A development-hell port of Dune II: The Battle for Arrakis has finally completed!
Rewind to 1996. I’ve finished my (deferred) A-levels and it’s a long hot summer. When I’m not playing guitar or watching Euro 96, I’m playing games on an Amiga 1200 (in the midst of the home PC revolution). After a few months of K240 I swapped to a new strategy game – Dune II: The Battle for Arrakis, and was hooked.
A game of considerable depth and atmosphere and based on the Dune series of books, Dune II was a precursor to the Command & Conquer series (which I simply failed to take to when I bought that game 18 months later). Intelligent, with a tough-but-appreciable difficulty curve, Dune II remains memorable and influential among strategy game developers.
You can, then, imagine my surprise to discover that not only was there a partly-developed port of Dune II for the ZX Spectrum back in the day. Double that when, a few weeks later, it gets a release!
“This game has come a long way, it was programmed by Perestroika Software and made available in a beta version in 1997, then put away for many years, for popping up again in a newer version with a fully working and playable level 1 as participant in the “Your Game 5” contest in 2014. A fixed version was made by Demige in 2019 (added missing files v-a.obj, w-a.obj, d-a.obj, level load fixed), and in May 2021 it was made available for the public to download. [Now] a 100% full working version of “Dune II – The Battle for Arrakis” for the ZX Spectrum 128k, and with intro and levels it takes up 2 disks for the UK company Technology Research’s Beta Disk 128 system.”
You can play the ZX Spectrum version of Dune II: The Battle for Arakis online in a browser-based emulator, or download it. For physical systems you’ll need 128K.
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Christian Cawley is a writer and editor who covers consumer electronics, IT, and entertainment media. He has written for publications such as Computer Weekly, Linux Format, MakeUseOf.com, and Tech Radar.
He also produces podcasts, has a cigar box guitar, and of course, loves retro gaming.