Soviet Videogaming [Archive] - Retrogaming Roundtable

blue lander

01-14-2009, 01:38 PM

... or computer gaming more accurately. I recently bought one of these:

http://www.rabotavinternet.info/ebay_foto/bk5.jpg

It's a Russian home computer called the BK-0010. They were made in the Soviet Union from the mid-1980's until the early 90's. It's based on a Soviet clone of the 16 bit PDP-11 CPU, and it's got 32k of RAM. Graphics are very CGA-ish. Maybe a little behind the times for 1986, but still not bad. Really smooth vertical scrolling. It loads programs via cassette, although I understand there are disk drives available for it as well. Here's a picture of the joystick, which doesn't really work very well.

http://www.rabotavinternet.info/ebay_foto/bk5-13-m.jpg

Most Soviet home computers are just clones of the British Sinclair Spectrum, so this is the closest thing to an "original" Russian home computer. It's not a bad little computer, just not very well engineered. For instance, every connector on the thing is a DIN-5, meaning it'll happily let you plug the power cable into the monitor port and burn itself up if you aren't paying attention. It came with the original power supply, but even I'm not dumb enough to plug a 25 year old piece of Soviet electronics into my voltage converter. It only needs 5 volts to run off of, so It's not that difficult to replace.

It came with a lot of manuals and thankfully my fiancee can read Russian, so I was able to get it somewhat working. I've got it connected to a NEC Multisync II monitor, although the picture is still really jittery. I've also connected the cassette to the soundcard on my PC, so I can download BK-0010 games from the internet and load them on the actual unit. Suprisingly, most games only take between 30 and 60 seconds to load, much faster than your average Spectrum or Amstrad game.

I've only played 20 or 30 games so far, but my impression is the library consists of 25% PC game clones, 25% Spectrum game clones, 25% arcade ports and 25% original titles. Lots of Lode Runner and Boulderdash style games in particular. Overall, I'm impressed with how high quality most of the games are, they're quite playable. More or less equal to what you'd expect from PC Shareware games from the pre-EGA era. Since the thing was only released in Communist countries, all the games are homebrew efforts. There were no companies developing software or hardware for it.

Considering the anti-Soviet tone of many American games from the 80's, I was expecting to find the reverse in a lot of these games. So far I haven't read anything explicitly anti-American, the closest I found was a war game where the good guy was "Red" and the badguys were "Green".

Anyways, after I play around with the library some more I'll post more thoughts on it. If you're looking for screenshots, start here: http://roman-dushkin.narod.ru/bk_games_all.html
Wikipedia has a pretty good description along with links, too. It'll point you towards some emulators if you want to play around with it on your PC.

Here are some screenshots I stole from the internet. Once I get the screen on mine stable, I'll take some myself.

http://www.demoscene.ru/info/pic/bk0010/exolon.gifhttp://www.demoscene.ru/info/pic/bk0010/ferrari2.gifhttp://www.demoscene.ru/info/pic/bk0010/knight2.gif
http://www.demoscene.ru/info/pic/bk0010/crack1.gifhttp://www.demoscene.ru/info/pic/bk0010/stalker.gifhttp://photos1.blogger.com/blogger/4581/2076/320/BKtetris.png

Dark_Sol

01-14-2009, 01:41 PM

ahahaha.....could not predict such topic here :)

geneshifter

01-14-2009, 02:18 PM

This is really cool! Thanks for sharing this. I have always wondered about the state of gaming in other countries during the 80s, especially those without basic freedoms and how that effected artistic expression.

Looks like us gamers are pretty much the same worldwide :)

Also, I wonder if the C64 ever made it over there?

dendawg

01-14-2009, 02:58 PM

In Soviet Russia, videogame plays you.

demen999

01-14-2009, 03:03 PM

This is very interesting, never really knew they had their own thing going on. I am however interested in seeing the propaganda game screenshots. Know of any?

EviLEd76

01-14-2009, 03:07 PM

In Soviet Russia, videogame plays you.

Dammit someone beat me to it. I wanted to make the cliche joke this time :-)

CreamSoda

01-14-2009, 03:10 PM

In Soviet Russia, videogame plays you.

