The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King is a 2003 action/hack and slash video game developed by EA Redwood Shores for the PlayStation 2 and Windows. It was ported to the GameCube and Xbox by Hypnos Entertainment, to the Game Boy Advance by Griptonite Games, to mobile by JAMDAT, and to OS X by Beenox. The game was published by Electronic Arts. It is a sequel to the 2002 game The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers.
The game is an adaptation of Peter Jackson’s 2002 film The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers and his 2003 film The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King, which was released shortly after the game. As it is not an adaptation of J. R. R. Tolkien’s 1954 novel, The Return of the King, the third volume in his Lord of the Rings trilogy, anything from the novel not specifically mentioned or depicted in the films could not be represented in the game. This is because, at the time, Vivendi Universal Games, in partnership with Tolkien Enterprises, held the rights to the video game adaptations of Tolkien’s literary works, whilst Electronic Arts held the rights to the video game adaptations of the New Line Cinemafilms
