This game was the first video game to make use of the game cover printed on a sleeve and then slipped over a previously printed, Virgin Games branded box. This combo became the industry standard for the next two decades. The new styled box was created by Anthony Mesaros for Virgin Games. He had created the sleeve design because he wanted to be able to get flashy covers printed in several colors as well as foil and yet create a box that cost significantly less that printing the individual game covers on individual boxes. His new packaging design not only came in at a much lower cost but had less than half the turnaround time for actual printing.
The game had a troubled production. Martin Alper of Virgin Games USA had obtained the adaptation rights to the Dune novel written by Frank Herbert and the movie inspired by it (Duna (1984)). Being a fan of the book, Alpert wanted to adapt it into a game. A French development team (that would later become Cryo Entertainment) was tasked with the job, but after six months of work, the Americans were not impressed with the initial designs. Alper backed out of the project and gave the job to Westwood Studios. Since so much work had already been done, the European branch of Virgin kept secretly financing the French team, even though they no longer had the adaptation rights, making it uncertain if the game would ever be released. Fortunately, after seeing a later version, Alper and Virgin USA were sufficiently impressed, and allowed the French team to finish and distribute it under their new Cryo banner, even though they still had another adaptation being developed by Westwood (the later Dune II: The Building of a Dynasty (1992)).