"Mid land world. About fifty-four thousand years ago, DARK LORD combine the technique of the metallurgy and the magic. Smelting a lot of rings with magic power. In face, he return to Mordor stealthy. Smelting a most powerful ring. and with this ring’s magic power to control and suppress the other rings. And to establish the powerful dark kingdom."
— The first part of the game’s Opening Scroll
King of Ring (original title: Zhi Huan Wang - Shou Bu Qu) is a bootleg video game based on the 2001 film The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring. The game — developed by Sintax — lets you play as Frodo, Gandalf, Aragorn and Gimli, as they set off to Mount Doom to destroy the evil, nameless Dark Lord and his minions. Notably, the game takes significant liberties with the original story, wrapping it all up in a single installment.
Oh, and did we mention that just about every line of dialogue in the English version is a Translation Train Wreck?
Yeah, it’s that kind of of game.
King of Ring contains examples of:
- Ability Required to Proceed: There are several boulders blockning the patts ahead which can only be destroyed by Aragorn using a POWER-STONE.
- Aborted Arc: Despite being made a big deal of in the prologue — and having the whole thing named after it — the One Ring plays no actual part in the game itself. Frodo can’t turn invisible, and the Fellowship simply kill Sauron without destroying it first.
- Adaptational Badass: Frodo, who now has his sword from the start and is a certified One-Man Army, even capable of taking down Ringwraiths, albeit temporarily.
- Adaptation Species Change: The elves are referred to as ”spirits”, and — at one point — ”sprites.”
- Adapted Out: The Fellowship consists of four people here: Frodo, Gandalf, Aragorn and Legolas, completely cutting out Boromir (and the battle he originally died in) Sam, Merry, Pippin and Gimli. That said, the ending screen clearly shows the silhuoettes of five people, (Gandalf, Legolas, Gimli and two hobbits.)
- Black Cloak: Unexpectedly Downplayed with the Nazgul, most of whom instead wear green. Only their Elite Mooks (theoretically the Witch-king, though there are at least two of them) wear black.
- "Blind Idiot" Translation: Very much the case. Let’s just say that the English translation is... questionable at best.
- Breaking the Fellowship: Averted. The Fellowship remains whole throughout the entire game, and take down Sauron together.
- Color-Coded Characters: All characters have a single, monochromatic color: Frodo and Aragorn are blue, Gandalf is purple and Legolas is green, (making him resemble a literal Token Heroic Orc.)
- Everything Trying to Kill You: As soon as Frodo leaves the Shire, he has to fight his way through countless cases of random forest animals and bandits.
- Giant Squid: The Watcher in the Water is marked on the overworld map as a purple octopus. It needs to defeated in a boss fight in order to enter Moria.
- Lighter and Softer: The scary villains have been reduced to simple video game enemies, none of our heroes die, and there’s no Bittersweet Ending like in the original story. Instead, we get an outright Happy Ending where our heroes walk off together into the sunset, having successfully completed their quest.
- Only Smart People May Pass: A knight guarding a crypt has such a requirement, or as he puts it: “Only profoundest philosopher can pass this place.”
- Our Dwarves Are All the Same: Well, if the message on the fate to Moria is any indication, they are apparently just regular short people.Only the friend of the midget can enter this place.
- Our Gargoyles Rock: Isengard is filled with them, which Saruman sicks on his former best friend when he refuses to join Dark Lord.
- Overworld Not to Scale: The game has such an overworld, allowing the player to quickly walk between its various locations.
- Plot Tailored to the Party:
- Frodo can crawl through tight spaces.
- Gandalf can cast healing spells.
- Being a ranger, Aragorn can break through stone walls with his sword. He also has a double attack, making dealing with enemies far easier.
- Legolas has the power to walk on snow (mind you, this is a canon ability of his in both the books and movies) and marshland.
- Power Floats: Saruman levitates throughout his boss battle.
- Revised Ending: The game initially loosely follows the plot of the original story, but goes Off the Rails when Gandalf survives his fight against the Balrog. The Fellowship later kill Saruman in another boss battle, which opens up a portal straight into Mount Doom.
- Spared by the Adaptation: Not that it lasted to begin with, but Gandalf never does at all here, staying with the Fellowship until the very end.
- The Very Definitely Final Dungeon: The game ends in the volcanic caverns of Mount Doom, where the player had to fight a wave of every enemy encountered in the game thus far, before facing off against the Eye of Sauron.
- We Used to Be Friends: Gandalf and Saruman, as lamented after the latter makes his We Can Rule Together offer.Saruman: Gandalf The Grey Feature is no more controlled by us. Now we should to go and seek help from Dark Lord. (...) Give Me the ring We can start a whole new world together!Gandalf: You (...) You are not my best friend any more.
- Wreathed in Flames: The Balrog, which appears to be an outright fire elemental here.
- Zombie Apocalypse:One may have befallen Bree, as aside from Aragorn, the village is completely void of life and instead filled with Ringwraiths, Dem Bones and what appears to be zombies.
