9/3/20- Dune II: The Building of a Dynasty (1992)

Dune II: The Building of a Dynasty (1992) by Westwood Studios and published by Virgin Games for DOS, Amiga, and Genesis. The first Real-Time-Strategy game is generally credited to Herzog Zwei for Genesis, which served as inspiration for this game, a sort of continuation of Frank Herbert’s seminal novel. While this doesn’t have *much* of a plot, it lifts the world and concepts, with the developers believing that the most interesting role the player could have was in managing the industry of the all-important spice rather than engaging in bouts of political intrigue. You choose from one of three factions, the noble Atreides, the tricky Ordos, or the ruthless Harkonnen, then are tasked by your advisor to complete various missions involving a quota of profit from your spice harvesting endeavors. This was the first game to focus on gathering resources to create units, technology trees, and even the basic user interface which would become staples of the genre. The actual gameplay is pretty engrossing; your win condition is tied to your profits, but you need to spend to build structures and produce units to protect them. There’s a constant back-and-forth until you breathe a sigh of relief as you hit your quota. Enemy bases pose an ever-increasing threat the further you delve into the missions, and if you aren’t prepared for an attack, you will get wiped out in no time. There’s a fairly extensive set of buildings and units to produce to generate power, process spice, train soldiers, and store your resources lest you leave some to waste. Overall, this game has aged pretty well, and doesn’t even suffer from the awkward camera controls that many overhead titles from this era fall victim to. If you’re a fan of Dune, or even just RTS games, this is a cool piece of history.