HOW DUNE II WAS INSPIRED BY THE MAC DESKTOP
Just appearing online is Edge magazine’s excellent ‘making of’ article on Dune II — the game that would essentially birth the real-time strategy genre — with the magazine noting upon a recent replay that “the same basic viewpoint, interface, controls and gameplay underpinning Dune II are still being reused today, with only the most minimal level of evolutionary advancement.”
Most interestingly, the feature goes on to quote producer Brett Sperry, who reveals that the game was less inspired by Herzog Zwei, as is often reported, but rather something much more mundane:
“Herzog Zwei was a lot of fun, but I have to say the other inspiration for Dune II was the Mac software interface. The whole design/interface dynamics of mouse clicking and selecting desktop items got me thinking, ‘Why not allow the same inside the game environment? Why not a context-sensitive playfield? To hell with all these hot keys, to hell with keyboard as the primary means of manipulating the game!’”
The Making of… Dune II [Edge Online]
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