Rare East German Arcade Game Unearthed

Lancey writes "While hunting for work stuff I found this press release about an old Soviet games machine, apparently there are only three surviving units from a production of 1500 - most of them were destroyed after the Berlin wall came down. Thought you might find it interesting..." There are screenshots and photos in this BBC story.

Comments

literal translations rule

[ack154]

Games include:

Hirshjagd (Deer Hunt)
Hase und Wolf (Hare and Wolf)
Abfahrtslauf (Departure Course)
Schmetterlinge (Butterflies)
Scheissbude (literal translation "crap booth"!)
Autorennen (Racing Car)

I wonder what you have to do to win at Crap Booth... Get to the toilet paper on the other side of the river? Flush the toilet to avoid the evil crap monster? Or is it like whack-a-mole, but with turds? What's the objective?

Re:literal translations rule

[Der Krazy Kraut]

Actually, confusing IE with EI is one of the more common mistakes made by non native speakers and is a somewhat common typo even in Germany.

Re:literal translations rule

[Dark Kenshin]

Here is a good site that explains this machine and the games more. (even Scheissbude)

http://www.andys-arcade.net/personal/polyplay/po ly play.htm

Re:literal translations rule

[absolut_kurant]

that probably should be
Hirschjagd
Abfahrtslauf is a skiing game (downhill racing)

and Scheissbude should be Schiessbude (shooting booth) *g*

Re:literal translations rule

[pdp0x14]

Speaking of literal translations ... While literally correct, "shooting booth" is not the idiomatic translation of "Schiessbude." Native English speakers say "shooting gallery," or "shooting range."

Re:literal translations rule

[AKAImBatman]

Did it look like the Nintendo's Game and Watch type handheld? The game that I have has a wolf that tries to catch the eggs in a basket that are being thrown by the rabbit. Where did you find the one for the Palm Pilot?

Yep. That's the one. The modern version is so damn cheap that it's almost as fun trying to get the buttons work right as it is playing the game.

The Palm game is called "CatchIT" and can be downloaded here.

Schiessbude

[Throtex]

...appears to be a carnival shooting game... or something.

Screenshots of actual gameplay

[lawpoop]

Here.

"Crap booth" is not as interesting as it seems, but apparently communist Germany and capitalist America aren't really that different.

Re:Screenshots of actual gameplay

[Rob Parkhill]

But the TV in this thing is not a stripped down unit, it is a whole TV set, little legs and everything!

U of Bath is in the UK

[gevmage]

For those like me who are geographically challenged, Bath is in the United Kingdom, a couple of hours west of London.

What

[stratjakt]

When it was first launched in 1985, the computer technology was 10 years out of date by western standards. It has text-based graphics generated with a Russian 8-bit processor compared to the 16-bit processors used in western home computer games, or 32 bit processors used in western arcade machines at the time

In 1985 where was MY 16 bit game console and 32 bit arcade machines?

Hell, Super Mario Bros 2 came out in 1985. "Western life" wasn't that advanced.

Re:What

[Gldm]

In 1985 where was MY 16 bit game console and 32 bit arcade machines?

Well, while the first 32bit arcade games weren't around until 1990 or so, I believe your 16bit console had been around for 5 years or so already.

Re:What

[jridley]

I think this person is a LITTLE wrong on "home computer games" being 16 bit by then.

However, for arcade games, state of the art then was 16 bit. Pole Position was released about then I think, and the arcade I worked at for a summer job got a brand new one. I checked out the schematics. It had two Z80 peripheral CPUs, one to do the quadraphonic sound and some other tasks, and one to draw clouds and other background stuff. The main CPU was a Z-8000, which was the 16-bit version of the Z-80.

There were other 16-bit systems, though I wasn't as familiar with them. Some were running 68000's, some were stuff like the 8088 or 80186.

Re:What

[master_p]

Dude, In 1985, SEGA created Outrun: 2x68000, Z80 for sound, a tremendous sprite scaler engine that could scale many many hardware sprites at real time...the 68000 had a full 32-bit architecture, but a 24-bit data bus. You can easily google arcade Outrun specs.

Furthermore, many mainframe systems used the 68000 with some version of Unix.

Furthermore, in 1985, you could buy an Amiga 1000 in US.

Re:MAME?

[strictnein]

It's been in MAME for quite some time.
PolyPlay is one of the the (few) legal ROMs for MAME. From Mameworld.net:
(C) 1985 VEB Polytechnik Karl-Marx-Stadt.
Owing to the collapse of East Germany, there does not appear to be any copyright holder for this software.

There's a link there to download the game. So go grab your favorite version of MAME and play the game! Interactive news! It's the future!

Re:MAME?

[Anonymous Coward]

It is already included in MAME. And ROM is available from official MAME page.

Re:MAME?

[grm_wnr]

It's on MAME. Google for "MAME polyplay". I actually played it. Problem: It's really boring.

