Dune II Pre-release Screenshots

[MrFlibble]

Just noticed a definitely pre-release screenshot in a scan of a review from an old French gaming magazine. Take a look here, the Harkonnen Mentat debriefing screen in the top right corner has the following differences:

• What Radnor says to the player here is never featured in the final game.
  
• The text ends with the word <More> in orange colour. In the full game, the briefing text is presented sentence by sentence (unless a sentence is too long and has to be split into parts).
  
• Something is written right over the image on the screen.
  
• The image is used in defeat debriefings in the final version, while here the text suggests it's a victory debriefing.

The screenshot in the lower left corner also has some differences:

• While the player is Harkonnen, the "Mentat" and "Options" buttons are in green.
  
• The Harvester has a "Rest" order button instead of "Stop".
  
• There are Spice Silos in the player's base, and since the map is the same as the first Harkonnen mission, once can assume it's mission 1 here too; yet in the final version the Silos are only available starting from mission 2, although the Mentat database entry for this structure type can be accessed from mission 1.

[Nyerguds]

Ooh, nice find :)

Odd though... in the next page, the button text is red again:

http://download.abandonware.org/magazines/Joystick/joystick_numero032/page%20045.jpg

[MrFlibble]

Obviously those are already post-release screenshots.

I suppose they got the screenies either directly from Westwood, or from someone who got them directly from Westwood. A person I know who studies the history of Blizzard Entertainment told me that the guys at Blizzard in similar circumstances would randomly pick several screenshots from a special folder where they stored good visuals from the game if a magazine requested those. Such folders were updated more or less regularly, but not fast enough to keep up with the development process, so there were chances that some screenshots from various stages of development could get mixed up.

[X3M]

I remember the screen shots of tiberian sun where nod had the mammoth tanks. And this was printed on the back of the box! That time I thought it was a mission I couldn't find, or it was multiplayer material which I never was able to do. To bad I don't have that box any more. I only have the disks.

O wait, here it is:

http://sun.tiberiumweb.com/tsgallery/ingame_beta_screenshots/01.jpg

http://sun.tiberiumweb.com/tsgallery/ingame_beta_screenshots/06.jpg

Those are mammoth, aren't they?

And you can see that the power suit was still implemented.

So, pictures of the beta game on the alfa release in the Netherlands 0_o

http://sun.tiberiumweb.com/images_ingamebeta.php

I bought it to soon I guess :D.

[MrFlibble]

Actually the Mammoth tank in TS is not only featured in several campaign missions (mostly used by the Forgotten mutant faction), but IIRC you can also get it as a random unit from a crate in skirmish/multiplayer game, as an easter egg of sorts :)

[Nyerguds]

Well, Westwood has ALWAYS put photoshopped beta pics on their covers :P