The Alternate Universe of Soviet Arcade Games | Hacker News Reader

The Alternate Universe of Soviet Arcade Games

atlasobscura.com

114 pointslermontov30 comments

The author may not realize (I only know this because my mother worked for the Soviet arcade ministry of sorts in the 80s) is that there was a whole illicit angle to the arcade business.

They were all cash-based - which created huge opportunities for embezzlement for guys working there. The government had no way of knowing how many coins were actually deposited (ie the technicians could fiddle with counters or whatever) - so they could skim huge (and shared the loot all the way to the top). The vig was apparently massive.

Every now and then somebody would leave their wife, she'd write a report to the special police that dealt with economic crime and the whole structure would end up in jail.

Fun times.

Funny how things are similar. I was in the USAF with a fellow who had served in Vietnam. While there, he had a side job of repairing the slot machines that were in the Officers and NCO clubs. Like the Soviet arcades, this was also a cash business, and the machines were also rigged. His share of the vig supplemented his military salary fairly well, he said.

I definitely remember playing these as a kid in the 90s, especially Magistral, and some sort of ship-torpedo game.

This, however, shows that the author didn't do their research:

> Strangest of all, however, is the lineup of radish pickers: after failed attempts by a mouse, a cat, a dog, a daughter, and a grandma, the vegetable can only be pulled up once the grandpa jumps in and the entire family works together to pull it out collectively.

That's not strange - that game is just based on a popular fairy tale where, well, you can guess exactly what happens in the fairy tale. It's not a long story.

> that game is just based on a popular fairy tale where, well, you can guess exactly what happens in the fairy tale.

I'm from Romania and we have the same fairy tale involving said vegetable (in our case is a giant radish). It would be interesting to draw some maps of "fairy tales influence" (for a lack of a better word), i.e. in this case the map for the "giant radish fairy tale" would cover both Russia and Romania, the Little Red Riding Hood fairy tale would cover most of Western Europe etc.

That fairy tale has reached as far as Slovenia.

And if memory serves, it is alluded to in an episode of Ed, Edd, 'n' Eddy, albeit through a foreign character with an accent.

Wikipedia says it's a Slavic fairy tale that has been presented in English-speaking countries. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Gigantic_Turnip

You mean like this - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aarne%E2%80%93Thompson_classif... ?

Apparently, Vladimir Propp did a lot of work on this.

Orson Scott Card's "Enchantment" is a fictional take, and explanation, for the reason there are so many similar fairy tales in eastern europe.

Btw, author confused the order in which participants joined the repka-collaboration: first grandpa, then grandma, granddaughter, dog, cat and finally mouse.

It's a fun article, but:

"Though it has never been substantiated by historians, the anecdote goes that on a trip to the United States, Khrushchev was so smitten with the arcade games he saw that, upon his return, he invited all the game makers to come to Russia and showcase their best games. "

Khrushchev was kicked out of power in 1964, and died in 1971.

It lines up though. He visited the US in 1959 and a little while after returning, the Soviets started working on their own arcade games. I guess there's no proof that he really did order Soviet games to be made but it's plausible.

Are you aware of the state of arcade games in the US in 1959.

Yes, it was called "pinball".

Depends where you were. Pinball was illegal from the 1940s onwards in New York, Los Angeles, Chicago, Philadelphia and Salt Lake City among others. It was only legalized in the 1970s.

Pong was released in 1972. A decent timeline of other releases: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timeline_of_arcade_video_game_...

You don't seem to understand that various kinds of arcade games existed before video games. Go to the article and scroll down to the “Winter Hunt” and ”Basketball” machines.

That was one of my first thoughts too, but take a look at the pictures in the article. They are not just video games, but also the older mechanical arcade games.

Had a little nostalgia moment there with "Vozduwnij Boi" and the soda water dispenser. Those were 2 kopeks for a soda I think and 5 kopecs for kvas, which was so delicious.

Yeah. I've bought bottled stuff here (NYC), occasionally, and even some stuff at restaurants - but it all tastes weird and bad, and vaguely Coca-Cola-ish.

Went back last summer for my grandpa's birthday, and bought like five liters from an old woman who was selling it out of a big tank. Tasted almost exactly like I remember it, and I probably drank about two liters in one day.

Quality of kvas improved a lot, so it may explain why it tasted _almost_ exactly like you remember it: it is not diluted anymore but produced by exactly same technology, so it a bit too concentrated, because soviet norms were adjusted for about 20% of additional water added at distribution. I.e. it especially made concentrated to dilute it later and steal money without need to fake documents.

Kopek for plain soda, 3 for soda with syrup was the longtime standard. Kvas, usually by some kvas-delivery vehicle, sold by a person. That seems to be still going strong:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kvass#/media/File:Kwass_kyjiw....

Oh yeah that's my recollection as well. Then of course the glasses were reusable and you had to press the glass down into a sprayer that sprayed the glass with some water to "clean" the germs of the person in front of you.

But you know we drank it and didn't mind it too much. But looking back it seems a little "unsanitary"

There was a similar article in Vice earlier this year, and it has more pictures for those interested:

http://motherboard.vice.com/read/soviet-arcade-museum

https://youtu.be/Gzwt56TPwkM

That is a link to a video with some game play, there are many others available as well

That's a pretty BS article written under, what appears to be, some sort of assumption of how life in Soviet Union was all driven by communist ideology. Hardly any games had "Marxist agenda", lots of them had high scores, and you bet that the adrenaline rush was right there. They weren't designed to train loyal citizens anymore than Mortal Combat was designed to train hand combat. They were just games... heavy and crude, but they were designed for fun first and foremost.

A better site where you can actually play a few -- www.15kop.ru/en/

Dying games simulated using a dying technology, Flash that is. No nostalgia for me tonight :(

I actually visited this museum on a trip to Moscow recently. It was super fun - ended up being one of the highlights. The Gorodki game they talk about seemed like it could be turned into a popular iOS app :).

I was there a while ago and also made some pictures in case someone is interested: https://blog.hboeck.de/archives/826-Moscow-and-the-Museum-of... https://pictures.hboeck.de/asia2013/moscow-arcade

So is the museum in St. Petersburg or Moscow?

Both. Judging from their site there is another one in Kazan.

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