Dune II: The Building of a Dynasty

The Good
Although Dune II wasn't the first RTS game (preceded by Art of War, Herzog Zwei and few others), it was the breakthrough that made it all possible. Just like the Ford wasn't the first car, the assembly line Ford invented made it all possible.
The reason Dune II is the father of the modern RTS is because it featured so many innovations and improvements in just one game that it resembles its predecessors as much as you modern car resembles the first cars made. Some of Dune II features and innovations:

• Dynamic background music. The music seamlessly changes to fit what is currently going on - whether its a fierce battle, a possible threat or simply peaceful gathering of resources. And the music is very good on your basic Adlib.
• Truly beautiful VGA graphics. Every piece of graphics in Dune II was hand drawn, and the work was detailed. Although some of the earlier RTSs had some nice graphics - this is the first that actually utilized it so perfectly, since it had the technological edge of using the VGA's 256 colors.
• A choice of who you played. You could choose between the three houses. And the choice mattered since every house had a few exclusive weapons and different technological evolvement rate during the game.
• Simple resource management: Spice and Power. This paradigm remains true today in Tiberian sun and most other RTSs.
• Strong emphasis on the real time element. You had to think fast, react fast and move fast. This was new.
• Speech. The units spoke (if you had a soundcard with DAC), and let you know what happens with them. You also had someone to tell you what is happening: "construction complete", "enemy approaching, from the north!", "unit destroyed", "your base is under attack!" and so on. The speaking helper is taken for granted in today's games - but try to play without it once and see how you fare.

Dune II featured many other improvements, such as a mouse interface, the sandworm that eats mechanical units and the automatic turrets.

And it was fun. So much fun indeed. You'd play it for houres at a time, only stopping when you had to, then keep playing it again.

**The Bad**

• The interface, although advanced for its time, is very annoying by today's standards. You have to select a unit, then choose an order, then click on the target. And you could only select one unit at a time, making army movement a tedious process. Although this interface was the best at the time, the developers should have thought if this problem during beta-testing.
• The AI is pretty bad, even when compared to art of war, but that could be attributed to the limited amount of memory and CPU cycles available for the AI.
• The map variety is limited, and once you play all 9 missions with all 3 houses, there is nothing new.

**The Bottom Line**
A great game. Fun to play, even by today's standards. If you like RTSs, you should play it, if only to see how it all started.