THE HISTORY OF DUNE
Dune is once again on our minds. The silver screen has been rocked by the latest rendition of Frank Herbert’s visually rich sci-fi novels, and both fans and newcomers to its universe are praising Denis Villeneuve’s stylistic representation of a world that means so much to so many. It’s one of those book adaptations that constantly finds it way back into the public eye, and we’re all for it. But while fans of the books typically have the films or miniseries for their imaginations to be realised, gamers have had a different understanding of Dune’s complex sci-fi story.
Of course, at this point anyone reading this magazine likely already has some awareness of just how important Dune has been for gaming. While there have been a decent number of Dune games, the history of strategy games – and in particular realtime strategy – owes an incredible amount to Frank Herbert’s warring world of Arrakis. If not for the novels’ overarching focus on the battle for resources and its Great Spice War, then perhaps there never would have been a discussion at Westwood that ultimately led to Dune II and, through that, the game that would forge the foundation of the RTS genre as we would go on to know it.
Frank Herbert’s rich fantasy series primarily made its way to its new interactive space thanks to Virgin Interactive, which was pushing hard to continue its expansion into the videogame industry and was looking for suitable licences to secure. Martin Alper, who had founded Mastertronic (that later went on to become Virgin Interactive), had adored the books and was curious about turning its world into a videogame. It wasn’t an easy task however, largely due to the then-recent death of Frank Herbert and the fact that the adaptation rights were obscured behind numerous film production companies. Martin persevered however and was eventually able to secure the rights for a game version of , meaning production could begin. “When I joined Virgin, Martin had already licensed along with rights to a video clip of Virginia Madsen from the movie,” explains Stephen Clarke-Willson, adding that at this point, “the UK office had started development of the game.” This
