Museum of Soviet Era arcade machines
I hope this hasn't been posted yet, but I saw it and thought it was fascinating.
http://www.15kop.ru/en/
Most of the site in Russian so it's just pretty pictures to me, but hopefully someone can translate and give us more info. I did discover by poking around that you can apparently play an emulated version of the first game that comes up when you look at the collection, though, the yellow game with the large face on it. It reminds me of the Atari 2600 title Street Racer.
Some really interesting cabinet design choices were made. A little more out there than the standard American (or Japanese) cab. Except for the color choice (army green) I'd love to have that foosball table, though.
In Soviet Russia, the cab plays you!
Very unique cabs. I wonder what the games are like? I love the ugliness of this cab. It's like a cross between a cocktail and an upright.
I would guess these cabs would be very hard to repair for a US collector.
Interesting site, and I love how at least 4 of them are playable. I was kinda hoping however to find some U.S. flags painted on the ships in Morskoy Boy. We had no problems killing Russians in our early video games, it would seem kind of right for them to have us as the enemy in theirs.
You're right. The ones on the top row of the collection page, except for the ones in the box, are fully playable. Pretty fun to check out.Originally Posted by Ro-J
God, arcade games were ugly in the USSR. Even though they actually had COLOR, the only electronic one was the racing one, and that looked like not even Apple 1!
Neat stuff.
Wonder what you do with this one? Pull it? Spin it?
Insert coin for exercise fun.
http://www.15kop.ru/f/1/turnip-anons.jpg
Of the 4 playable games, only the red one doesn't look familiar to me. As Shopkins pointed out, the yellow game looks like Street Racer (2600). Although the name eludes me, I am sure I played the periscope game before, and the beige game reminds me of Indy 500 (2600).
I researched the red one a little and found it is based off some Russian folk sport of sorts. It's called Gorodki and more info can be found here, if interested.
I don't know why, but I am finding myself fascinated by this site this morning.
Ok so I figured out how to play the red one. It seems you have to throw a spinning rod at a box with shapes in it. If you knock all the shapes out, you get a new box. I wonder what exactly it's called in English?
The periscope one reminds me of Battle Shark, only with construction paper backgrounds instead of a computer screen. It's actually pretty interesting to see a game done that way. It reminds me a little of the simulator scene in Apollo 13 where they're actually controlling a camera around small model of the LEM...only that is still a bit more high tech.
"Game programmers are generally lazy individuals. That's right. It's true. Don't let anyone tell you otherwise. Since the dawn of computer games, game programmers have looked for shortcuts to coolness." Kurt Arnlund - Game programmer for Activision, Accolade...
Good job in finding the Gorodki info. That game mystified me.
Tomwaits, I bet you pull it, because the filename features the word turnip. A turnip pulling game is about as Russian as you can get.
Last edited by shopkins; 06-22-2009 at 01:09 PM.
Clicking on the text by the chick on the bottom of the page of the periscope game brings up a description of Midway's Sea Raider. Wonder if they are basing their game off of that?
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