"THE LORD OF THE RINGS™ is the perfect title and theme for a pinball," Gary Stern said. "It lends itself to lots of Mechanical Action Pinball shots and toys for casual players, yet the story cries for deep rules to challenge the best players."

The goal of THE LORD OF THE RINGS™ pinball machine is to collect the Elf Rings, the Dwarf Rings, and the mortal men rings, thereby forming The One Ring™. Then destroy The One Ring™ through collecting all three movies.

THE LORD OF THE RINGS™ pinball machine offers non-stop action at its best in the form of the following mechanisms:

A Balrog toy that pivots when hit by the ball, revealing the jump ramp that leads to  The One Ring™;A magnet in the center of The One Ring™ which pulls the ball in and then feeds another ramp shaped in the form of Aragorn's legendary Narsil sword; Many multi-ball modes, including one for each movie, as well as for Gollum; The Orthanc and Barad-dur Towers. Players can knock down Barad-dur, which features the eye of Sauron; A small playfield in the upper left hand corner represents that of The Paths of the Dead; plus 12 LOTR action figures are interspersed throughout the playfield.