The Hobbit (1982 video game)

The Hobbit (also known as The Hobbit Software Adventure in North America and Australia) was the first licensed video game based on Tolkien's work, being the first part of The Tolkien Trilogy (also known as The Tolkien Software Adventure Series). The game was designed by Philip Mitchell and Veronika Megler, and illustrated by Kent Rees. The game was considered large at the time of its release and included 80 locations, of which 30 were illustrated. The game was released by Melbourne House for Amstrad CPC, BBC B, Commodore 64, Dragon 32, MSX, Oric-1 and ZX-Spectrum in most of the world,</ref> whilst Addison-Wesley released it as The Hobbit Software Adventure for Apple II, Commodore 64, Macintosh and MS-DOS in North America and Australia. After its initial success, it was re-released by Sinclair Research Ltd. Beam Software also developed editions for Amiga and TRS-80, but were never released. Every game also included a copy of The Hobbit and an instruction book.

In 1984 David Elkan published a book, A Guide to Playing The Hobbit, to help players complete the game. Beam Software originally planned a sequel, Where Hobbits Dare, but was cancelled. Instead, it was succeeded by Lord of the Rings: Game One.

In 2012 the Hobbit environment "Wilderland" was published (see external link below). It runs the original ZX Spectrum game code in an emulator and reveals what is going on in the background of the game.