I've been a little critical of Vivendi Universal Games this week, both for their lack of involvement with the King Kong game, and for their surfeit of involvement with the Fight Club game. So why let up now? Friday's Flop Bin this week is all about VUG's game The Hobbit, a month away from its first birthday.

While Electronic Arts had the rights to publish Lord of the Rings games, VUG had The Hobbit. So when Peter Jackson's Lord of the Rings movies turned out to be a hit, VUG tapped Inevitable Entertainment, makers of perfunctory licensed games like the modern update of arcade classic Defender and Tribes Aerial Assault, a console take on the popular PC series Tribes.

Bilbo Baggins couldn't be made to look like the Bilbo Baggins of the movies, I guess, but did they have to make him look like that? This off-kilter Bilbo is shoehorned into a pretty standard Zelda-inspired cartoony-looking platform game. Ratchet & Clank: Going Commando, a much more successful platformer released the same day as The Hobbit, drew sales with its wide array of impressive weaponry. The Hobbit loads up Bilbo at the start of the game with a walking stick and throwing rocks. Later of course you'll get the sword Sting, and get the ring from Gollum, but the competition was too much. Added to that was the plethora of LotR games from EA with box covers featuring the actors from the movie. The Hobbit never had a chance.

The damage: saw The Hobbit on sale last weekend for $4.99. If Frodo had a copy of this, he could have put the ring inside it instead of throwing it in Mt. Doom; no one would have ever touched it.

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