Format: Sega CD
Genre: Adventure
Developer: Cryo
Publisher: Virgin Games

Frank Herbert's strangely wonderful novel, followed by David Lynch's strangely awful movie, vividly paint the arid, sand-blasted, mirage-filled setting of Arrakis. The artists for this video game adaptation merely had to follow form, and the resulting rolling desert and purple-hued sietches, accompanied by stellar animated-- and splendidly lip-synced!-- character face art creates bundles of atmosphere. It's too bad then that the reduction to sixty four colors puts this Sega CD port very much behind its DOS and Amiga counterparts.

Dune's sound track is as bizarre as the film the game is meant to imitate; it plinks and plunks up and down the scale, accompanied by sitar-like string plucking and experimental percussion effects. It's unorthodox but rather genius in the way it fits the game's almost abstract levels of tribal action, while it also makes good use of the Sega CD's added sound hardware. Like its DOS CD-ROM counterpart, this Sega CD version is fully voice acted as well, and the work is rather phenomenal, with the voice intonations and added reverb effects mimicking Herbert's oddball universe superbly.

Dune's user interface was designed with a mouse in mind, and the game's pacing was balanced accordingly. So, this console version's dpad-snapping-to-buttons cursor is somewhat cumbersome and slow, and does disturb the rhythm. The map frustratingly splits its data between two separate screens-- and when Paul can only interact with nearby units, things become unnecessarily fussy. That said, the core game loop of exploring for sietches while engaging in point-and-click adventure exploits translates in its entirety to Sega's television-oriented platform.

After this title's storied and tortured development cycle, the DOS and Amiga "Monkey Island"-meets-"Herzog Zwei" end products were surprisingly great, and rightfully heralded. This Sega CD port has the full-motion video ornithopter and worm enhancements of the DOS CD-ROM rendition, along with the voice acting-- but really suffers from the lack of a mouse, and by the reduction in screen colors. Even with these shortcomings though, Dune's idiosyncratic gameplay mechanics and aesthetic sensibilities make for an experience that no player will soon forget.