One of the first major video games produced in Australia, The Hobbit was developed at Beam Software in 1982 and published by Melbourne House. The game was a commercial success, selling 100,000 copies in the first two years and a million units by the end of the 1980s.

This colour advertisement for The Hobbit appeared in MSX Magazine, a computer magazine published by ASCII in Japan. The prominent full-page promotion signifies the international reach and recognition achieved by the early Australian gaming industry.

The ad includes an inset image of the JRR Tolkien novel on which the game is based. A copy of the book was included with every unit sold, not as a marketing tie-in, but because you needed to be familiar with Tolkien’s story to complete the game!