While Dune as a franchise today seems fairly self-evident, historically the concept of sand worms and spice hasn’t lent itself well to adaptations. Such is the case with Elland: The Crystal Wars, a game that was cancelled at 95% completion, and is so obviously supposed to be a Dune video game that a few name changes can’t really hide that fact. Elland: The Crystal Wars has a fairly novel approach though- instead of dealing with any actual characters from the book, the backdrop of war is mostly just an excuse for lots of dogfights.
Elland: The Crystal Wars is cutting edge gameplay…well, for the Game Boy Advance era anyway. I often marveled that the game works as well as it does. The lock-on mechanics are often questionable, and some late game levels are nearly impossible to win unless you turn them off. Although to be fair, in a setting famous for not having thinking machines, it does make sense that fighter pilots would have to have the skills necessary to knock out tiny targets without just having the computer do all the work.
When it works (which is most of the time, snarky tone notwithstanding), Elland: The Crystal Wars is actually a lot of fun. As with many retro games, Elland: The Crystal Wars benefits a lot from the fact that there are only so many ways to do things in an engine that’s obviously about shooting down other aircraft and bases too. For example, missions involving collecting spice (um, I mean crystals of course) instantly fail if the sandworm manages to devour the harvester. It took me way too long to figure out what the various little dots on the radar are supposed to represent and why I need to pay attention to them.
One time I mistook a destroy ship mission for an escort mission. To be fair, the mission details did tell me I was supposed to be trying to destroy something. Difficulty in this game often hinges on the specificity of the objective more than anything else. No boss can withstand a barrage of every single missile you have. The main challenge are the late-stage base missions, because they’re surrounded by turrets that will quickly tear your ship to pieces if you’re not moving at top speed.
In that sense, Elland: The Crystal Wars is a game ahead of its time. Being able to finish missions fast because you’ve finally figured out what needs to be done is quite gratifying. Yet the game also has a step planted in the past with a password system. I made use of post-it notes to keep track of my progress, never quite cursing when I realized on picking the game up later because once I’d figured out how to beat a level, the task isn’t too difficult to repeat, which is often a good test of whether or not a game is playing fair or not.
The deductive play style Elland: The Crystal Wars calls for is intriguing, although it’s easy to see why the publisher ultimately decided it wasn’t marketable with or without the Dune license. I do appreciate RetroRoomgames bringing it back to life. Post-it note collection notwithstanding, Elland: The Crystal Wars is a really good title to just pick up and play wherever on original hardware.
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