9 More Amazing Video Games (You Can’t Actually Play Anymore)

4. The Lord Of The Rings: The Battle For Middle-Earth

Lord of the Rings doesn't get as much focus when it comes to the world of licensed games as the likes of Spider-Man or Batman, but it was subjected to just as many video game tie-ins, of very varying quality.

Battle for Middle-Earth was a genuine gem though, a solid RTS experience that fully captured the scale of the conflicts central to the source material. Especially at the time, the epic nature of the films wasn't easy to translate to the gameplay of a third-person action title, but it was perfect for the strategy genre.

Sadly, this was one of the LOTR tie-ins EA published during their tenure, and when they lost the license in 2010, it suddenly became unavailable (though there are some unofficial servers still floating around there).

Consequently, while this entry is specifically about Battle for Middle-Earth, it might as well stand in for every LOTR game that's been scrubbed unceremoniously from history. The multiplayer Conquest, the Lego games, Hobbit tie-ins - they've all been pulled at one point or another.

Someone get Peter Jackson on the phone, surely he can sort this out?!