Soviet Videogaming

[blue lander]

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



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.



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.

[Dark_Sol]

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

[geneshifter]

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]

In Soviet Russia, videogame plays you.

[demen999]

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]

In Soviet Russia, videogame plays you.

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

[CreamSoda]

In Soviet Russia, videogame plays you.

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

[Ze_ro]

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.

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.

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?

--Zero

[PapaStu]

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

[blue lander]

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]

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]

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]

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]

It's already got the virtua boy beat

[chrisbid]

http://www.wired.com/gaming/hardware...y_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]

http://www.supersoviet.com/

(Alien Hominid reference)

[blue lander]

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]

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]

i want one

[CastlevaniaDude]

i want one

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