Almost two years ago I bought a boxed copy of the first Lord of the Rings game from 1990 and now it’s time for the second game to join my ever growing collection of games. The internet says that The Two Towers was released in 1992 (yet another game from 1992), but that is not mentioned anywhere on the box or in the accompanying booklets or manual. The order sheet for the clue book mentions that it will be available in Summer 92 and another leaflet shows the then new books to celebrate the 100 birthday of Tolkien in 1992. I’m currently looking into which hardcovers I would like to buy and these books look like a solid option, albeit the dust jackets on second hand books are often damaged.

The nice part of collecting old games is often the surprise element of what you find when you receive the item, although sometimes it’s not a nice surprise. This time it was nice, mainly because the box is bigger than the small box variant I was expecting. I was expecting that because the version of the first game in the series I have is of the small box variation.

The manual is also bigger and goes into detail about the first game and about the planned third game that was cancelled. Because the manual of the first game is in German, and my command of that language is not excellent, it might help to read the manual of the Two Towers to help me understand what I’m supposed to do. The paragraphs you need to read in certain sections of the game will still only be in German though, so I might want to play the CD rerelease instead of the floppy version, because the CD provides the story with cutscenes in the game itself.