Five-Second Dune
 

Happy Easter! As you know, I like doing Easter eggs on this site sometimes. With a certain movie out, this feels like the right time to take one of the old ones and officially post it.

Back in '05, when I did the April Fool's event that introduced our "Five-Second" format, the official content was six five-second seasons from various shows (including one, B5, which didn't quite have its subsite yet!). You can find them all on the <a href="../news/05apr.html">April '05 news page</a>. But what you'll <i>also</i> find, if you float over the phrase "more five-seconders" in the April 21 update, is a hidden link. Yep, there was a seventh set of five-second parodies -- this one for the <i>Dune</i> series.

Selected entries, anyway. I love the first two books, but the third was so bafflingly bad that it killed my enthusiasm for reading any more, so that's all I included. I also threw in a Dune game I had played -- and to be very clear, we're <i>not</i> talking about the good one here. (That's <i>Dune II</i>, which codified the RTS genre, and is held in high esteem by people who like that genre. I don't, but I'll take their word for it.) This first Dune game was a strange attempt with a troubled production and, let's just say, a few bugs. Finally, I covered what was at the time the only Dune movie, David Lynch's very weird version. Even back in '05, there was already a better filmed version of the story -- a 2000 TV miniseries -- but I wasn't going for exhaustive coverage.

This Easter egg <i>was</i> <a href="http://fiveminute.net/forums/showthread.php?t=716">found back in the day</a> (in fact, every Easter egg I've ever done has been found at least once, though I occasionally have to drop hints). But anyone who wasn't around at the time is likely to think I've never touched Dune, so it's about time that changed. Here, with the April Fool's trimmings removed, is <a href="../movies/5sdune.php"><b>Five-Second <i>Dune</i></b></a>. One of these days maybe I'll add some of the more recent stuff...

(Huh. In 24 years, I think this may be my first update on April 1 that wasn't a gag.)

I was shocked to see a Vinyl Goddess from Mars reference. I miss the glory days of DOS shareware...

Truly the peakest of gaming! By the way, did you know that Vinyl was originally going to be a sequel to Jill of the Jungle? They made a new story for it when that didn't work out, but you can see a lot of similar DNA. (It's kinda like how Commander Keen grew out of a pitched DOS version of Mario.)