I see I wasen't fast enough with that one...

Ze_ro

01-14-2009, 03:15 PM

PapaStu

01-14-2009, 03:28 PM

Good to know theres a Tetris clone in there. It would just be wrong for there not to be one.

blue lander

01-14-2009, 03:37 PM

I was always curious as to what video games and home computers existed behind the iron curtain, but it seems to me that there wasn't a whole lot of effort put into it somehow... like it was seen as too decadent, or a tool of capitalism or something, and just ignored.

Looks like they were very difficult for the average person to acquire. Not just because of cost but because not enough were made. Maybe most were in schools or something. Far more common were home built Spectrum clones from the looks of it. Many magazines had schematics of how to build one from scratch.

I would have hoped that some of the Russian designers had come up with interesting new concepts in microprocessors and computing, but everything that does exist just seems to be bootlegs of European or American products without a lot of original ideas, and usually almost 10 years behind.

Yup, everything's pirated. Pirated CPU, pirated OS, pirated games. Why come up with something original when nobody's enforcing western copyrights?

At least this BK-0010 seems to be a rather unique combination at least. Is that really how the colours look on it, or is that just a result of bad emulation?

Apparently it's very similar to a Terak 8510/a, some obscure American computer. But I don't know if it's just coincidence or if it was deliberately cloned.

Unfortunetly that is indeed how the colors look. Sort of like a mix of CGA and Tandy Color Computer graphics. Everything's very RED, too. The text is red, most of the games are red, and even virtually all of the wires inside the thing are red. Maybe they were just being patriotic.

ccovell

01-14-2009, 09:35 PM

Yeow! It looks like the hardware can turn on Red, Green, or Blue, but not all at the same time! :|

Old computers still are pretty cool, tho.

c0ldb33r

01-14-2009, 09:48 PM

This is a great thread. It reminds me of something that should be in retro gamer. I love reading about old british computers and russian ones are neat too.

What about gaming consoles? What were Russians playing while I had Super Mario Bros?

Do we have any Russians on the board that can shed some light on the issue?

Tupin

01-14-2009, 10:02 PM

While I am not Russian, I am aware of the famous Soviet "Dendy" which basically had the same market penetration as the NES, which is pretty good for a Famiclone with a software library consisting almost entirely of bootlegs.

You have guts to be even attempting to turn ON a piece of Soviet electronics, even if you don't use the power supply it came with. That wire on that joystick looks like it would just burst into flames.

Anyway, very cool. Where did you manage to find it?

squirrelnut

01-15-2009, 09:12 AM

http://www.demoscene.ru/info/pic/bk0010/exolon.gif

It's already got the virtua boy beat

chrisbid

01-15-2009, 09:23 AM

http://www.wired.com/gaming/hardware/multimedia/2007/06/gallery_soviet_games

semi-off topic, this was a wired article on a group of russian students that are collecting old soviet era arcade games

Sniderman

01-15-2009, 10:16 AM

http://www.supersoviet.com/

(Alien Hominid reference)

blue lander

01-15-2009, 10:41 AM

While I am not Russian, I am aware of the famous Soviet "Dendy" which basically had the same market penetration as the NES, which is pretty good for a Famiclone with a software library consisting almost entirely of bootlegs.

I'm no expert on this kind of stuff either, but I believe the Dendy came out right after the Soviet Union collapsed, not before. I think because of trade embargos and whatnot, it would have been very difficult to import the custom chips a NES clone needs. The prevalent Soviet home computers I've looked at were all built from off-the-shelf parts.

You have guts to be even attempting to turn ON a piece of Soviet electronics, even if you don't use the power supply it came with.

At risk of starting an electrical fire and becomming the last casualty of the Cold War, I did plug in the original power supply and it actually worked fine. I wasn't going to tempt fate so I didn't leave it in for long.

That wire on that joystick looks like it would just burst into flames.

You should see the inside of those cables. You know how in a "real" cable, the wires all fit tightly inside? These cables are just long flexible plastic tubes that somebody dropped a few wires through and soldered a connector to each end. All the wires inside the cable are the same color (red of course), so it was really difficult to trace which cable went to which pin when I was making a monitor adapter.

krooper13

01-15-2009, 12:24 PM

That's very intersting, I'd always wondered if the Soviet Union had any sort of computer game scene, ok it looks a little behid, but very cool none the less. Great find.

