I'm a fan of the books but never played any of the games. If one or more showed up here I'd probably give them a shot.

I'd buying pretty much any Dune game released here. I confess to still not understanding why either the company would be reluctant to release the games. Clearly they were able to reach an accord before in order to have the games made and sold the first time around. The only reason I can think that they might want to hold back is if they are planning a new property in the arena.

I don't get it, but then, I don't get most of the "logic" of the business world.

Spot on. Said "logic" is usually downright stupid. Baffling so.

It's more likely that the companies are still thinking in terms of "exclusive rights" rather than "release rights". So EA may be thinking it costs too much for the exclusive right to make and release Dune games rather than asking how much it would cost for the rights to release the games it already owns....

That makes sense, albeit in the twisted way that modern business makes any kind of sense. Still, you think by now companies would have worked out a way to "grandfather" existing products after a period of time, so that such contractual negotiations are less of a concern. But then that would take away from the fun of their cutthroat dealings with each other, I suppose.

I have both Dune 1 and 2 running in DOSBox just fine. In fact, the DOSBox website uses Dune 2 graphics in its title.
http://www.dosbox.com/
Shouldn't be a problem running either of them.

IIRC, Dune and Dune II were the very first DOSBox-compatible games (or at least they were made compatible in the early DOSBox versions).

it's very often I don't understand those publishers way of thinking - people want to buy game they can easily pirate, but those shitheads don't want to sign a contract because of what exactly????

As a FYI, the rights to Dune 1 aren't held by EA, but to the best of my knowledge by Nordic Games (maybe Thom can shed some light on this situation?)

The first Dune game was an adventure game published by Virgin Interactive. Dune II is the first game by Westwood and was also published by Virgin. Dune 2000 was (co???)developed by Intelligent Games and published by Virgin. It wasn't until a year after Dune 2000 that EA started publishing it due to purchase of Westwood Studios. This was followed by Emperor: Battle for Dune.

EA seems to be holding the game rights to both Dune 2000 and Emperor. The game rights to Dune and Dune II however aren't as clearly defined. Either way the licensing rights to the franchise are held by Herbert Properties and an agreement would have to be made on that front. I wouldn't doubt that the rights to Dune II might have changed hands when Westwood was sold, but I doubt that the original Dune was included. Avalon bought Virgin Interactive then went bankrupt themselves the same year as Titus Interactive (parent company) went under. So the rights to the original Dune might be in worse shape than the nightmare that is NOLF...

Hmm, that's a good point I never even thought of. Cryo developed Dune, but Westwood dev'd Dune 2 and onward it seems.

Honestly, though, it's GOG's job to ultimately figure this out.

LOL I know, right. Makes no sense. It's like they are saying "No, we don't want your money because....well...we don't want your money, okay!" *Publisher walks away and slams the door on their way out*

"Old games making money" is concept that is still pretty foreign idea for many publishers.. Then again, it seems Steam is the dumping ground for just about every random game ever created these days - so i wouldnt too surprised if something like Dune was suddenly there -_-

and what about Cryo's 2001 Dune? :)

I own every Dune game so I decided to check how they work on Windows 7 (32-bit).

Dune 1 and 2 (both CD versions) worked flawlessly in DOSBox.

Dune 2000 had a little issue with the installer - the default folder was Dune2000 I've changed it to Dune 2000 (with a space) and the game wouldn't run. I reinstalled it and used the default name it ran fine out of the box. I tried to install widescreen patch and got it to run with 1366x768 resolution without any problems. And man, it does look good now!

I couldn't check Emperor because my friend has my CDs but I should get it back soon (I'll test it then and let you know)

I refuse to check if Frank Herbert's Dune runs fine because I refuse to acknowledge that this game exist ;P If I ever end up in gamers' hell I'll be forced to play it over and over again.


On the side note: even though I have them I would buy them in a heartbeat if they appeared here.