Trivia / Dune II

• Completely Different Title: The subtitle of the Russian version literally means Battle of Ancient Dynasties.
• Dummied Out: In addition to the three playable houses, the Sardaukar and the Fremen, Dune II has data for a sixth faction, the Mercenaries, but their units never appear in-game.
• Executive Meddling: Word of God said Virgin Interactive forced them to have a "II" in the title, even though there's no connection between their game and Dune made by Cryo Interactive.
• Germans Love David Hasselhoff: A relatively obscure Mega Drive/Genesis port of the game is widely beloved in Russia and other ex-USSR states, to the point of taking second place in a "Greatest 8bit/16bit games" poll organized by Emu-Land.net, the biggest retro gaming site in the region. The community for this particular version of the game is still fairly strong within the country, with projects ranging from complex mods to attempts to "port the port" to the ZX Spectrum.
• Screwed by the Lawyers:
  • Wonder why these games have yet to see a rerelease on GOG? The Dune license is not only in licensing hell at the moment, but it is partially owned by the Frank Herbert estate. GOG, in fact, approached them for said rerelease only to be greeted with a firm "No!" So, to this day, your best bet for ever playing the grandfather of all RTS games (or, for that matter, any of the Dune games) is to either keep circulating those floppies and CDs or go the Abandonware route.
  • A complete, free-to-play but unauthorized porting of Dune II for Android was available on the Play Store. It was tolerated for a short while, but it was pulled out when its author inserted microtransactions in the game (to call as reinforcement high-tier units regardless of whether they're supposed to be available in-game or not), basically making money out of something they weren't even authorized to publish at all.

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