Soviet Conscript

01-15-2009, 12:32 PM

i want one

CastlevaniaDude

01-15-2009, 01:10 PM

i want one

I wonder if Mayor Steelerstahl would like you importing Soviet technology? LOL

backguard

01-15-2009, 01:10 PM

i would love to pick up one myself - if you ever decide to sell let me know. has some sentimental value since the wife is russian and lived through the soviet era, fall of communism etc.

you know you have a good wife when she gets you are mario ddr t-shirt as a gift. :)

blue lander

01-15-2009, 01:13 PM

This is very interesting, never really knew they had their own thing going on. I am however interested in seeing the propaganda game screenshots. Know of any?

Unfortunetly I haven't found anything too propagandistic. The closest I found were the hammer and sickles in this game...

http://roman-dushkin.narod.ru/images/galleries/bk_0010-01/pereval.gif

I attached a gameplay screenshot too, it's sort of a Soviet Super Mario Bros... If Mario was on the moon killing turtles with nuclear missiles.

CastlevaniaDude

01-15-2009, 01:17 PM

Unfortunetly I haven't found anything too propagandistic. The closest I found were the hammer and sickles in this game...

I attached a gameplay screenshot too, it's sort of a Soviet Super Mario Bros... If Mario was on the moon killing turtles with nuclear missiles.

I doubt there'd be too much propaganda, when you think about it.

These games were probably made by rogues and pirates who wanted to spread the western, capitalistic-style joys of gaming.

The people writing the games were, in all likelyhood, not particularly sympathetic to the Soviet Union, as they were probably breaking some type of law in many cases producing private label, consumer-level goods.

Am I off base in thinking this?

blue lander

01-15-2009, 02:51 PM

Here's a unique game called Heaven. I think the concept is best described as Lemmings meets Lode Runner meets Space Invaders meets Communism. Unfortunetly the graphics are horrible...

http://roman-dushkin.narod.ru/images/galleries/bk_0010-01/heaven.gif

... but I'll do my best to describe the gameplay. Imagine a level of Lode Runner. But the little guys running around are actively building ladders and platforms sort of like in Lemmings (they spawn out of the little doors, which you can't destroy), their goal being to reach the top of the level.

You're the guy way up at the top. Since the game's called Heaven, I assume you're God or an angel or something. You job is to shoot arrows down at the little guys building the ladders, and you can also destroy the ladders and platforms themselves. You only get 9 arrows to start, but you get 3 more arrows when you hit a little guy (none if you hit a platform or ladder). If they make it to the top and reach you, you lose. But if you can kill 15 of the guys before they reach you or before you run out of arrows, you go on to the next level.

I don't know if this is a allegory for class struggle or that religion opresses the working class or what. But I do know it's pretty fun destroying the little guy's progress. The slowdown gets really bad when there are too many dudes running around and the graphics are terrible, but other than that it's a fun and unique game. I'll post anything else I find interesting.

Gameguy

01-15-2009, 05:43 PM

...it's sort of a Soviet Super Mario Bros...

So it's basically just Super Mario Bros then? I'm pretty sure Mario was a communist in that game.

http://web.archive.org/web/20050211035942/http://www.aethiamud.org/communist_mario/

CMA Death Adder

01-15-2009, 06:11 PM

blue lander: Thanks for sharing photos, screenshots and information regarding this machine. At one point, during the height of my former vintage computer collection, I too owned a БК-0010 but only the computer itself, no power supply, cords or tape/disk drive. Since I never actually got a chance to use the computer, I always had some curiousity about it in the back of my mind. Through your post that curiousity was rekindled, and I was inspired to do some research. :)

blue lander

01-15-2009, 07:22 PM

I'm glad I quenched at least some of your curiosity! If you ever come across another one, they're really easy to hook up even without the original cables. It only needs 5 volts to run, and it can hook up to any cassette player (it doesn't need something special like the C64 or Sharp X1 do). It should theoretically work with any RGB monitor that can sync at 15khz and handle composite sync, although I'm having problems getting a stable picture with mine. I don't know if that's because the sync signal is just too weak or if there's a faulty component somewhere. I ran the sync signal through an lm1881 hoping it'd do the trick, but it only helped a little.

