Aspyr Media Inc. sent a media alert this afternoon noting that its Mac conversion of The Lord of the Rings: Return of the King has gold “gold master,” the final step before a game is sent to duplication. It will be in stores nationwide by April 2, 2004.
The Lord of the Rings: Return of the King is a Mac conversion of the game based on the popular movie and literary work of J.R.R. Tolkien. It puts players in control of several the story’s main characters, including Gandalf, Frodo and Sam, Legolas, Aragorn, Gimli and others.
It’s a straight up hack-and-slash action game that recreates scenes from the movie as players progress on one of three tracks: The path of the wizard, the path of the king, or the path of the hobbits, all with one goal in mind: The destruction of the One Ring and the defeat of the evil Sauron and his minions.
The game features extensive extras that are unlocked as you complete various stages, and incorporates cutscenes from the films and characters voiced by many of the movie’s actors. What’s more, there’s a cooperative multiplayer “hot seat” mode that lets two gamers play side by side as different characters.
Aspyr Media announced plans to bring The Return of the King to the Macintosh last December, after the title was released for consoles and the Pc. Developing the Mac version for Aspyr Media is Aspyr’s frequent partner Beenox, which has also worked on Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater 4, Kelly Slater’s Pro Surfer and other titles for Aspyr.
Return of the King is presently available for pre-order for $50. System requirements call for Mac OS X v10.2.6 or higher, G4/800MHz or faster; 256MB RAM; 2.2GB hard disk space; and ATI Radeon 7500 or Nvidia GeForce2 MX or better graphics card with 32MB VRAM. A DVD drive is required to install and play the game as well.