The game starts off as an adventure title, with Paul Atreides getting familiar with the Atreides household and fly between locations in the ornithopter while earning the trust of the Fremen in their cave-like homes called sietches. Cryo obviously took the aesthetics from the film from Kyle Mclachlan’s face to Sting’s portrait, but generally, every portrait and graphic here is brand-new and inspired by the novel. One reason why some niche circles adore it was because it was faithful to the first book from Frank Herbert. But was Cryo’s Dune terrible? Far from it it was a decent adventure-slash-strategy hybrid sci-fi title that is quite unique at the time. Many would assume that Dune II was remembered more fondly than Cryo’s Dune because it was the better game. Talks were made between Cryo’s devs and Virgin founder Martin Alper, and somehow or other they decided to just finish up Cryo’s Dune and ship it in 1992. When Sega bought over Virgin’s European division, around that time the American division of Virgin found out about Cryo.
#DUNE 2000 GAME REVIEW LICENSE#
They handed the license to Westwood you already know how that went.īut what Virgin didn’t know then was that Cryo was still developing the game in secret. The history behind it was such: Cryo was working on the game 1989, but was shelved in 1990 because its publisher Virgin Interactive decided halfway to cancel the game because they believed its mix of adventure and strategy wouldn’t succeed.
The answer was simple: it was clearly overshadowed by Westwood’s efforts. Rarely, however, does anyone ever bring up the 1992 Dune adventure game made by French developer Cryo that came out the same year as Dune II. Or Emperor: Battle of Dune and its goofy live-action cutscenes which is what happens when a David Lynch production was on a tight budget. When the subject of Dune and video games crop up, it’s either Dune II or Dune 2000. After Virgin acquired the license from the 1984 Dune film’s production house (via the latter’s desperate attempt to sell off its licenses to stave off bankruptcy), they set about making Dune games. The 1992 Dune II: Battle for Arrakis title from Virgin and Westwood laid the foundations of real-time strategy games without it, you wouldn’t be enjoying your Warcrafts, your Command & Conquers, and your Supreme Commanders. Oh, and he eventually gains superpowers and fights real good, so he’s kind of the first shonen hero of sorts.Īnd with that ever-expanding sci-fi plot, making video games out of it is a no-brainer. Not only do they have to deal with the takeover attempts of House Harkonnen and Machiavellian plots from the Emperor, but our hero Paul will need to accept his destiny in leading Arrakis’ inhabitants, the Fremen, as their saviour. The plot to Dune is as epic as they come: a young Paul Atreides and the family House he’s from are the latest in line to rule the planet Arrakis to mine the rare commodity named melange (dubbed “spice).
To celebrate the reveal of the latest film adaptation of Frank Herbert’s Dune directed by Denis Villeneuve and starring that one kid in Call Me By Your Name, as well as the film’s release, I’d like to bring up Dune’s video game adaptations. Brought forward to 2021 since the film Dune is out now in theatres.
Article originally published in October 2020.
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