In a bid to right the wrongs of the original release, Robert Koon, one of the programmers on the iconic 1993 RTS game Dune II, is currently working on remastering the classic for Amiga AGA and OCS versions.
Key Information:
- Dune II: Considered an influential RTS title based on Frank Herbert’s novels.
- Original Release: Initially released on Amiga, PC, and Mega Drive.
- Challenges with Amiga Version: Koon cites issues like extensive disk swapping, limited soundtrack presence, and no AGA-specific version.
- Remaster Goals: To recreate Dune II for the Amiga from scratch, addressing those shortcomings and more.
Why It Matters:
This remaster aims to provide a more refined experience for fans of the original game on the beloved Amiga platform. With an updated visual and audio experience, it promises to offer a closer-to-perfect version of one of the most influential RTS games ever made.
Do you think remastering classic games like Dune II for modern platforms can reignite interest in the genre and bring nostalgia to new audiences?
I think the PC version of Dune 2 was fine, so this project seems a bit obsolete. On the other hand I can only respect the perfectionism though.
At risk of embarrassing myself, what the hell is an Amiga?
Successor to Commodore 64
An early 16 bit home computer based on the 68000 microprocessor. Versions released from the late 80s to the early 90s. It earned a cult following because it was the first home computer to have arcade quality graphics and sound (80s and 90s arcade games, obs).
It had a decent OS and business software, but at heart it was a gaming computer. It lost out to the home consoles, partly because as a fully fledged computer, piracy was rife, so big games developers moved to the very locked-down games consoles instead.
That’s really neat, I’ve played a few MS-DOS era games but I didn’t think that sort of home computer hardware was around in the mid 80s.
The Commodore Amiga is a family of personal computers that were available from 1985. They used the Motorolla 6800 family of CPUs, the main competitor to Intel’s x86 CPUs at the time.
The Amiga is held in great esteem, in no small part due to its innovative design featuring the use of co-processors. The co-processors had their own names, such as Paula, the sound co-processor.
Ah, now Commodores are a name that everybody recognizes.
Late 80s/Early 90s computer. Not the architecture we use today, but a competitor to what we use.
These devices are when PCs looked more like something you would recognise today, a bulky beige box with a big monitor.
My 80’s computer was a big bulky keyboard with a big monitor, lacking the big separate box (not an Amiga though). Is that what you meant with this?
I loved my Amiga 500, I liked the gaming part, but mostly made music on it all day every day.
Fantastic machine that had a 4 channel audio Paula chip and with the right software called OctaMED, turned into an 8 channel music studio. I could sample, mix, hook up external MIDI hardware. It was the heart of my mini home studio back in the day.
Audio on the Amiga was way ahead of its time. I had a device for my A500 that you could plug in an RCA cable and sample audio. I plugged my VCR into it and recorded all the best lines from Aliens and some other movies and shared them with my friends. Game over man, game over!
And I like to fire up my Amiga emulator and play some of my old mods once in a while. They still sound good.
Word!
I had the Techno Sound Turbo.
Friend said his IBM pc could do music…bleep bleep from the motherboard speakers, lmao. Everything changed with the 16bit Soundblasters though. My first was an AWE32, it was like a betrayal to Paula.
It was Atari ST or Amiga for music back then. The Atari didn’t have the sampling capabilities of the A500 until the Atari Falcon, but Atari had Cubase, and if you had a shitload of money for outboard gear, Atari was the way to go because it was compatible with most studio’s at the time just as Protools today.
Before I had an Amiga 500 my fosterdad had a C64 with Steinberg Pro 16 and a MIDEX interface, a Fostex 8-track tape machine and outboard gear back in the 80s where I learned how to produce music. He had a DX-7, drumtraks and six-trak from sequential along effect pedals and what not.
Still making music on the Amiga seemed less complicated, more spontanious, my own thing so to say and a fraction of the money.
I wish I have the energy and enthusiasm for equipment and music I had back then…I have the Akai S-1100 samplers I could not afford and stuff now, they are all in storage, minimal setup now.
Yeah I am rambling on, please forgive me.
Nothing to forgive, I love hearing about cool stuff people did with their Amigas! Thanks for sharing.
Finally a reason to upgrade from my C64!
Used to play a whole lot of Dune II when I was a kid. Played on Windows though. Since the remaster is only for Amiga, does this mean that the Windows version didn’t need any of the things that is being fixed?
Windows has OpenRA, which is a modern open-source engine that runs Dune II, C&C, and RA. It also has WIP support for TibSun and RA2, though they can’t distribute the content for those as easily.
Neat. Not the version I played, and arguably a lot of those issues were fixed in the PC port. But then, there are a lot more options for accurate hardware-level emulation and preservation of period-appropriate Amiga than the much muddier explosion of PC specs, so it’s weirdly a cleaner way to preserve an optimal version.
I’m never sure how much to push early releases like these, though. Is the clumsy one-unit-at-a-time approach to Dune 2 worth messing with? Or do you just go play the (extremely good) remaster of Command & Conquer at that point?
