For this month's "Maps Of The Month" featurette, I wish to draw your attention to mechaskrom's Dune II: The Building Of A Dynasty (PC) maps.
Arrakis, a harsh desert planet, is the source of the valuable commodity known as "spice". Spice has health benefits, including the extension of life expectancy, and can alter the mind, like expanding sensory perceptions and even foresight. Guild Navigators depend on spice for the prescience required for safe interstellar travel. Spice isn't so easy to harvest and refine, as there are massive sandworms under the surface, and the native Fremen oppose off-worlders. Even with these obstacles, the Houses of Atreides, Ordos, and Harkonnen seek to command and conquer Arrakis, as Baron Harkonnen says, "he who controls the spice, controls the universe."
A few years before the first game in their Command & Conquer series, Westwood Studios released Dune II: The Building Of A Dynasty, an earlier RTS (real-time strategy) game. It even predates WarCraft (by Blizzard). So besides building a dynasty, it was also pioneering a genre. Herzog Zwei (by Technosoft) on the Sega Genesis may have come before, but Dune II is certainly meaningful in the history of the genre on PCs, where many RTSes make their home.
So to recognize the effort put into mapping this genre trailblazer, mechaskrom's Dune II: The Building Of A Dynasty (PC) maps will be known as VGMaps.com's Maps Of The Month for May 2024.
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