All the pinouts can be found here: http://groups.google.com/group/bk0010/web/schematics Just run it through babelfish or something and you'll have a pretty good idea what to do.

Ze_ro

01-15-2009, 09:20 PM

I think because of trade embargos and whatnot, it would have been very difficult to import the custom chips a NES clone needs. The prevalent Soviet home computers I've looked at were all built from off-the-shelf parts.
"Off-the-shelf" parts in this case would all be unlicensed clones of CPU's and support chips that were originally designed in the US. There are plenty of Soviet equivalents to popular chips like the Z80.

If they had the technology to reverse-engineer a Z80 (or the espionage network to steal the design) and re-implement it, I don't see why the same wouldn't be possible with Nintendo's chips.

--Zero

Soviet Conscript

01-16-2009, 01:41 AM

I wonder if Mayor Steelerstahl would like you importing Soviet technology? LOL

lol, yhea i saw that in the paper today. funny.

i'll just smuggle it in and pretend its a shippment of terrible towels or something. or ahhh, steelers memeribilia from the 70's recently discovered as part of a underground soviet era steelers fan group.

blue lander

01-16-2009, 10:44 AM

"If they had the technology to reverse-engineer a Z80 (or the espionage network to steal the design) and re-implement it, I don't see why the same wouldn't be possible with Nintendo's chips.

--Zero

I'm sure they could have if they wanted to, but I get the impression that the Soviet government only cloned chips that had broad usage in military or government electronics. The Z80 could be used in dozens of vital applications, so I'm sure it was worth their effort to clone them. I'm guessing the Evil Empire would consider using of one of their chip fabricating plants to make custom VDPs only used by a single video game to be a waste of productivity.

blue lander

01-22-2009, 02:13 PM

CastlevaniaDude

01-22-2009, 02:49 PM

lol, yhea i saw that in the paper today. funny.

i'll just smuggle it in and pretend its a shippment of terrible towels or something. or ahhh, steelers memeribilia from the 70's recently discovered as part of a underground soviet era steelers fan group.

Hahaha I guarantee you such an underground soviet era steelers fan group existed.

And they probably had a BBS. I bet they had some great games of LORD

rbudrick

01-22-2009, 08:02 PM

Maybe I spoke too soon, it looks like Elektronika did clone Nintendo's Game & Watch handhelds, which must have required cloning pretty specific parts. I assume these were cloned in the 80's but I guess it's possible they came out after communism too.

http://i17.tinypic.com/6cyteok.jpg

Still can't find any proof that there were home video game consoles during the same era though.

Holy crap! This thread is getting more and more full of awesome. Secret Soviet games: Declassified! More, I say!

Hey, what's the title of that game?

I hear rumors that the Soviets had the REAL Polybius.

-Rob

Draven

01-23-2009, 10:42 AM

Looks like King's Bounty is in there! AWESOME game (on Genesis, anyway). One question...were the bad guys in Soviet games back in the 80's American? I've always wondered that.

blue lander

01-23-2009, 10:57 AM

No clue what the name is, under the screen it says "Igra na ekrane". I think Igra means game, no clue what the other words mean.

I know absolutely nothing about Game & Watches, so I don't know if these are really clones of Nintendo's units or if they just look similar or what. They've definitely had the graphics changed, though. Most of them look like they're based off of "Nu Pogodi", which is a Russian cartoon about a wolf and a rabbit. Sort of the Soviet equivalent of Tom and Jerry.

