Arcade games from the Soviet Union

[Arino]

I found this video so I though a lot of you would enjoy it as well:

https://youtu.be/gCI2alXDz4w?si=XTSaRHDYbbpb8W7n

[To Far Away Times]

In Soviet Russia real games play you, not like puny American games.

[Sima Tuna]

Soviet Russia allowed fun?

[orange808]

Soviet Russia allowed fun?

Looking at the shovelware in the video, I'd say the answer is no.

I looked up TIA-MC1. Just looking over the specs, the "game software" the Soviets produced looks embarrassing. It's too bad there's no development documentation or materials available in English. It would be interesting to probe the capabilities of the system further.

[To Far Away Times]

In Soviet Russia we wrestle bear for fun.

[Arino]

Still better than having no games at all

Edit: Actually, I'd prefer playing nothing over this lol.

Also, note BIL's cameo at 13:02 !

[To Far Away Times]

[Sima Tuna]

Still better than having no games at all

Yuri would rather wrestle bear than play shitty game of Sea Battle! Would rather shoot gun of Kalashnikov at scum of capitalist than play "racing" game such poor quality!

[orange808]

This is an interesting rabbit hole.

I enjoyed reading about the process of cloning western chips here:
https://retrocomputing.stackexchange.co ... ed-in-ussr

You'll be able to identify the quality posts from the rubbish, but stackexchange threads are always hit and miss. The yields appear to have been shockingly low with their early clones. 1% yields...

The story of a proposed Soviet computer network was another fascinating read, but most of us have heard about it before. Of course, they were too busy protecting their silos to innovative.
https://www.bbc.com/future/article/2016 ... -the-start

Makes sense that the TIA-FC1 arcade cabinet would use Intel PC chips, because that silicon was most useful for productivity and military purposes. By the time the TIA-FC1 arrived, it had some stiff competition from home computers. Z80 clones and pirated western games probably made the TIA-FC1 a target of ridicule among many gamers.
https://www.cpushack.com/2021/01/26/the ... processor/

Finally, the link for the TIA-FC1 mame driver on the MiSTer github was dead. Here's a working link with details on machine. I still think they could have gotten a lot more out of the hardware.
https://codesearch.isocpp.org/actcd19/m ... tiamc1.cpp

[Sima Tuna]

digression/spitballing why the games are so bad

I think it's interesting Soviet era games are so awful, because Soviet-era film contains some real gems. Granted, they were fantastic films made in spite of the Soviet film process rather than because of it. But it's hard to look for a list of greatest films ever made and not come across Derzu Uzala, Solaris or Stalker. There were many more made earlier (in the black and white era), but those are the three I'm most familiar with.

I suppose one could chalk it up to two factors: Respectability of medium and Understanding of medium. By the postwar years, all countries had enjoyed decades of local film industries. At least in the West (including Russia.) How to make a "good" film according to certain general rules was understood everywhere by talented directors and cameramen. Prestigious films were honored on the world stage at festivals like Cannes, and the status obtained by movies that did well around the world (regardless of politics) was a boon to the country.

Anyway, that's my thoughts on why maybe other forms of art were more highly developed in the Soviet Union. These games look truly terrible, but domestic (electronic) entertainments probably weren't a high priority in the USSR the way that arcades were in Japan and the USA. Arcades also require disposable income and it's possible the citizenry at that time may not have had as much disposable income as their American and Japanese counterparts. Less money would mean less focus on making future games bigger and better.

[orange808]

Rogue young gamers that were playing good black market games in the mid 1980's probably weren't the ones working for the companies making the Soviet arcade cabs in the early 1990's. There wasn't a path for game designers to learn and grow their craft--outside of hobby software development on home computers. The Soviets didn't actively encourage or train game designers, so they had none. Any self trained devs they had weren't engaged with a firm that could use them.

https://scd.sk/clanky/playable-english- ... 0s-period/

I believe the Soviets that were most qualified to develop and make decent video games weren't in a position to work on game software. Beyond that (and I'm speculating), I think the Soviet method of software development was going to be the waterfall. They probably had absolutely no patience for iteration or experimentation. That kind of rigid thinking wasn't going to produce good games.

[Andrey Aritonov]

Heh