Day after day, it feels like my childhood keeps finding its way back to me, as we are continuously treated to remasters and remakes of some of the most iconic gaming classics. These aren’t games that are merely a few years or even a decade old, mind you—these are games that originally launched before half of Gen Z was even born. We recently got the Star Fox 64, Assassin’s Creed Black Flag, Halo, and Gothic remakes, we’re about to get the Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time remake, and now Aspyr has shadow dropped a remaster of the 2011 action RPG classic, The Lord of the Rings: War in the North, with a promise that more classic remasters are on the way. Needless to say, us “old folks” are eating well in 2026, and everyone else is finally getting the chance to experience the games that defined us in the best way possible.
But while I loved War in the North despite its initial, rather divisive reception, I’m already looking forward to what other classic Lord of the Rings games will be re-released now that Aspyr has committed to doing so. Of course, there are those like The Third Age, Battle for Middle earth 2, and maybe even the classic game based on The Fellowship of the Ring. However, there is one game that would have me over the moon, were it the first on Aspyr’s list of priorities for re-release. That game is none other than The Return of the King—the 2003 hack and slash game based on the film adaptation of the same name and the sequel to the 2002 classic, The Two Towers (which should arguably be re-released alongside it).
Aspyr’s Next LotR Remaster Project Should Be Return of the King
Funny enough, Aspyr already has some history with The Return of the King, which makes it an even easier choice than it would be otherwise. Electronic Arts originally published the game on PS2, Xbox, GameCube, and PC in 2003, but when it eventually came to Mac OS X the following year, Aspyr was the one that published that version, with Beenox handling the actual conversion. In other words, more than 20 years before Aspyr started bringing classic Lord of the Rings games back from the dead, it was already helping put The Return of the King into more players’ hands. Now that the company has apparently decided there is still plenty of life left in these old Middle-earth games, going back to one it already has some history with feels almost too perfect.
Put the consoles in the correct order.
It helps that The Return of the King was actually received pretty well when it came out, too, which isn’t something every licensed game from that era can say. The PS2 version is sitting at an 85 on Metacritic, while the Xbox and GameCube versions both landed at 84, with critics generally praising its presentation, huge battles, and the way it managed to capture so much of the film’s spectacle. There were complaints about things like the camera and its relatively short length, but for a movie tie-in released in 2003, The Return of the King came about as close as I could have asked for to letting me actually play through some of the Lord of the Rings trilogy’s biggest moments. Throw in multiple playable characters, three different story paths, and two-player co-op, and there was a lot more here than the type of licensed game that simply existed to cash in while the movie was still in theaters.
A remaster today really wouldn’t need to mess with much of that, either. Give me a cleaner image, a better frame rate, modern controls, some work on the camera, and all the usual quality-of-life improvements that come with bringing a game from 2003 into 2026, and I’m probably already sold. Keeping the co-op intact would be a must, and adding online co-op on top of the local option would make replaying it with someone else much easier than it was back then. Aspyr has already shown with War in the North: Legacy Edition that it is willing to go beyond simply getting an old game running again, with changes to things like targeting, UI, autosaving, and character swapping, so there is plenty it could clean up in The Return of the King without turning it into something I no longer recognize.
The Two Towers Should Probably Come With It
If I’m asking for The Return of the King, though, I might as well go ahead and ask Aspyr to bring The Two Towers along for the ride, because separating these two games now would feel a little strange. The Return of the King was built as a direct follow-up to The Two Towers, taking the same basic hack-and-slash idea and expanding it with more playable characters, multiple paths, and co-op, while both games were built around recreating Peter Jackson’s Lord of the Rings films. The Two Towers was also a success in its own right, selling millions of copies and earning generally positive reviews, so this isn’t a situation where Aspyr would need to bundle a great game with one everyone would rather forget.
Ideally, I would love to see some sort of The Two Towers and The Return of the King collection that puts both games in one package, but I would happily settle for them being released side by side if bundling them together isn’t realistic. They belong together, especially for anyone who grew up playing them one after the other, and having both readily available on PS5, Xbox Series X|S, Switch 2, and PC would finally give me a reason to retire the old hardware whenever I feel like running through Helm’s Deep or the Pelennor Fields again.
Aspyr Has Plenty of Other Classic Lord of the Rings Games to Choose From
Of course, The Return of the King and The Two Towers are hardly the only games sitting in Middle-earth’s back catalog right now, so Aspyr could keep this going for quite a while if the rights and licensing for some of these older releases can be worked out.
Classic Lord of the Rings Games Aspyr Could Re-Release
- The Lord of the Rings: The Third Age
- The Lord of the Rings: The Battle for Middle-earth
- The Lord of the Rings: The Battle for Middle-earth 2
- The Lord of the Rings: Conquest
- The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring
- The Hobbit
- The Lord of the Rings: War of the Ring
The Third Age is probably the one I would put closest to The Return of the King on my personal wish list, while getting Battle for Middle-earth and its sequel back on modern PCs would be a pretty big deal on its own. Conquest has also developed enough of a following over the years that I can’t imagine too many Lord of the Rings fans complaining if Aspyr decided to dig that one back up. There are obviously licensing questions surrounding some of these games, especially with how many different publishers and adaptations were involved during that era, so Aspyr promising more classic releases doesn’t automatically mean every old Lord of the Rings game is suddenly on the table.
For now, though, The Return of the King feels like the easiest place to go next. It reviewed well, it still has plenty of fans more than 20 years later, Aspyr already helped bring it to Mac once before, and there currently isn’t an easy way to buy a modern version of it. War in the North getting another chance is already great news for me, but if Aspyr really plans on continuing to pull games out of Middle-earth’s past, I know exactly which one I want to see come back next.
- Released
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August 11, 2026
- ESRB
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Mature 17+ / Blood and Gore, Intense Violence, Users Interact
- Multiplayer
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Online Co-Op, Local Co-Op