If you go on E-bay and search for Elektronika Game, you'll find a bunch of them. They're only about 25 bucks each, I've ordered a couple just for fun. It looks like almost all of them are the exact same game but with different graphics. This one is a Frog catching butterflies, but another one is a Wolf catching eggs, and another one is a Monkey catching balls, and another is a sattellite shooting down asteroids, and yet another is a cat catching fish!!

http://i17.tinypic.com/6cyteok.jpg http://img.inkfrog.com/pix/magnety222/game_obez_110607_2.jpg http://i14.tinypic.com/6h6zvnn.jpg
http://i19.tinypic.com/6bc0lew.jpghttp://i11.tinypic.com/62hkoso.jpg

Are these all the same game with different screens? Every one I've seen on e-bay seems to be a variation on the same theme.

blue lander

01-23-2009, 11:04 AM

Looks like King's Bounty is in there! AWESOME game (on Genesis, anyway). One question...were the bad guys in Soviet games back in the 80's American? I've always wondered that.

I've been looking for any evidence of that, but nothing concrete so far. I will say that in war games, the good guys are always red and the bad guys are always green. I don't know if that means anything. Like in this one...

http://roman-dushkin.narod.ru/images/galleries/bk_0010-01/green.gif

Wolfrider31

01-23-2009, 01:35 PM

That's fascinating. I posted a request a little while ago for any websites that covered Asian gaming (in the way Kotaku does for example). No dice on that front, but this is pretty cool. I often forget how fascinating gaming can be in different cultures.

Those graphics are making my eyes bleed though.

scooterb23

01-23-2009, 01:48 PM

This is A+ material. I love this kind of stuff, and now very much want those Game & Watch style games... which I am now going to name.

The frog game = Froggie's Homework Assignment is Due or Vib Ribbit
The Monkey game = Look! The Mime Monkey's Stuck in the Invisible Box 2
Asteroids game = I Blame the Americans for this Random Attack of Space Rocks

Steve W

01-23-2009, 07:43 PM

blue lander

01-23-2009, 08:34 PM

I'd think that most of those Game and Watches came from Russia's communist neighbor China. You know how popular cloning already established technology is in China. And I've read that Famiclones were moderately popular in Russia in the early '90s in an article in Retro Gamer.

The Russians and the Chinese hated eachother during that era, so I'd doubt it. Did the Chinese clone much in the 80's, anyways? I thought that was mostly in Hong Kong (which wasn't part of China at the time). Everything I've read suggests that there were Famiclones in Russia in the early 90's, but no reliable source says if they were pre or post Communism.

When you think about it, they would have either had to smuggle in cloned Famicom ROMs in mass quantities or they would have had to have the facilities to burn PROMs with a variety of programs on them in mass quantities. I don't know how feasible that would have been.

Looks like King's Bounty is in there! AWESOME game (on Genesis, anyway). One question...were the bad guys in Soviet games back in the 80's American? I've always wondered that.

The version of King's Bounty for it is pretty good, except that you're stuck using the super stiff BK keyboard (no joystick support). It's quite playable on an emulator though. Oddly enough, after you die the game plays a few bars of "Take on me" by A-Ha.

Thrillo

01-24-2009, 07:46 AM

Man, this is one fascinating thread!
All I can contribute is this: American CPU engineers knew that the Soviets were copying their designs, so the engineers at VAX decided to have some fun with them: http://www.microscopy.fsu.edu/creatures/pages/russians.html

The version of King's Bounty for it is pretty good, except that you're stuck using the super stiff BK keyboard (no joystick support). It's quite playable on an emulator though. Oddly enough, after you die the game plays a few bars of "Take on me" by A-Ha.
Now that just sounds incredibly random, but when you think about it it makes sense. The commies rarely heard western music, so I'm not surprised to see a (probably anti-communism) soviet programmer put part of his favorite song into a game.

blue lander

01-25-2009, 02:46 PM

I'm guessing the authors of these games must have spent some time in the west to have been exposed to arcade games like King's Bounty, so I guess it isn't suprising they had contact with Western music. I wonder if stuff like that was considered subversive. From what I read these computers were only available to people with quite a bit of money, maybe they were allowed to get away with whatever they want. Since there weren't any game stores (or game companies for that matter), it appears software was distributed through game clubs, so it's not like the government could keep a close eye on it. It's amazing that literally 100% of the software and hardware for the thing was fan made without any commercial support. It looks like you could buy homebrew hardware or get modifications from the same clubs where you could get the latest software.

I finally got a 100% stable video picture of of the unit, I'll take some pictures soon. My next goal is to make a joystick adapter. The Soviet one isn't the worst I've ever used, but I'd prefer to use a nice Sega joypad or something.

