There isn't a lot of modesty in a title such as Wargame of the Century. Though in the commercial computer gaming industry, which by 1987 had not even hit 15 years, it was a big deal to release a game with a history almost that long.
The history of Empire bears some similarity with a few other games from the mid to late 1970s. At least those which became enduring classics with a significant legacy such as this one. Originally developed on and for a university mainframe, it quickly gained popularity within student and staff circles… eating up considerable resources of this time-sharing system. Though where certain contemporaries took the plunge and founded their own companies, such as Infocom, Empire author Walter Bright got a "real" job in his original field – engineering.
The first strategy game I seriously played and loved was Dune II: Battle for Arrakis. Before that, I was absolutely not interested in this genre. I never found it particularly exciting to virtually push some combat units around on a map. But Dune 2 nevertheless cast its spell on me and has not let go of many of us to this day. A whole bunch of successors poured over the audience in the years that followed. However, these clones soon lost the appeal of the new. Perhaps I would have found these fresh ideas in other – less well-known – representatives of the genre back then. In search of such pearls, I enter the famous hexa fields of The Perfect General II.
A beginning is a very delicate time. So, how to start? With some dunes, which shall be stabilised by planting grass on them? With megalomaniacal visions for a cinematic realisation of a highly sophisticated science fiction novel? At the source of a flood of real time strategy games, or one step further at the archetype, which got copied ad nauseam? All of this led, on more or less direct ways, to Dune 2000, a remake of its predecessor Dune II: Battle for Arrakis, with an updated interface, strongly inspired by Command & Conquer, and aesthetics that look like taken right out of Lynch‘s take on the space opera. A melange of many great examples, but does it live up to them? Does it dare to step out of its source’s shadows? Does it offer anything new? Or is it just an unoriginal rehash, simple cash cow cosmetics for a classic game? Let’s take a look!