War begins as deputations from all three Houses arrive on Arrakis. To achieve this, he now offers the sole governorship of Arrakis to the House (huge nobleman family/cartel) which delivers the most spice for him out of House Atreides, Harkonnen and Ordos.

Spoiler warning! Plot and/or ending details follow.Įmperor Frederick IV of House Corrino is desperate for the harvesting of the valuable spice melange, only found on the planet Arrakis, to pay off all of his debt incurred on internecine wars with family members. Striking a balance between complexity and innovation, it was a huge success and laid the foundation for the coming Command and Conquer (which was nicknamed 'Dune III' by some fans and detractors), the Warcraft series, and many other RTS games. As such, Dune II is the founder of the RTS genre in its modern form. While not the first real-time strategy (RTS) game (it was preceded by Herzog Zwei), Dune II established a format that would be followed for years to come, and is the first to use the mouse to move units, giving much fluid interaction. A new house, House Ordos (not found in the novels or film), appears in this game even though it is mentioned only once in the non-canon Dune Encyclopedia.

Both games were based upon David Lynch's 1984 movie Dune, which was in turn taken from Frank Herbert's science fiction novel of the same name. It is a loose sequel of the computer strategy game Dune (although it shared no storyline or gameplay).

This article is based largely on the Wikipedia article on Dune II.ĭune II: The Building of a Dynasty (also known as Dune II: The Battle for Arrakis in Europe, and simply Dune: The Battle for Arrakis in the Sega Mega Drive/Genesis port) is a Dune computer game, released in 1992 by Westwood Studios.

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