Vintage Video Games from the USSR

Wired is running a short piece on a group of students from Moscow State Technical University who are on a quest to restore Soviet-era arcade consoles. The piece is frustratingly short on details, but the photo gallery is worth a look. In many ways, the games are crude variants of Western concepts: side-scrolling adventure games, driving games (no brakes, though), and so on.

Approximately 70 different titles were produced between the 1970s and the fall of the Soviet Union, intended for "entertainment and active leisure, as well as the development of visual-estimation abilities." Oddly enough, they lacked high-score tables because that sort of competition was discouraged. I suspect that high scores were removed to discourage gambling, however. Many of the games focused on earning enough points to win a free play. While we're on the subject, how come Pac-Man or Galaxians never offered a free pay option? Hmm. Now I'm feeling ripped-off.

Soviet-Era Arcade Games Crawl Out of Their Cold War Graves

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