Play Dune II: The Battle for Arrakis Online

Dune II: The Battle for Arrakis is the game that basically taught every RTS after it how to work. You land on this brutal desert planet, pick one of three factions (I always went Ordos—something about their weird tech just clicked for me), and then it's all about scrambling for spice while trying not to get your harvesters eaten by sandworms.

The first time I played, I lost three harvesters in a row because I didn’t realize worms home in on movement. Lesson learned: spread them out. The factions actually play differently—Harkonnen brute force, Atreides balanced, Ordos with tricks like poison gas—and figuring out how to rush or outmaneuver the AI still feels satisfying, even if the pathfinding makes units occasionally wander into walls.

Yeah, it’s janky by today’s standards, but there’s something raw and exciting about it. That moment when your first missile tank rolls off the factory line? Pure power trip. Just don’t forget to build turrets—the CPU loves to send random squads to wreck your spice fields.

Each game uses different controls, most DOS games use the keyboard arrows. Some will use the mouse , "Alt" ,"Enter" and "Space bar".