While 1989's Herzog Zwei is arguably the first real-time strategy game ever and one of the most impressive game to ever bless the Genesis library, Dune set the standard for what would later become the entirety of the RTS landscape: Age of Empire, Command and Conquer, Starcraft, Warcraft all came from this 1992 masterpiece. It is impossible to fathom that a game like Dune 2 could make from the MS-DOS computer to the Mega Drive, with its massive map and simultaneous action requiring what would seem like a massive amount of processing power. The graphics and sounds don't compromise, being the same as the computer version, with digitized voice for every character actions. All 3 campaigns are available, totalling at over 20 hours of playtime. Dune II is undoubteably the most impressive Genesis port to ever fly under gamer's radar.

i guess it's a foundational early rts that i, everyone i knew and everyone i knew's dad played for countless hours, the direct precursor to command and conquer and so on and so forth

but it's also the best soundtrack in history and it could be glued to a videogame that sucked ass and still be amazing. (of course this is a nonsense sentiment because what's great about it is that it captures the sublime desolation of arrakis and the energy and aggression of the technofeudal armies locked in a forever war over its resources, but you get the idea.) frank klepacki & dwight okahara greatest of all time

also i guess people might not realize this today but the fact that operation desert storm, george bush senior's first invasion of iraq, was on the news all over the world all day every day in early 1991 -- something i have only a very hazy recollection of -- really contextualized this game and its world in a way nothing else could

this game in such a weird spot for me. it's a really bad game with ass controls, really bad voice acting that fucks up the tone of the game a lot at times, and a whole bunch of glitches that i'm not sure are from the actual game, or the emulator.
but on the other hand, the premise is really really interesting. love how you can either make the reporter(s) suffer for some good camera footage, or save them but have no footage at all. too bad I encountered a glitch somewhere near the end, where I kept clipping through the floor and I couldn't continue. it's a shame, if this game had a better dub (or no dub at all) and the game was less buggy (or the pcsx2 devs fix them) this game would definitely be up there as a goated horror game in my opinion