The most famous novel by American writer Frank Herbert – Dune (1965) inspired many other authors. This legendary piece of art is one of the top in the science fiction field. Many games were created based on a novel or a popular film. Sometimes it was the other way round and a successful films were inspired by popular games.
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Published: 1992
Developed by: Westwood Studios
Published by: Virgin Interactive
Platform: DOS, Amiga, Megadrive, RISC OS
Genre: Real-time strategy
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Dune II left a trace in each player. It is the game that changed the field of real time strategy. What made it so popular? Its graphics, sound and game components. The graphics was so amazing that it was incomparable to any other game. The game intro and animations were no less great. These together with effects were absolutely unique at that time. And that isn’t all yet. The best of all was the playing system. It was genial because it made controlling simple. All could be controlled using mouse only and there were no complex commands. Even though it wasn’t possible to perform context clicking or choose more units at a time but it was still a breakthrough. There were several elements first introduced that were used in other real time strategies for a long time after Dune II. We can mention as an example mining of raw material, building of head quarters, technological development or so called fog of war – fog covering parts of the area. The last element was already used in Empire in 1977 but it became known among the players only after Dune II. From the historical point of view is Dune II the most elaborated and sophisticated part of the series (there were two more parts – a remake called Dune 2000 and Emperor: Battle for Dune) and its precision (taking in account the technology of that time) deserves our attention.
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The game was developed by Westwood Studios which created also the series Command & Conquer. Do you know why it was number II while it isn’t linked to the first part? Westwood developers didn’t know that there was a similar project. They expected their game to be the only one licensed. Yet the publisher assigned the task to Cryo Interactive first which was later stopped due to low quality. Despite that the game was completed and the publisher hoping for gain launched it. Dune II was launched in the same year – in 1992. It was called Dune II: Battle for Arrakis in Europe and Dune II: The Building of a Dynasty in countries outside Europe.
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1/ The game inspired many other games. Here are some Czech games that were based on Dune II: Paranoia (1995, Phoenix Arts) and Paranoia II (1996, Phoenix Arts) as well as Husita (1997, JRC, Phoenix Arts).
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2/ The game is included in “1001 Video Games You Must Play Before You Die” book.
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3/ Its version for Megadrive had better graphics.
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4/ Its version for Amiga had 5 floppy discs.
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5/ Dune book had another 5 parts, then the author died in 1986.
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6/ Fans of Frank Herbert consider the game as a poor imitation with little in common with the original story. However, they accept its originality and contribution for the real time strategy field.
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7/ The Dune novel was turned into 3 films. The first by David Lynch in 1984, then by John Harrison in 2000 as a TV series and the third by Denis Villeneuve in 2020 (premiering in December).
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