
Soviet Arcade Games from the 70s and 80s - videotopia
https://arcadeblogger.com/2019/06/15/the-museum-of-soviet-arcade-games/
======
dang
Related from 2010:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1668085](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1668085).
Article at
[https://web.archive.org/web/20100819104026/http://adangerous...](https://web.archive.org/web/20100819104026/http://adangerousbusiness.com/2010/01/05/the-
museum-of-soviet-video-games/)

And from 2015:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10171304](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10171304)

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gbuk2013
Wow this brings back childhood memories! I played several of those and “Sea
Battle” was my favourite. :) I think it was the physicality of the controls -
I can still remember the smell of the rubber on that periscope! The actual
gameplay was very primitive, very much in line with some of the Flash games
that were so popular in the past on the web.

I also had a handheld “game console” which was a one-game thing with an LCD
with 4 buttons that would move a wolf character out of a famous cartoon to the
4 corners of the screen to catch falling eggs.

~~~
nbaksalyar
This “handheld game console” is in fact a complete clone of Nintendo Game &
Watch. :)

~~~
RandomGuyDTB
Probably from Elektronika, maybe you can recognize it from here:
[https://www.gameandwatch.ch/en/faq-questions-answers/game-
wa...](https://www.gameandwatch.ch/en/faq-questions-answers/game-watch-
clones.html)

~~~
gbuk2013
Oh yeah, that’s the one! :) “Nu Pogodi” is the one I had.

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markussss
During my recent visit to Saint Petersburg, I visited the Museum of Soviet
Arcade Games, and I would highly recommend all the games to everybody who is
interested in the games! In case you are in the city, it's one of my top 5
places to visit, at least if you are interested in games. I went there alone,
but I would highly recommend bringing a friend, as some of the games are
designed for two players, and it's far more fun to play with a friend than a
random stranger.

My favorite games were Sniper and Sniper 2, but I would recommend trying
everything.

~~~
lowercased
Similar museum trip in Moscow in ... 2011? 2013? I think Sniper was a fave
until I tried Gorodki. :)

EDIT: [http://game-game.com/32102/](http://game-game.com/32102/)

Also, morskoi boy: [http://morskoy-boy.15kop.ru/en/](http://morskoy-
boy.15kop.ru/en/) and flash version: [http://morskoy-
boy.15kop.ru/en/game/](http://morskoy-boy.15kop.ru/en/game/)

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blondin
OMG, i will definitely put my hands on any game, arcade or not, that has a
ship wheel! it looks so awesome. we have all these forms to explore and yet we
have been leaning towards standard forms introduced by consoles for years
now... i was reading how gamers were so happy about the new xbox controller
announced at E3 recently, and yet as a casual gamer i see the same thing.
maybe their latency / responsiveness issues is all that was addressed.

~~~
videotopia
Completely agree. What makes these old arcade machines (Western games
included) are the uniqueness of the controls. Trackballs, Spinners, 360
joysticks, thrusters, yokes all added to the immersion. These are the things
that connected players to arcade cabinets and the games. Today's androgynous
joypads just don't do that.

~~~
freeflight
Feels obligatory to mention Steel Battalion with its massive controller setup
[0], that was an early 2000 console game.

[0]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steel_Battalion#/media/File:St...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steel_Battalion#/media/File:Steel_Battalion_controllers.jpg)

~~~
videotopia
Good call.

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steveklabnik
I've been lucky enough to visit this place twice; it's one of my favorite
things to do in Moscow.

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rmason
I'm the wrong generation for most of these games. But I did play a significant
amount of pinball back in the day.

Never been there but if I ever get to Las Vegas the Pinball museum will be on
my list of places to visit.

[http://pinballmuseum.org/](http://pinballmuseum.org/)

~~~
corysama
[https://www.pacificpinball.org/](https://www.pacificpinball.org/) in Alameda
CA is really great.

~~~
rmason
Thank you! I'm going to be out in SF this winter and I will definitely check
it out.

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SOLAR_FIELDS
In the article it states that visitors to the museum get 15 kopeks to operate
the machines. 100 kopeks is one ruble. 1 dollar is 64 rubles. Therefore it
costs something on the order of 0.001 _cents_ to operate one of the machines.
That’s some crazy inflation!

~~~
e-max
You have a small mistake in your calculation. 0.15/64 = 0.002$ which equals
0.2 cents. But!

It's much worse, actually. Russia conducted redenomination in 1998 with a
coefficient 1000. Which means that 1000 old rubles were replaced by 1 new
ruble. So considering this it would be 0.0002 cents.

~~~
glintik
Actually, in 1980th an official rate per US dollar was 0.6-0.7 RUB. But black
market deals were 8-10 RUB per $.

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8bitsrule
Very interesting images! ( _Of course_ St. Petersburg!)

I'm left wondering about the _soundtracks_ on these machines. (Maybe it's
mentioned somewhere and I missed it?) I assume that they had sound (going by
USSR synth tech) ... and not that the proprietors simply played pirated rock
recorded on old x-ray plates!

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abruzzi
Funny, I visited the Moscow museum just a couple weeks ago. What I especially
enjoyed was was this solenoid based basketball game. Two player, about 15
places on the playing field where the ball could land. Each player the to hit
the right button first to engages a little solenoid that would “throw” the
ball towards their net and eventually score a basket. It was a reminder that
for me, sometimes the simpler games are more fun that the complex high tech
games.

~~~
icelancer
Yes! This is a great game and existed in ice rinks and other places in middle
America while I was growing up in the 1980s and early 1990s.

EDIT: Ah, here it is! Turns out TFA says specifically the Moscow game is an
exact clone of _Sega Basketball_ :

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_Wv2hqhh2Zc](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_Wv2hqhh2Zc)

~~~
joezydeco
Which came out two years after Midway's Basketball... ;-)

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N0HCOOra_qs](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N0HCOOra_qs)

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darkpuma
Amusingly, Morskoi Boy/Sea Battle was one of the games in the arcade aboard
Typhoon class SSBNs. A submarine game, on a submarine.

~~~
walrus01
Apparently the Akula/Typhoon even had room for a 4x2 meter "swimming pool" and
sauna.

[https://www.rbth.com/economics/2015/07/28/a_navy_day_tour_of...](https://www.rbth.com/economics/2015/07/28/a_navy_day_tour_of_the_akula_sub_44447)

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iuguy
There's a really awesome video game museum in Berlin on Karl Marx Allee that
features an East German Soviet PolyPlay arcade machine with Wasserrohrbruch
running on it. It's a terrible game, but the museum is worth a visit for
anyone not going to Russia who wants to try a few Soviet-era games.

~~~
bmsleight_
The pain game is worth the entrance price alone. Pain Battle 2
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Computerspielemuseum_Berlin](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Computerspielemuseum_Berlin)
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F4HDIiakT7E](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F4HDIiakT7E)

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duxup
I remember seeing a photograph of what was supposedly the inside of a Typhoon
submarine and they had a similar submarine video game cabinet as the one in
this article.

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cosmodisk
NI remember when my dad used to take me to arcades when I was a little kide:
the sea battle was there! Nice.

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FillardMillmore
I presume the high score list on the machines contained 10 or so entries of
the same score? That is of course, after the machine calculates and
redistributes the scores of the top performers.

~~~
inflatableDodo
You are thinking of communism. This is the USSR, the scores are all sent to
Moscow and then one point is reissued to each player. Then anyone who asks
what happened to the rest of the points is sent to the gulag.

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avip
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z2_dhUv_CrI&t=14s](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z2_dhUv_CrI&t=14s)

<seeing myself out>

