Published
in 1992 by Virgin and developed by Westwood Studios.
Full
disclosure: IG developed Dune 2000 and Emperor: Battle for Dune for Westwood, so
I am probably biased.
It is often credited with starting the RTS genre and I think it did in practice; but some credit has to go to Chris Crawford’s work, Stonk on the Spectrum and Herzog Zwei on the Sega Megadrive; which all contained some genre elements.
This
is what Brett Sperry said about the conception of Dune II:
“The
challenge was that strategy games would be out-of-control fun if the real-time
aspect of Eye of the Beholder could be combined with resource management and a
dynamic, flat interface. Just one mode of play and no additional screens. But
how? Long before I decided to experiment with actually building this new game in
a Dune setting, I kept toying with the answer.”
Like
Empire, it used a limited number of simple rules which could be combined into
complex strategies but It’s telling that the design started with an aesthetic
and UI consideration.
It
is clearly influenced by the WIMP interface that was beginning to appear on Macs
and Windows at the very end of the eighties. It used a scrolling window, mouse select, and buttons but NOT selection
marquees. Other innovations
included:
It
was real time
Pictures
of units not symbols
Visual
feedback, like bullets, craters, wheel tracks and so on
Enemy
AI to allow solo play (I think this is often overlooked because later
C&C became so MP focused)
An
invention tree
It
seems to me that almost all of these developments are based on making the game
more accessible.
*
I suspect that Dune II is still under copyright but there seem to be lots of working copies on the net. I found one here. Obviously, you should only download the game if you already have a legitimate copy. Alternatively, go out and buy the very wonderful Emperor and get an up to date Dune experience.