Frogacuda

01-31-2009, 03:02 AM

What about gaming consoles? What were Russians playing while I had Super Mrio Bros?

Elektronika made a couple video game consoles, but they weren't programmable. They were like our Odyssey vartiants; pong-type paddle games and primitive light gun games.

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/ru/thumb/4/48/Eksi.JPG/800px-Eksi.JPG

In 1992, right after the fall of the USSR, they got the Dendy, a famiclone compatible with all the usual HK/Japanese release. From what I gather, legit games were hard to come by, so they were mostly playing hacks and mutant versions of games, much like the Chinese kids.

Oh, as for people asking about the colors on the BK games, it bears mentioning that some of the games are monochrome and appear to have random colors when run in color mode. I dunno if that King's Bounty-looking game is one of them, but it looks like it to me.

I've noticed a lot of games have the odd snippets of music, too. One game played "Popcorn" (also used in Pengo) and Arkanoid plays "When the Saints Go Marching In."

Frogacuda

01-31-2009, 03:06 AM

NeoZeedeater

01-31-2009, 01:14 PM

I love this thread and have been playing BK-0010 stuff on emulator.

I remember someone on another message board who grew up in the Soviet Union saying he used to play Raid Over Moscow of all games.

Ed Oscuro

02-01-2009, 02:21 AM

It's not a bad little computer, just not very well engineered. For instance, every connector on the thing is a DIN-5
That's more a case of having to make do with existing mass-produced parts only...although the joystick does look rather iffy.

Still would love to have one just because it's got that retro-Soviet charm about it :D

Not too surprised there aren't any Anti-American themes in it so far, Blue Dawn notwithstanding.

The games look pretty nifty too.

Thanks for the info!

boatofcar

02-01-2009, 05:25 AM

Blue Lander, you ought to compile your posts in this thread and send it to Retro Gamer. I bet they'd print it. This is great stuff.

Dark_Sol

02-01-2009, 10:16 AM

hehe yes those russian handheld electronic games were ripped directly from Game and Watch. only years later we realized this when we actually discovered game and watch. lol. We always thought it is our original design :) . It is long not in production. For like.. 15 years a i guess. But these clones are still popular among russian collector's.

c0ldb33r

02-01-2009, 10:21 AM

Blue Lander, you ought to compile your posts in this thread and send it to Retro Gamer. I bet they'd print it. This is great stuff.
That's an excellent idea.

I just quickly searched retro gamer AND soviet/russia on google and the RG forums and I don't believe that they've already run a story on soviet gaming.

blue lander

02-02-2009, 05:58 PM

Man, I gotta get me one of those Soviet pong clones!

In 1992, right after the fall of the USSR, they got the Dendy, a famiclone compatible with all the usual HK/Japanese release. From what I gather, legit games were hard to come by, so they were mostly playing hacks and mutant versions of games, much like the Chinese kids.

So it was definitely a post-Communism thing, then? I guess it would have been difficult to sell a cartridge based gaming system when there weren't any video game stores to sell them.

[qupte]Oh, as for people asking about the colors on the BK games, it bears mentioning that some of the games are monochrome and appear to have random colors when run in color mode. I dunno if that King's Bounty-looking game is one of them, but it looks like it to me.[/quote]
...
I discovered the same thing. This is "Heaven" in B&W and Color modes...

http://img67.imageshack.us/img67/3560/heavenbwnq2.pnghttp://img50.imageshack.us/img50/2037/heavencolorjp2.png

Blue Lander, you ought to compile your posts in this thread and send it to Retro Gamer. I bet they'd print it. This is great stuff.

Thanks! That's not a bad idea, although an actual Russian or at least a Russian speaker could probably do the subject better justice.

Cinder6

02-02-2009, 11:17 PM

Some of these games look like they're meant to be in 3D. Particularly this one:

http://roman-dushkin.narod.ru/images/galleries/bk_0010-01/heaven.gif

Anybody have some stereoscopic glasses they can try out with this image?

Cool find. But why are so many of the screenshots in English?

