Here's a really silly popcultural POD I thought of and you should feel free to use it in some suitable video game timeline:
In the late 1980s and early 1990s, SEGA manages to secure some of the rights from Saul Zaentz for a Tolkien video game adaptation. They then create either a
Golden Axe spinoff/derivative set at the time of Tolkien's Third Age works, i.e. based on
The Hobbit or LOTR, or focus on bringing the concept and mechanics of
Golden Axe into those Tolkien games and the OTL
Golden Axe series is never created in the ATL. Tolkien computer games were gaining some popularity at the time, even a decade before the film trilogy was made, so who knows what a Tolkien-themed side-scrolling hack-and-slash would look like.
Just to make it more secure, have some ardent Japanese Tolkien fans on the dev team, so it's not just about the mayhem, but captures some of the necessary feel of the setting.
If the game would get a sequel, I imagine your choice between the three different main characters would be Aragorn, Legolas and Gimli, as the Three Hunters, interspersed with playing for Frodo and Sam, and occassionally Merry and Sam (GA already has a Tolkien-style, Gimli-inspired dwarf among the three player characters, so it wouldn't be a stretch).
Yeah, silly, but I think it would be hilarious. Imagine the hobbits fighting a Nazgul who rode into the Shire or Bree and is terrorising locals...
