Dune II: Battle For Arrakis (1992)
Dune II: Battle For Arrakis is a 1992 strategy video game made by Westwood Studios.
This is Dune II on the console, the game that taught a generation how to right-click an army into existence. You take command of one of three noble Houses, Atreides, Harkonnen or Ordos, and fight for control of Arrakis, the desert planet where the spice melange is the only prize that matters. Harvest spice, spend it on refineries and tanks and troopers, and grind the rival Houses off the map. It runs loose on Frank Herbert's universe, keeping the sandworms and the feuding dynasties while inventing the base-building rhythm that real-time strategy has followed ever since.
Quick answers
What is Dune II: Battle For Arrakis about?
This is Dune II on the console, the game that taught a generation how to right-click an army into existence. You take command of one of three noble Houses, Atreides, Harkonnen or Ordos, and fight for control of Arrakis, the desert planet where the spice melange is the only prize that matters. Harvest spice, spend it on refineries and tanks and troopers, and grind the rival Houses off the map. It runs loose on Frank Herbert's universe, keeping the sandworms and the feuding dynasties while inventing the base-building rhythm that real-time strategy has followed ever since.
When was Dune II: Battle For Arrakis released?
Dune II: Battle For Arrakis was released on 1 December 1992.
Who made Dune II: Battle For Arrakis?
Dune II: Battle For Arrakis was made by Westwood Studios.
Similar games
Dune II: Battle For Arrakis in our writing
- Companion guide: Deserts & the Wasteland
- Companion guide: Westwood Studios: The Studio That Invented Real-Time Strategy
A few thoughts on Dune II: Battle For Arrakis
To sink into the world it borrows, Dune: Part Two gives you Arrakis, spice and the warring Houses at full cinematic scale, with the sandworms rendered the way this old game could only hint at. It is the rare case where a landmark film and a landmark strategy game share the same stretch of desert.
Real-time strategy classics of armies and resources
Dune II basically invented the modern RTS, teaching a generation to harvest, build a base and swarm the enemy in real time. Warcraft III, StarCraft II and both Age of Empires games are its direct descendants, and Heroes of Might and Magic III carries the same addiction to squeezing an economy into an army.
Grand strategy and city-building empires
If commanding Arrakis appeals more than the twitch of battle, these slow the clock down. Civilization V and VI let you steer a people across millennia, Cities: Skylines turns you into an urban planner, and The Sims 4 shrinks that god's-eye control to a single household you shape from above.