

The Museum of Soviet Arcade Games - _delirium
http://adangerousbusiness.com/2010/01/05/the-museum-of-soviet-video-games/

======
sethg
So back in the day, when the Supreme Soviet issued its Five-Year Plan, was
there a line item in the Plan allocating so much sheet metal and paint to
People’s Video-Game Console Factory Number One? Or did some factory that
produced military hardware make a few “Snaiper-2” machines on the side, so
that young comrades on the home front could develop their skills and boost
morale? Did the workers in the video-game factories struggle with shortages,
or did they get bonuses under the table so that members of the nomenklatura
could have the prestige of video games in their dachas?

~~~
_delirium
According to a _Wired_ article whose accuracy I can't vouch for, but which
seems plausible, it appears to be your second option, military factories
producing them on the side for entertainment/morale, perhaps with a secondary
goal of motorvisual-skills training
([http://www.wired.com/gaming/hardware/news/2007/06/soviet_gam...](http://www.wired.com/gaming/hardware/news/2007/06/soviet_games)):

"From the late '70s to the early '90s, Soviet military factories produced some
70 different video game models. Based largely (and crudely) on early Japanese
designs, the games were distributed -- in the words of one military manual --
for the purposes of 'entertainment and active leisure, as well as the
development of visual-estimation abilities.'"

------
albertzeyer
It's interesting how time has changed. I'm 25 now and I have never had much
experience with such arcade games in my youth.

In my youth, when I started playing computer games (with 8 years or so, don't
remember exactly), it was already our own computer (of the whole family; a 486
with 33MHz). But I had the feeling that the games I could play there were much
better than what I could play on arcade game machines (which were also not
that popular; at least I have never really seen much of them). When I had seen
one, I always thought that I could play better games for free at home.

Games back then which I played and kept deep into my memories were: Commander
Keen 1 - 6, Crime Fighter, Stunts, Sim City 1 / 2000. Well and you probably
know the history of games. When I grow older, the PC games developed very
fast.

Most of my friends handled this very similar. We met somewhere at home and
played some of those games together (preferable some which could be played
turn based or with split screen). A few years later (when we were around 15 or
so), we met and organized small LAN-parties.

~~~
zppx
I'm almost the same age, I had a PC, a console (first my older bother's NES,
then a SNES, a GameBoy, a Saturn, a PlayStation and a GameBoy Advance) and I
played with Arcades as well, each one was good for some genres of games, PCs
hardly received Japanese games in 90s, including fighting, shot 'em ups, some
cool puzzle games, platform (although you cited Commander Keen) and some JRPGs
that were absurdly good.

The PC had it genres as well, strategy, the nascent FPS genre and adventures
were far better in the PC. I tried to play as many as I could in every
platform, turn out that I never played much attention to quality if I had fun
playing them (this partly explain why angband is one of my favorites). Maybe
I'm an oddity to have played them all.

~~~
eru
I second that.

What's so `low quality' about Angband?

Small note: In English you should probably talk about genres of games, not
genders.

~~~
zppx
Oh thanks, I fixed the text.

I do not think Angband is a low quality game, although after reading the text
this is what I understood as well, the sentence was poorly written, sorry. I
intended to address the situation that some people perceive it is a "low game"
and that even the worst game for Atari 2600 is better just because it does not
have graphics (I play it without tiles).

~~~
eru
I think angband is a low quality game. But that's just a religious stance,
since I prefer nethack. :o) (Without tiles, of course.)

------
grigy
As I've played all these arcade games in soviet times I can say with
confidence that the emulators on their website are very high quality. While
playing them I was transfered to my youth.

------
spython
And here is their website - <http://15kop.ru/en/> It has some nice photos and
one playable game in the english version.

------
motters
Looks like those soviets knew how to have fun.

------
allenbrunson
well, that was just lovely. as someone who spent far too much of his youth in
arcades, it's interesting to see how it's done in other countries.

