liv Tyler media blitz continues with a great new download from Filmspeed. Now you can watch the perfect Liv Tyler video promos over and over again (if you go in for that sort of thing) in full multimedia splendor, thanks to a new Windows Media Player download from Filmspeed. Get out the bandwidth, baby, 'cause you're going to want that biggest file. The McCool's player from Filmspeed requires that you have automatic codecs download enabled in your Windows Media Player options, or that you are using Windows Media Player 8. It's all free for downloading. You can browse the official McCool's Web site, watch several video promos, enjoy Liv in a drop-dead beautiful red dress, see the trailer, buy tickets, or enter the CitySearch sweepstakes. Have you checked out our previous article, Oh, Arwen! Ooo, yeah!?

Speaking of the Lord of the Geeks, er, cults...

by Michael Martinez, Friday, April 27, 2001

Well, about half of online Tolkien fandom got its weskits up in a duff when Hollywood Confidential columnist Jeff Wells called everyone who reads Tolkien "geeks". Tolkien Online and TheOneRing.Net sent hundreds of angry fans scurrying for their epithets in a wave of protest. So, now TORN and Tolkien Online have followed up with acknowledgement of Wells' acknowledgement of the Ring Rage. But in apologizing for insulting all Tolkien fans by calling them geeks, he manages to heap insult upon insult by referring to Tolkien fandom as a "cult". Wired is producing a major article on Tolkien fandom in anticipation of release of the first movie, "The Fellowship of the Ring". The article should be out later this year and is expected to be a major concession from mainstream media of the fact that Tolkien fandom is neither geeky nor cultish. Of course, once the movies start appearing in theaters, there will undoubtedly be Uruk-hai organizations and Ranger Companies, and every convention in the United States will sport Aragorn and Arwen lookalike contests, so maybe there is no point in getting upset after all....

Sierra settles, MM3D drops lawsuit

by Michael Martinez, Friday, April 27, 2001

Nothing else to say, really. But it does seem odd that Sierra would let the dispute go so far and then settle quickly. Sounds like someone got their hands slapped at corporate headquarters for letting confirmation of the development project leak out.

Notinole from Babylon to Middle-earth

by Michael Martinez, Friday, April 27, 2001

It requires a lot of nerve to criticize one of the most respected Tolkien linguists in the world, and to suggest he may be wrong, especially when you are no linguist yourself. But I'm going to suggest that Helge Fauskanger, and other linguists who have followed his lead or confirmed or accepted his work, may be wrong. About Elvish numbers. Numerals, that is, not the populations of Elves. A great deal of work has been done on Elvish numerals, and Helge has only built upon the work of others. Indeed, until I began looking into the possibility of constructing a numeral system (I was sure others had attempted to do this), I hadn't really given the matter much thought. Every time someone asked, "Are there tengwar for numerals?" I would quickly say, "No, not in any published text I have seen." Well, that's what you get for not looking at the published texts before answering questions. It occurred to me that there must, indeed, be at least one candidate for an example of Elvish numerals: Aragorn's letter to Sam. And when I checked Sauron Defeated I was pleased to read two examples of Elvish numberrs. After all, Aragorn mentions a specific date in the letter. Now, these two tengwarin numbers are not unknown examples. Helge and others have been aware of them for years. Since I never explored the minutiae of Elven writing systems in that kind of detail the examples were quite obscure to me. So I'm hardly revealing anything new here. Except that most people, I am sure, do not know about these numbers. Are there other examples of tengwar numerals? Yes. And no. Yes, some people have tried to construct tengwar numeral systems. No, not so far as I know, are there any other examples by the hand of J.R.R. Tolkien. David Doughan and Julian Bradfield published a tengwar numeral system in Quettar Special Publication no 1 in 1987. Daniel Smith has used the Doughan and Bradfield work as part of the Tengwar resource for the Electronic Tolkien Encyclopedia Project. Doughan and Bradfield's work, which would at most be compatible with The Lost Road and Other Writings but not later books, has apparently been the foundation of all tengwar research. Read the full article here.

Lawsuit confirms Sierra is still working on MMORPG

by Michael Martinez, Thursday, April 26, 2001

Software firm MM3D filed a lawsuit against Sierra On-Line, alleging the game developer has breached their super-secret contract. MM3D entered into an agreement to develop Middle-earth Online with Sierra in February 2000, several months after Sierra suspended in-house development and fired more than 100 employees. The terms of the agreement were open-ended, but MM3D says that Sierra is now trying to pay less than the $10 million the project has cost the smaller company. No details about the game or its state of development have been released. MM3D filed the suit in Los Angeles Superior Court, noting that it had failed to secure permission from Sierra to mention the project in the suit despite requesting such permission.

Seeing Tolkien through the pens of history...

by Michael Martinez, Thursday, April 26, 2001

The New York Times has published a remarkable collection of articles going all the way back to 1938 about J.R.R. Tolkien and his works. March 13, 1938, the New York Times published its review of The Hobbit. Anne T. Eaton wrote: "This is one of the most freshly original and delightfully imaginative books for children that have appeared in many a long day." Whereas today many authors are compared to Tolkien, he was compared by this reviewer to Lewis Carroll, who wrote Alice in Wonderland and Through the Looking Glass many decades before The Hobbit was published. On November 26, 1950, Irene Smith wrote a brief introduction to Farmer Giles of Ham. "There is a rare flavor in this new tale by the author of 'The Hobbit,'" she noted. On October 31, 1954, the New York Times published W.H. Auden's legendary review of The Fellowship of the Ring. "I think some readers may find the opening chapter a little shy-making," he wrote, but "they must not let themselves be put off, for, once the story gets moving, this initial archness disappears." On May 1, 1955, Donald Barr followed in Auden's footsteps with Shadowy world of Men and Hobbits, a review of The Two Towers. "This work is much admired by certain critics who have always practiced a highly conscious and proud intellectualism," he observed. "Mr. Tolkien's fantasy is not metaphysical like E. R. Eddison's, nor theological like George MacDonald's; his appeal to the intellectuals is therefore interesting." On January 22, 1956, Auden returned with a review of The Return of the King. After rambling on about choices, Auden concluded: "Mr. Tolkien is not as great a writer as Milton, but in this matter he has succeeded where Milton failed." Read the full article at Xenite.Org.

LordoftheRings.COM shut down

by Michael Martinez, Wednesday, April 25, 2001

The Webmaster of LordoftheRings.COM, a fan Web site, has announced that he is shutting it down 'due to legal pressure'. For years, fans of J.R.R. Tolkien have been publishing Web sites with domain names related to the series. But with the approach of the release of the first of Peter Jackson's "Lord of the Rings" movies, it seems that legal actions are pending or being threatened in all corners as corporations position themselves to make hundreds of millions of dollars off the Lotrmania the movies are sure to generate. Xenite.Org salutes a fellow fan domain, and we hope this announcement is an anomaly and not the first of many to come. The official Web site for the movies is located at LordoftheRings.NET.

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