Long before *Dune II* helped define the RTS genre, Cryo’s *Dune* was doing something much harder to categorize. Part adventure game, part strategy game, part planetary management sim, it remains one of those strange experiments that nobody ever really repeated. Maybe they should.
It was also one of my earliest PC games, so Arrakis was familiar to me long before I finally saw David Lynch’s film. By the time I watched it, the characters, locations and visual style already felt like old acquaintances. This game actually made me find the book as a kid and read it... a hard read but well worth it.
Then there is the music. Stéphane Picq’s soundtrack is legendary, and the "Spice Opera" available online is a frequent visitor in my listening queue.
And if GOG ever gets *Dune*, I hope they preserve **both** major PC releases as others have noted.
The later CD-ROM edition added speech and pre-rendered sequences, but not everyone considers those improvements. The original floppy release has a cleaner, quieter presentation and retains several atmospheric touches that were changed for CD. There is a good argument for preserving both rather than deciding that the technically newer version automatically replaces the older one. Don't get me wrong, the cutscenes are "cool" but a little out of place.
More than thirty years later, *Dune* still feels unusual. It wasn’t simply the game before *Dune II*; it was its own peculiar branch of game design that largely ended with it.
A genuine classic, and absolutely worth preserving properly.