Green Mode

[trifakir]

I wonder what is the power consumption of this gadget. Probably you have to switch-off one or two districts in the neighbour and it needs an additional water cooling. A Soviet refrigerator, for example, consumes probably 1Kw and most of the energy is converted to sound as it is louder than a truck...

Re:MAME?

[k98sven]

Owing to the collapse of East Germany, there does not appear to be any copyright holder for this software.

I'm not certain the MAME guys should be so sure of that though. Had it had any commercial value whatsoever, you can bet someone would've claimed it.

There have been cases of rights disputes over Soviet creations, not to mention the big fuss over Tetris back in the day.

3 in existance ?

[Anonymous Coward]

I had one of those. And I know about a dozen of other PolyPlays

Its rare, but not that rare. there are more PolyPlays in Germany (east&west) than PacMans.

There are several different cab versions of it (due to lack of rescoureces)

And its really not worth anything........not really.

Which Super Mario 2?

[Luyseyal]

See Super Mario Brothers 2.

Japanese (basically extra levels to original): 1986
USA (Doki Doki Panic + Mario sprites): 1988

-l

Funniest post in the thread!

[__aagctu1952]

Even though I was going to post something like it myself when I read the topic, I salute you :)
Just a shame today's mods don't get it...

For those who don't get the joke it's a play on words (or acronyms rather):
DDR = Dance Dance Revolution (popular arcade dancing game)
DDR = Deutsche Demokratische Republik (the official name of the state of East Germany)

It is.

[Gorath99]

Isn't that "Schiessbude" (shooting booth)? See Schiessen vs. Scheissen...

It is. See an image over here (the text on the page spells it wrong though).

Is it just me, or do a lot of native English speaking people seem to have a problem with the difference between "ie" and "ei"? I would understand if they always wrote "ei", but I see too many instances of "wierd" for that to be true. Odd...

Re:BBC blows up

[Anonymous Coward]

Bollocks. The TV license does not go to the treasury, it goes (usually via the post office) to the BBC. Not much of a difference in some ways, but very important.

Some must have snuck out of germany

[random coward]

Because I played one in California in the mid 1980's. At the time I just thought it was some old defunct company. Hare and Wolf is just too familiar.

Re:Itchy & Scratchy

[daviddennis]

Worse than that, actually. A Trabant in East Germany was issued after you saved most of your spare money for 10 years.

if you did the same thing in West Germany - an act that would admittedly take tremendous willpower - you could afford a 911, easy. A 911 is only about ten times as fast from 0-60 as a Trabant. Well, a Trabant can't even make it to 60 (it has a top speed of 56mph) but you get the idea.

Not much of a joke if you have to live it, alas :-(.

D

Re:I remember that

[queequeg1]

They actually let Soviet citizens in the hotel? When I went over there (a year earlier), Soviet citizens were not allowed in most hotels where westerners stayed (although security was relatively lax and it wasn't too difficult to get people in).

If you want to play it yourself

[Baumi]

The page linked above also has a link to a MAME file.

Re:If you want to play it yourself

[darc]

No. The MAME team writes custom drivers for many games. Sometimes they have to write more than normal, to emulate a special chip. Most of the time, they have to emulate the board, but the CPUs are already available n another driver.

If it's a special minicomputer, then they wrote a driver for it. As a case in point, several MAME drivers have to emulate early 3dfx chips, hard drives, and weird controllers, which are most definitely not a stock systems.

Re:oh no!

[myster0n]

Not exactly right, but close. It was released in Japan as Puckman, and when Midway got the rights and released it in the US, it was renamed for the reasons you stated. for more info : the history of Puckman

Re:BBC blows up

[jimicus]

Historically the BBC has never been afraid to challenge the UK establishment:

• In 1995 they aired an interview with Princess Diana, which at the time was something of an embarrassment to the royal family. Still got aired.
  
• They employ Jeremy Paxman for a lot of political shows. I doubt anyone in the States has heard of him - he's like an angry dobermann if a politician won't give an answer. Paxman has been known to ask the same question 14 times in order to get an answer, and will make no secret of it if he doesn't like the answer.
  
• Most recently, they refused to back down having made allegations that the government went to war in Iraq on the back of a dossier which was intentionally "sexed up". This ultimately led to 2 resignations/sackings at the highest level, and a senior MoD weapons expert mysteriously "committed suicide".
  

The sad thing is, having said all that about editorial independence, it looks very likely that they may soon lose it because our current government doesn't like being publicly criticised by a body which they can ultimately pull the funding on.

If the government really doesn't like what is being said on the news, regardless of who's saying it, they can go to court & demand that the publisher/broadcaster doesn't go with the story. This is fairly unusual, and they don't always get their demands (publishers tend to then publish a story all about how they're not allowed to publish the story they'd like to), but we technically have no such thing as freedom of the speech or of the press.

Not that I reckon our system's perfect, but to criticise it without understanding it is IMHO equally foolish. YOpinionMV, TWIAVBP, etc etc etc.