MUME

While an immense number of computer and video games were inspired by J. R. R. Tolkien's works and the many other high fantasy settings based upon his, relatively few games have been directly adapted from his world of Middle-earth. From the early 1980s to the present, several video game series have been developed based upon Tolkien's writings, including titles by Electronic Arts, Sierra, Melbourne House and recently Warner Bros. Interactive Entertainment.

In 1982, Melbourne House began a series of licensed LoTR graphical interactive fiction (text adventure) games with The Hobbit, based on the book with the same name. The game was considered quite advanced at the time, with interactive characters that moved between locations independent of the player, and Melbourne House's 'Inglish' text parser which accepted full-sentence commands where the norm was simple two-word verb/noun commands. They went on to release 1986's The Fellowship of the Ring, 1987's The Shadows of Mordor, and 1990s The Crack of Doom. A BBC Micro text adventure released around the same time was unrelated to Melbourne's titles except for the literary origin. In 1987, Melbourne House released War in Middle-earth, a real-time strategy game. Konami also released an action-strategy game titled Riders of Rohan.

Other early efforts included Shadowfax by Postern (1982), a simplistic side-scrolling action game for the Spectrum, C64, and VIC-20, in which Gandalf rides the titular steed while smiting endless Nazgûl. Suspiciously similar in appearance to Activision's Stampede. The Lord of Rings: Journey to Rivendell was announced in 1983 by Parker Brothers for the Atari 2600, but was never released. The prototype ROM can be found at AtariAge.

...
Wikipedia