[The posts for this month are reposts from the site www.honotogroabemo.org, on which a host of hirsute individuals including yours truly would grow beards to raise money for breast cancer research. The site is defunct, but I thought I’d resurrect the game-related posts. This was originally posted on 2011-11-09.]

(I could really use some coins)

If you can’t get this one, you have completely missed out on games for the past twenty years. Seriously. Corporate mascot? Sequel after tie-in after sequel after tie-in sequel? No?

Day Eight’s game is Dune. Here I’m thinking of the Avalon Hill game published in 1979, not the Parker Brothers movie tie-in published in 1984. Dune was designed by the Eon Games team of Bill Eberle, Jack Kittredge and Peter Olotka. The original theme focused around the Roman Empire (plenty of treachery and backstabbing there), but Avalon Hill was looking to publish a game in the universe of Dune, and asked them to retheme it. For the movie release, Avalon Hill printed a second edition along with a couple of expansions, Spice Harvest and The Duel.

Dune is planned to be re-released by Fantasy Flight Games, but because they can’t afford the Dune license, it has been re-themed yet again and placed in their Twilight Imperium universe. Somehow I can’t see it being the same.