

A JavaScript clone of Nu Pogodi, a Soviet hand-held game - Nowaker
http://nerdlab.pl/uploads/projects/nu-pogodi/index.html

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nathell
Ah, Nu Pogodi. The handheld everyone played in rural Poland around 1990. This
one mimics the look-and-feel of the original rather well, but, sadly, I have
yet to see a clone that faithfully implements the gameplay of the original.

From memory (remember that I was only 6 back then, so I might have screwed up
some things):

* There were two levels of difficulty, denoted "игра А" and "игра B" ("game A" and "game B"). The A version was easier: in it, the bottom-left roost was disabled and eggs would never fall off of it. In game B, all four roosts were in use.

* There were multiple stages of the game: \- Score 0 to 5: only one egg falling at any given time, the next egg appears only when you catch the previous one \- Score 6 to 20 (?): two eggs active at any given time \- Score 21 to 50 (?): three eggs active at any given time

And so on, up to a limit of, I think, six or so at a time, at certain
thresholds. Also, at certain score thresholds the game speed would accelerate.
I think this didn't start to be noticeable until the score of 200 or so; by
the time you got to score 500 falling eggs would become moderately fast, by
score 700 quite fast, and getting past 800 or even 900 would require your
fingers to be extremely snappy.

* If I remember correctly, getting past 999 would cause the score to wrap back to 0 and the speed to wrap back to as slow as at the start, but you wouldn't get three lives back and you would still have six eggs to catch at a time. I managed to do this only a few times ever; I think my high score ever was approximately 1050-1100, and average score might have been around 700-750. This was in game A, which I mostly played.

* Also if I remember correctly, the order of falling eggs, at least in the beginning phase of the game, was deterministic (top-left roost, then top-right roost, then bottom-left roost (skipped in version A), then bottom-right roost, and so on). The order of subsequent eggs was probably deterministic as well, but this wasn't noticeable anymore. The initial roost might have been chosen randomly.

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batrat
Yep we had the same thing here in Romania (ex communist) in the 90's. From
what i can remember it was a clone of this but the implementation was the same
as you said.

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malkia
I had the real Nu Pogodi as a kid, and once invited half of my class and
served them lemonade while they were taking turns to play it. It was a big
thing to have in Bulgaria, and the rest of the eastern block in the 80's.

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chaostheory
It looks like a clone of one of Nintendo's earliest video games:
[http://www.mariowiki.com/Egg_%28Game_%26_Watch%29](http://www.mariowiki.com/Egg_%28Game_%26_Watch%29)

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rdtsc
Argh. But I am not surprised. I was kind of hoping it would be an old Soviet
original. But yes, it looks pretty much like a clone of that game.

I guess since the 60s or so, Soviets just started to copy all the CPU designs
and electronics from the West. Apparently it included children's games.

~~~
undershirt
Don't forget about Tetris, the Soviet original released in 1984.

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erikj
Nintendo went to great lengths to acquire publishing rights for this game.
Tetris basically established the whole handheld gaming market, it was the Game
Boy's killer app.

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Gracana
That was way too much fun. At the beginning I thought to myself "gee, this is
a simple and boring game." And then I played it to a score of 208, haha.

One thing I found interesting while playing was that the game never deals you
a losing hand. It got faster, sure, but only one egg is added per step so you
always have time to move.

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JoshTriplett
Yeah. There's never a kill screen, just increasing speed until there are
multiple eggs per second.

First attempt: 484. In a way, it almost gets easier at higher speeds. And it's
always obvious which egg is next, or you can just watch what order they appear
in and collect them in that order.

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foobarian
It was originally a cartoon. I remember watching it growing up.
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nu,_pogodi](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nu,_pogodi)!

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ivan78
Interestingly, Wikipedia translates "Nu, pogodi" as "Well, you just wait".
Actually, this phrase is a threat and should be translated something like "I
will get you".

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quarterto
Idiomatically, "just you wait!" is a threat.
[http://dictionary.cambridge.org/dictionary/british/just-
you-...](http://dictionary.cambridge.org/dictionary/british/just-you-wait)

~~~
ivan78
Thank you, I did not know that. It is sometimes very surprising to see such
identical idioms, while English and Russian languages are so different.

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Nowaker
Holy smokes, another Электроника game I played 20 years ago. [http://www.pica-
pic.com/#/space_bridge/](http://www.pica-pic.com/#/space_bridge/) I'll
definitely ask my parents to look for this game, maybe it's still somewhere
there.

~~~
cbd1984
Ah, Electronika. They made an interesting PDP-11 clone desktop computer:
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/UKNC](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/UKNC)

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electronika](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electronika)

~~~
jaxb
It's actually a brand name. A while lot of different consumer- and
professional-grade products were sold under that brand (follow the link to
Russian Wikipedia to see the full list)

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sakopov
Holy crap, this brings back some memories. Very cool! I also remember playing
"Весёлые Футболисты" (Fun Futballers).

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kissickas
Cool game. If anyone else is as confused as I was, you have to use up/down as
well as left/right. I only figured this out after trying to use the console
buttons.

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maksg
This is awesome. I created an account just to make this comment. I did not
even realize I played this as a kid until I started to play it here.

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sprokolopolis
This brings back so many memories of sitting on the steps playing those old
hand-held LCD Tiger games. I was absolutely addicted to the batman one:
[http://www.handheldmuseum.com/Tiger/Batman.htm](http://www.handheldmuseum.com/Tiger/Batman.htm)

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laacz
Others already mentioned, this game bears a lot of sweet memories, since it
was one of few hanheld games foreign USSR made (OK, a few years ago I found
them being much more than a few) and other countries cloned. Having one ot
those was friend-magnet, mastering and exploiting bugs in them was regarded as
being geekish in best of ways.

Also, it came as no shock that each and every Elektronika brand game was a
copy of sorts from similar or identical Nintendo products.

As this is very approximate clone of original handheld, sound was closest to
version everybody remembers. It triggered nostalgic feeling all around the
room.

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Nowaker
Found the source here: [https://github.com/pawel-winiecki/nu-pogodi-
html5-game](https://github.com/pawel-winiecki/nu-pogodi-html5-game)

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romanhn
For more nostalgia, check out
[http://www.emulator3000.org/hq.htm](http://www.emulator3000.org/hq.htm). Many
many Elektronika simulations in one package (Win/Linux).

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victorantos
Very nicely done! Scored 165 from the first try. I used to play this game on
my friend's console, long time ago.

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agsamek
Nice but I cannot play on iphone4 Ios7 safari - bottom buttons are hidden
under the toolbar.

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ageyfman
I remember playing this when I was a kid. Nice job!

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friendzis
IIRC, originally it was silver, with red buttons

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Egregore
A similar game but with better graphics:
[http://netforza.com/verydoge/](http://netforza.com/verydoge/)

