The Original RTS Game

Dune, by Frank Herbert, is one of my all time favorite books, and if you're a regular reader you know how exited I am about the upcoming Dune movie that's to hit theaters in December. That is, if the release won't be postponed due to the pandemic. But today I'd like to briefly discuss another all time favorite of mine, which is Dune 2, an MS-DOS game released in 1992 that's considered the grandfather of the entire Real-Time Strategy game genre.

Many of you will never have heard about Dune 2, but it was indeed the game that inspired many titles that made the RTS genre very popular; I'm sure most of you will know about the Command & Conquer series, Warcraft, X-Com and so on, all of which can trace their roots to the Dune 2 game. In 2001 a sequel was finally released, called Dune 2000, but since then it's been completely quiet around the Dune games; almost two decades now there haven't been any games released on Frank Herbert's magnificent futuristic universe. I've often wondered why that is. I mean, the setup was perfect, with "spice" being the resource competing factions (or Noble Houses in Dune's universe) want to harvest and control.

So, for any other fans of Dune and video-games, today I'd like to share the below linked video about the history of Dune, the game. Watching that video reminded me that I've even played the very first Dune game, a graphic adventure. But what's most interesting are the new things I learned. I didn't know for example that Dune 2 was based on the David Lynch film, not on Herbert's novel. It explains why Dune 2, a real time strategy game, is the "sequel" to Dune, a graphic adventure; sequels are always in the same genre, but not in this case. The reason for this has everything to do with ownership of the license to the film and / or the books; much like the Star Wars films, the Dune games have fallen victim to the changing of hands of "intellectual property rights". It's a messy but interesting history with many famous and infamous people and games, and as a bonus it takes the mind away from all the political and economic topics that dominate our current lifes as well as my posts. Dune, the movie coming in December (hopefully) gives us something exiting to look forward to, and Dune 2 gives us something exiting to look back at; I hope you'll enjoy it as much as I did.

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