Push Upstairs

02-02-2009, 11:27 PM

It doesn't seem to work with red/blue 3D glasses.

I find it hard to believe that such a gimmick would be used in Russian video games when it was hardly used in Western games.

skaar

02-03-2009, 01:37 AM

In Soviet Russia, videogame plays you.

In Soviet Videogaming thread, joke makes you.

Sweet toy.

Thrillo

02-03-2009, 06:40 AM

Wasn't Eletronika an East German firm/company/whatever-the-commies-called-it, thus making some of this hardware technically non-Soviet?
Not that it's any less cool...

Some of these games look like they're meant to be in 3D. Particularly this one:

Anybody have some stereoscopic glasses they can try out with this image?

Cool find. But why are so many of the screenshots in English?
I figured that they were using the old color-blending trick, which was used in a lot of '80s computer games (and practically all Apple II ones) in order to get more colors.
As for the English, my guess is that the programmers were probably pretty liberal like programmers have historically been, and they thought that those weird forbidden English characters were a lot cooler looking than the usual Cyrillic. Kinda like how the Japanese, Chinese, and Koreans love English text and put it on shirts and store names just for the sake of it.

Dark_Sol

02-03-2009, 07:00 AM

Wasn't Eletronika an East German firm/company/whatever-the-commies-called-it, thus making some of this hardware technically non-Soviet?
No they were russian. :vamp:

Sabz5150

02-03-2009, 08:00 AM

Some of these games look like they're meant to be in 3D. Particularly this one:

Anybody have some stereoscopic glasses they can try out with this image?

Cool find. But why are so many of the screenshots in English?

The glasses, they do nothing!

robotriot

02-03-2009, 09:13 AM

Wasn't Eletronika an East German firm/company/whatever-the-commies-called-it, thus making some of this hardware technically non-Soviet?
Not that it's any less cool...

Robotron was a company in the GDR that produced computers, among others the KC 85 home computer which also had some games made for it: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/KC_85

blue lander

02-03-2009, 10:17 AM

As for the English, my guess is that the programmers were probably pretty liberal like programmers have historically been, and they thought that those weird forbidden English characters were a lot cooler looking than the usual Cyrillic. Kinda like how the Japanese, Chinese, and Koreans love English text and put it on shirts and store names just for the sake of it.

I was wondering the same thing too. You see virtually no English in games made between 1987 to 1990, but then ones from 1990 or so onwards have quite a bit of english in it. Here's my favorite examples of... uh, Russlish:

Here's a decent platformer....
http://img6.imageshack.us/img6/170/horrorcm0.png

The text for this one scrolls along the top so I can't exactly take a screenshot, so I've transcribed it here:
"This beautiful game was born in Stavropol in 1989. It is maded by famous corporation Manul's-Catarina. One have many sound and color's effects. In this game used 16 colors. The rules of this game are very interesting and attractive. If you want have a good and safe programs you must buy only our software!!!"
http://img24.imageshack.us/img24/8678/pipevk5.png

The english in this one isn't really that bad, but it still cracks me up for some reason. It's Return of the Jedi, and when you run out of lives it says "The Jedi not return."
http://img3.imageshack.us/img3/6173/rotjqb1.png

This one isn't bad english, it's just completely random. I didn't know Frodo had such a gutter mouth!
http://img223.imageshack.us/img223/4245/hobbitax8.png

Here's Comrade Ms. Pac-man:
http://img3.imageshack.us/img3/9490/mspacmanbb7.png

This is the BK-0010 ripoff of Ultimate PTG's Spectrum classic Jetpac. The only difference is that the rocket says USSR on it, which I thought was cool.
http://img528.imageshack.us/img528/1210/jetmanwt7.png

No they were russian. :vamp:

I think mine was either made in or sold in Latvia. The box has both Russian and Latvian writing on it, and all the manuals are in both languages too.
http://img528.imageshack.us/img528/9892/1000005bn3.jpg

The box has obviously been through alot, but I bet it looked pretty grimey even when it was new. It's basically just a cardboard box with a piece of paper glued to it. And here it is living in harmony with the other computers of the world on my desk...
http://img3.imageshack.us/img3/3229/1000007lh6.jpg