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- Dune 2: the building of a dynasty -  
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As far as genre defining games go you won't get any better example than
this one. Dune 2: the building of a dynasty is a realtime strategy game
where you can built and control your units directly into battle against
your enemies. Not only units but you will have to built powerplants and
factories that can manufacture vehicles as well as gather money to build
it all. The entire game takes place on dune a planet that is a huge desert
and the only place in the universe to contain spice which is used for
space travel. Now you must fight against two other houses for control
of dune and whoever controls dune controls the spice and the entire universe.
You can select from three houses to control: the noble Atreides, the insidious
Ordos and the evil Harkonnen. The Harkonnen prefer heavy weapons and weapons
of mass destruction, the Ordus prefer sabotage and small but fast weapons
and the Atreides use airpower and tanks that use sound as a weapon. Each
has their own strategies and you will have to use their special weapons
to their fullest to win. Things don't start out so hectic though and the
first thing to do is collect some credits for you house. Credits are made
from collecting spice with a harvester and then returning it to the processing
plant. You'll first have to build a powerplant to be able to build any
other buildings. Later when you go on the offensive you will get troops
and quads and when things get nasty tanks and missile launchers. These
will come gradually so you will not be overwhelmed with new units each
level. At later levels the house's special weapons will come into play
and they have to be deployed with care because there are a maximum of
25 units you can make.
The first two levels only require you to harvest spice but all levels
after that require you to destroy all enemy units on the level. Sometimes
this requires a bit of searching as a single soldier hiding in the desert
is enough to stop you from completing the level. Before a level begins
your mentat or instructor will give you the lowdown on the level and present
any new untits that you can manufacture. During a level you can ask him
for some basic advice and also information about structures and vehicles.
The building of the base and structures falls entirely in your hands though
and there are plenty of things that you need to build. Along with the
standard contructional facilities you can also build walls and turrets
for defence. Later on you can build a mobile construction yard that can
function autonimously from your main base should it be destoyed. You can
only build on land but spice is only available in patches on the sand
so you'll have to find it. The bad news is that the Shai-hulud, the giant
sandworms, also live there and they can easily eat an entire vehicle in
one gulp but sadly there is no real defence against these beasts so you'll
just have to hope for the best.The Harkonnen and Atreides are quite evenly
matched but the most difficult house is without a doubt the Ordos, they
cannot build rocket launchers at all and they will have access to quads
and tanks later than the other two houses. By using a starport to buy
some helps a bit but they still have a disadvantage in my eyes.
Dune 2 is a fantastic game and all realtime strategy games still take
the basic idea from this one. There are however numerous bugs and exploits
that both you and the computer can use the most obvious of which is that
the computer has an endless supply of credits. Others are quite strange
like setting the game speed to lower/faster will change the range of the
Atreides sonic tank which can be used by you both for advantage when attacking
as well as when an enemy sonic tank attacks you. Dispite these bugs the
game is still very enjoyable, it might not be as polished as later RTS
games but this is the one that started it all. No gamer should be without
this game.
Overal rating: 9/10
Erde Kaiser
Dune 2: the building of a dynasty was released for three different systems here are some notes:
| DOS |
Released
in 1992.
This is the original 1.0 version, the 1.07 patch is a lot harder and
fixes some bugs but at the same time adds more of them. Also this
particular version is patched so that you build items much faster
than normally. |
Megadrive/
Genesis |
Released
in 1993.
Playing this type of game without a mouse is not so good but the entire
is still there. Since the first dune was never released on console
this version is called Dune battle for Arrakis. |
| Others |
This
version is not available.
Amiga released in 1993, every version I tried failed with an emulator. |
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Date added |
Mar-10-2006 22:08 |
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Name |
Dune 2: the building of a dynasty |
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Developer |
Westwood
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Publisher |
Virgin
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First released |
1992 |
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Genre |
Strategy
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Download |
MS-DOS, filesize: 3913 Kb
Sega Megadrive, filesize: 594 Kb
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Links |
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Manual |
Download manual for Dune 2: the building of a dynasty
, filesize: 18 Kb
Zip contains a text manual. |
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Solve / Docs |
No solve available
Get level codes for the megadrive version here
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Sitestats
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03-Sep-2010
Games: 404
Utils: 30
Manuals: 193
Solves: 83
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