Re:Soviet Arcade Games from the 70s and 80s
by gbuk2013 on Saturday June 15, 2019 @07:18PM
(#20192807)
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.
Re:Soviet Arcade Games from the 70s and 80s
by markussss on Saturday June 15, 2019 @09:50PM
(#20193348)
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.
Re:Soviet Arcade Games from the 70s and 80s
by blondin on Saturday June 15, 2019 @05:55PM
(#20192420)
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.
Re:Soviet Arcade Games from the 70s and 80s
by videotopia on Saturday June 15, 2019 @06:19PM
(#20192539)
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.
Re:Soviet Arcade Games from the 70s and 80s
by marcins on Saturday June 15, 2019 @07:44PM
(#20192908)
This is what’s so exciting about the Play date (https://play.date/) - I have the hope it brings back that retro vibe, with a different input mechanic for a twist.
Re:Soviet Arcade Games from the 70s and 80s
by a_t48 on Saturday June 15, 2019 @08:37PM
(#20193100)
You would definitely enjoy alt.ctrl.GDC (https://www.gdconf.com/alt.ctrl.gc) - it's a section of the Games Developer Conference Expo dedicated to people using alternative/experimental control schemes.
Re:Soviet Arcade Games from the 70s and 80s
by SOLAR_FIELDS on Saturday June 15, 2019 @06:28PM
(#20192587)
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!
Re:Soviet Arcade Games from the 70s and 80s
by e-max on Saturday June 15, 2019 @06:38PM
(#20192624)
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.
Re:Soviet Arcade Games from the 70s and 80s
by 8bitsrule on Sunday June 16, 2019 @08:27PM
(#20198832)
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!
Re:Soviet Arcade Games from the 70s and 80s
by abruzzi on Saturday June 15, 2019 @09:03PM
(#20193192)
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.
Re:Soviet Arcade Games from the 70s and 80s
by _b8r0 on Sunday June 16, 2019 @03:06AM
(#20194242)
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.
Re:Soviet Arcade Games from the 70s and 80s
by duxup on Saturday June 15, 2019 @06:14PM
(#20192516)
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.
Re:Soviet Arcade Games from the 70s and 80s
by FillardMillmore on Saturday June 15, 2019 @07:08PM
(#20192750)
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.
Re:Soviet Arcade Games from the 70s and 80s
by inflatableDodo on Saturday June 15, 2019 @07:38PM
(#20192885)
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.
And from 2015: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10171304
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.
My favorite games were Sniper and Sniper 2, but I would recommend trying everything.
EDIT: http://game-game.com/32102/
Also, morskoi boy: http://morskoy-boy.15kop.ru/en/ and flash version: http://morskoy-boy.15kop.ru/en/game/
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steel_Battalion#/media/File:St...
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/
Hurry.
https://vitalvegas.com/pinball-hall-fame-close-seeks-funds-s...
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.
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!
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=N0HCOOra_qs
https://www.rbth.com/economics/2015/07/28/a_navy_day_tour_of...
<seeing myself out>