Fans of Dune completely missed out on the licensing craze of the Atari 2600 days. Partly because of that pesky gaming crash that was partially due to the licensing craze but also to when the movie released (late 1984). Maybe if Atari was still financially able, there could have been a chance they would have licensed Dune for the Atari 7800 but well, if you know that history, you know how confused Atari was on their own console. Anyways, fans being fans, Dune fans can now play a hyper focused part of Dune on their Atari 2600. Spice Harvester certainly has a self-explanatory name. You have one goal here.
Capturing the Essence of Dune
Anyone that has never heard of the Atari 2600 is probably wondering what is so interesting here. Spice Harvester seemingly has very little to offer – just some dots on the screen (wait till they discover other Atari 2600 games). For those that know the Atari 2600, or era, well there is a lot going on here.
Look at the video by GenXGrownup below for proof of this. Borrowing the Transformers slogan here; More than meets the eye.
Focusing on the original Dune here, it was a complex theatrical release. No wonder no gaming publisher attempted to license it for a game release. Sure, later Westwood released a phenomenal real time strategy game based in the Dune universe (LONG before Command & Conquer was a thing) which did get released on the Sega Genesis as Dune II (I had it, loved it, best $0.99 I spent at EB back in the day).
Keeping It Simple
Of course the Atari 2600 could never reproduce any of the cinematics, unless somehow the MovieCart could be implemented but it can replicate action scenes.
That is what Idiot Box Games have done. They have taken the idea of collecting the precious spices and made a game around it.
How they did this is the key point.
You control a harvester and must move about the desert to collect spice. If only it was that simple though. There are worms that are protecting the spice and will show up when you find some. Collect as much of it as you can and move on.
You are not defenseless, you can drop a Thumper to keep the worm busy for 10 seconds.
Collect one spice block per level and you can move onto the next. There is no timer but the worm gets faster and obviously, you need more spice blocks to advance. See the Atari arcade influence here?
Check out Spice Harvester over on Idiot Box Games’ website it is about $30 as of this writing. You get an Atari 2600 style box, manual, and Atari 2600 cartridge complete with label and artwork.