Dune II

The player takes the role of the commander of one of the three interplanetary houses, the Atreides, the Harkonnen or the Ordos, with the objective of wresting control of Arrakis from the other two houses. House Ordos is not featured in the Dune novels and is mentioned only in the non-canon The Dune Encyclopedia. The basic strategy in the game is to harvest spice from the treacherous sand dunes using a harvester vehicle, convert the spice into credits via a refinery, and to build military units with these acquired credits in order to fend off and destroy the enemy.

The game map initially starts with a fog of war covering all area which is not covered by the player's units range of view. As the units explore the map, the darkness is removed. Unlike later games such as Warcraft II: Tides of Darkness, the fog of war is lifted forever with initial exploration; it does not become dark once more when units leave the area.

Emperor Frederick IV of House Corrino is desperate for the harvesting of the valuable drug melange (also known as "the spice"), found only on the planet Arrakis, to pay off all of his debt incurred on internecine wars with family members. To achieve this, he offers the sole governorship of Arrakis to whichever of the three Houses (Atreides, Harkonnen, and Ordos, the latter of which previously only appeared in the Dune Encyclopedia which is not considered canonical) delivers the most spice for him. War begins as deputations from all three Houses arrive on Arrakis.

The player is a military commander from a House of their choice. In the first few missions, the objectives are to successfully establish a base on an unoccupied territory of Arrakis, while harvesting spice and defending the base from enemy incursions. Later, as the three Houses begin moving against each other territories, missions will increasingly focus on destroying or capturing enemy bases. When the player dominates Arrakis on the world map, the two other enemy factions form a temporary alliance with the remnants of their armies.

According to Virgin Interactive Entertainment vice president Stephen Clarke-Willson in 1998, the development of Dune II began when Virgin Interactive Entertainment planned to cancel the production of Cryo Interactive's adventure game Dune, after which he was given the task of figuring out what to do with the Dune license. After reading the original Dune novel, he decided that "from a gaming point-of-view the real stress was the battle to control the spice", so a resource-based strategy video game would be a good idea. It was around this time that employee Graeme Devine (who later founded Trilobyte) introduced to everyone at the Virgin office a real-time strategy game on the Sega Genesis / Mega Drive console called Herzog Zwei (1989). Clarke-Willson described it as a game where the player "kept clicking on stuff and then zooming off to another part of the screen.

It was very hard to keep track of what was going on as an observer. Still, everyone liked it, it had fast action, and it was a strategy game". Virgin staff, including Clarke-Willson and Seth Mendelsohn (who later worked on the Ultima series), then went to Westwood Studios to talk about making a Dune game. According to Clarke-Willson, "Westwood agreed to make a resource strategy game based on Dune, and agreed to look at Herzog Zwei for design ideas".

According to Westwood Studios, Dune II was a commercial success, with global sales in excess of 250,000 units by November 1996.

Computer Gaming World in 1993 stated that the PC version of Dune II "easily outshines its predecessor in terms of game play ... a real gem", with "arguably the most outstanding sound and graphics ever to appear in a strategy game of its kind". A February 1994 survey of space war games gave it a grade of B+, stating that without online play, there was little replayability once each House conquered the planet, but a May 1994 survey of strategic space games set in the year 2000 and later gave the game five stars out of five, describing it as "a wargame par excellence; superb graphics and sound make an enjoyable gaming experience". Electronic Games gave the game a 92% score.

Dune II was one of the most influential games in the real-time strategy genre, particularly in Westwood's own Command & Conquer series. Though not every feature was unique, its specific combination of a fog of war, mouse-based military micromanagement, and an economic model of resource-gathering and base-building became the hallmark of the RTS genre. It served as the template for subsequent real-time strategy games. Warcraft: Orcs & Humans, the first game published by Blizzard Entertainment, was developed by outright copying all artwork from Dune II and then redesigning each asset, though it accidentally retained the font of Dune II. Chris Taylor has stated that Dune II and Command & Conquer were great inspirations, driving him to leave Electronic Arts to create Total Annihilation.

Dune II also led to direct sequels: Westwood released a semi-remake for Windows in 1998 as Dune 2000, along with a PlayStation port in the same year. Westwood subsequently released Emperor: Battle for Dune in 2001. There are also fan-made game engine recreations, like Dune Legacy, OpenDUNE and Dune Dynasty, which aim for improved usability and controls while not changing the gameplay.