Link: https://www.pcgamer.com/games/rpg/i-played-the-lord-of-the-rings-rpg-where-frodo-can-straight-up-die-and-the-game-just-keeps-on-going/

Which would have made for a different book, I think.

• J.R.R. Tolkien's The Lord of the Rings, Vol. I on Mobygames
• J.R.R. Tolkien's The Lord of the Rings, Vol. I on Internet Archive

I never knew that there is a LOTR RPG from the 90s. This looks pretty nice, with a relatively modern interface for 1990 and I was personally expecting the graphics to be worse.

Curious about modding capabilities for this.

Now play the text (mostly?) C64 version!

Edit: what would you mod?

AI upscaling, fonts and UI. I haven't seen too many UI mods for DOS games, I don't even know if it's a thing. But I honestly prefer Windows variants for games that were released on both DOS and Windows (e.g. SimCity 2000, XCOM).

I am assuming you can configure some DOSbox variant to run ML upscaling, or even build out an ML upscale hook of some sort for the DOSbox output.

Do you think an upscaling of the post (this posts image) image would have some value to it? It looks fine to me.

Well for a screenshot in an article I would want something without modifications.

I meant more about playing the game.

It's a CGA game so 320 x 200 resolution. A x2 ML upscale would be 640 x 400 which is going to make a world of a difference on a 32" 1440p monitor. The 1990 sprite graphics should work well for x2 ML upscale, unless there is something specific to that game (I don't believe this to be the case based on the screenshots, looks pretty standard for a game from that era).

If the game had a native 640 x 400 mode, why would you not use it and stick to 320 x 200?

I generally struggle to play games before 1995 or so (with some exceptions), primarily because of the resolution and bad UI/UX. ML upscaling is a good solution for resolution issues and it does not impact the aesthetic elements in any way.

I've played the SNES version of this and it was VERY hard. The first thing they do is ask you to find the Gaffer's missing spectacles, and leaving town to look for them almost invariably results in all the hobbits getting eaten by wolves. Despite several attempts, I never really got much further than that.

Then you arent really experiencing that game but some modern abomination.

I've got the box set of this I think.

You're mistaken. This is not DLSS5 or whatever. The principles are similar, but the goals are not. The 1990 limited colour palette sprite graphics and pixelart stay as they are.

Note that this an image upscaler, I haven't played the game yet, so it's only a baseline comparison:

CGA:

Upscale:

CGA:

Upscale:

CGA:

Upscale:

One could argue we are seeing some unneeded changes in the third screenshot in the line where the grass meets the mud. This is a screenshot upscale, you can configure a proper ML upscale mod to avoid doing such "detail recovery" and act more as a filter.

I would leave the movie as is. Basically, you need someone to package a mod to focus on an authentic experience.

Fair point! Thanks for the examples!

There's also an SNES version!

https://cdromance.org/snes-rom/j-r-r-tolkiens-the-lord-of-the-rings-volume-one-europe/

https://cdromance.org/snes-rom/j-r-r-tolkiens-the-lord-of-the-rings-volume-one-usa/

One could argue we are seeing some unneeded changes in the third screenshot in the line where the grass meets the mud.

There's also smearing in the lettering. The title screen doesn't look too bad, but I guess I'm a bit of a purist...I just don't really like the upscale results. Personal preference obviously.

That's understandable. I cannot do CGA games, 320 x 200 on a 32" 1440p monitor is not appealing, if there was a mod for X2 ML upscale, I would be much more likely to try it.

I mostly do video and image upscale hobby stuff. I ran the CGA screenshots in Topaz Gigalpixel using their graphics/charts preset (first time I've used this preset, I work with photo) without any configuration.

There is a decent number of models / settings / approaches with video and to a lesser extent image upscaling to allow you to get a "very close to source" look with modest changes that make the doubling of resolution look good.

This is just a baseline visual comparison to show that it doesn't have to be overly processed results with unnecessary changes and clearly out of place additions. A frame of reference if you will.

That's why I mentioned a mod for X2 ML upscale, something that is packaged and tested to focus on authentic results using setting that help avoid some of the issues we see in the third screenshot. Less "AI" and more "authentic upscale".

That being said, I have no clue how game upscaling works and I have never heard of DOS game upscaling. I am assuming to make it work you would hook into directX (or the Linux + wine equivalent) and then upscale the "stream" tied to DOSbox. I can't imagine it's possible to dynamically change upscale settings by modifying the DOS package.

DOSBox has a native scaling function! I've linked below an article on how to use it effectively 💪😎

https://www.dedoimedo.com/games/reviving/dosbox-hd-screens.html

Very interesting, this could be helpful for several of my favourite DOS games.

Do you know if you can hook up more advanced upscaling systems? Some brief reseach suggests, but it looks like of experimentation will needed.

No idea tbh, I have a massive collection of dos games currently locked on a drive with a broken SATA connector and I've been too lazy to fix it for months. So obviously I don't really play dos games very often 😅

This was a good game actually. I had forgotten about this gem.

There was also a text adventure game that was awesome.

War In Middle-Earth - 1988 (PC)

Ah yes, wandering the barrow downs and scraping walls for moss, endlessly lost. Memories.