Dune II The building of a dynasty Developed by Westwood studios Published by Virgin Interactive Entertainment Release Date 1992 DOS version Type of Game Action Strategy Real Time Price 40 at release Abandonware now Minimum Stated Hardware Requirements Minimum CPU Class 80286 12 MHz or better Minimum OS Class DOS 3 0 3 3 Minimum RAM 640K Disk Drives High Density Floppy Drive assuming they mean 1 44Mb Input Devices Mouse Sound Device Adlib Adlib Gold Disney Sound Source PC Speaker Roland MT 32 and LAPC 1 Sound Blaster Sound Blaster Pro Thunderboard Video Modes Supported VGA the game ran at 640x400 Actual Hardware Requirements CPU 80386 or above Quick Overview One of the first blockbuster RTS games to be brought to the PC Amiga and Genesis With top notched graphics game play and sound this game became a classic Story Line Even though the game supposedly exists inside Frank Herbert s Dune series the game itself takes resembles no existing story line The emperor of the Universe presets a contest to the three main houses Atriedes Ordos and Harkonnen to take control over the Spice producing Dune For those that have never read the series The spice is cinnamon like seasoning that only grows on the planet Dune The spice holds astonishing powers giving civilizations the ability to travel long distances in space give people psychic powers and overall a tonic to every ailment But the wonder spice has a price it s extremely addicting and extremely scarce Since it only grows on one planet in the whole universe it becomes a tremendous commodity The three houses land on Dune and take up strategic land space Your job is to invade other territories and expand your houses borders The story line seems linear but playing the game completely through a few surprises are in store for the player Player s Role You are the commander of a base whose task is to create buildings harvest spice ward off attackers and finally demolish the opposition Not an easy task by any means but the game adapts to that Installation The standard DOS installations happen here You run an install file one the floppy and the game files are uncompressed onto your hard drive The game itself fully unpacked takes up around 4 0Mb User Interface and Controls Dune II had a SimCity type overhead view The game area is built around a grid where you could move A commander view was on the right for whatever is selected this let you perform actions on a unit or building The mouse was used to control everything in the game From selecting units to making executive decisions the mouse dominated all A keyboard could be used for some hotkeys which did end up proving very useful later on A left click selected buildings or units A right click moved a unit to that spot or preformed an action mostly attack Game Play The game play was very simple for a RTS The commander had to collect spice through specialized vehicles called harvesters The credits you earned from your harvest could be put towards purchasing a new vehicle building a new building research upgrades or repair buildings A shallow technology tree kept you differentiated slightly between the different houses Unfortunately there are not good game unit links as other RTS games have The basic way to win is make the most and biggest tanks There are some unit variations in the game Specifically Ordos Ordos Trike a 3 wheeled unit that had the fastest movement speed in the game but was relatively weak Ordos Deviator technology from IX gives you this nerve gas launcher it is used to convert opponents units to your own but they convert back in a few minutes Sabatog the palace special where an invisible unit would infiltrate an opponents base and cause massive damage but was easily detected by turrets Atriedes Light Infantry a squad of weak units that could posses weak enemy buildings Atriedes Sonic Tank a tank that has no shells but rather uses sonic waves to cause damage very powerful long range tank with excellent damage to buildings Fremen the befriended local natives fight for you have the strength of several Harkonnen heavy infantry squads Harkonnen Heavy Infantry rocket based heavy infantry long range and heavy damage to vehicles Devastator a duel barrel wielding death machine does 2x the damage of siege tanks and upon death explodes damaging a wide area Imperial Sardukar very heavy armored rocket infantry rarely seen but very lethal when they hit Scoring A scoring system when the battle is over tells you how well your battle did The more spice harvested and units destroyed brings the highest score Artwork Blocky and ugly by today s standards but works of art in 1992 The battles were beautifully animated and colored with immersing visual effects Sound and Music MIDI music was enabled if you had an appropriate sound card with songs that fit the mood of the game perfectly The songs would change based on the events present eg Battle music when units are attack each other The sound was very minimalist with only explosions being rendered by sound samples Special features One special feature was the save and load game function This let you save a game in the middle of battle and resume it with nothing changed Since some of the maps were very large this is a very welcome feature Bugs Some bugs were found with the original release so a patch was introduced and automatically applied with the White Box version of the game was released Review What is good about the game Fun this game is a blast to play From the beginning to the end of the game you could play each new level with a totally different strategy The game was fair and balanced With no house overpowered many games ended up a near tie The AI was extremely stupid and predictable This is a good thing since some of the later battles seem almost impossible to beat without exploiting the AI What is bad about the game There are bugs and lots of them A patch fixed many of the issues but many prevailed today One really annoying part of the game is city management You needed to make sure there were clear paths between buildings or else units would get trapped with no way out With the seemingly random placement on maps this was a difficult task to accomplish How does it compare to other games in its genre While not the first modern RTS third to be exact on PC s it was the first really fun RTS game This game was ported to 2 other platforms with a European release a few years after the US PC Why is it better or worse than similar games The simplistic
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