Re: Melbourne House games now free for distribution

[Fredrik Ekman <ekman@lysator.liu.se>]

Radioactive Warrior <radwar@orl.mindspring.com> writes:

> I know MH had the copyright on "WAR IN MIDDLE EARTH" but 
> "THE HOBBIT" and "LORD OF THE RINGS" (both are graphic text adventures...)
> were done by someone else.?.  I donno who- maybe under licence from BEAM
> but the text/graphic adventures above were of uncommon quallity if BEAM had
> anything to do with either of them...  Anyway, if you know for sure who
> did "THE HOBBIT" or "LORD OF THE RINGS" c64 text/graphics adventure games
> please let me know....

War in Middle Earth: I'm not sure about this. I do know that it does not
seem to fall under the Beam Software release. I am currently investigating
into this. What I do know is the following: 8-bit versions (Spectrum, C64,
etc...) were made by Maelstrom Software. 16-bit versions were distributed
by Virgin Games under the Melbourne House label. The Melbourne House name
was sold about 1986 and all MH games up to that date are now (c) Beam. I
think Virgin may have purchased the Melbourne House name, although I am
not quite sure.

The Hobbit and Lord of the Rings: Both were written by Beam Software
(which at the time was owned by Melbourne House (things are rather complex,
I'll admit)). Melbourne House distributed the games in Europe and
(presumably) Australia. The games were much later released in the US by
Addison-Wesley. The AW version of The Hobbit was much improved compared
with the original.

More information can be found on the following WWW pages:

http://www.lysator.liu.se/tolkien-games/entry/wime.html
http://www.lysator.liu.se/tolkien-games/entry/hobbit.html
http://www.lysator.liu.se/tolkien-games/entry/lotr-gameone.html

  /F