Every 3-4 years I play through this game again for the nostalgia factor, the dynamic music, and because I still find it fun to play.

I agree about this being a mandatory candidate to play.

I don't agree about gameplay versus presentation, on the other hand. It was extremely flashy for its time, graphics are way above most of the competitors (well done, Ren & Aaron), sound and music are changing according the the situation and so on. Gameplay, on the other hand, is fairly limited once the novelty is gone.

I own the game (it was part of the "10th anniversary collection of Westwood"). IMO the game is important because it the grandfather of the "command & Conquer" series. Therefor it is a game worth playing to see the roots of this highly influential series.

To the game itself: I play it now and then (not such a big strategy fan!) and I enjoy its focus on gameplay and not presentation.

In its time a game you should have played, now a jewel of long gone times.

Elie Arabian was hired end of 92, if he worked
on Dune II it was minimal.
Myself and Aaron Powell did 98% of the graphics.

Ren

Same for me, obviously - it's just too bad

Maybe not in all levels, but I remember those things appeared, but well, I haven't replayed the game in a long time.

Are you sure? I certainly do remember those 'things' which 'openend' a new spice field when shot at, but I also remember many times when I was just completely broke, because there wasn't anything to harvest anymore.

Fun (or not so fun back then) fact: This game runs on an Amiga 500. The emphasis is on 'runs', however. Later levels are more like watching a frozen frame... wait, I've seen something move! Completely unplayable on stock models.

In the PC version once a spice field was depleted a pre-spice mound appeared. If you shot to it, or a unit passed over it, it exploded, but gave little spice compared to what was before.

There is a remake, Dune 2000, but it is too similar to Command and Conquer, I do not like the changes like that having more than one units building only serves for training faster, not for training more at the same time.

I've played the genesis/megadrive version, but not any of the computer versions. I liked it a lot, but agree that it needed some sort of skirmish mode. It also needed a non-fixed total income, ie either have some second way to get cash besides harvesting spice, or have the spice fields renew themselves occaisionally.

Has anyone tried any of the dune 2 clones?
http://users.i.com.ua/~amonit/main/edune.htm
http://sourceforge.net/projects/dunelegacy/
http://dune2.workpad.com/

A game which aged extremely badly. Although it impressed because of its technical merits when it was new, I just can't get myself to seriously play it these days. It's just repetetive, fussy and in the end unchallenging.

Also: One of the two games responsible for the whole industry going down the drain. Because of its success, everybody and their dog wanted to imitate it, resulting in approximately 50% of all games being identical to this one for a long time (the other 50% being Doom clones).

Feel free to share anything about Dune II: The Building of a Dynasty (1992) here!