Slashdot Mirror

← Back to Stories (view on slashdot.org)

Rare East German Arcade Game Unearthed

Posted by michael on from the capitalistic-tendencies dept.

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.

8 of 368 comments (clear)

  1. Re:literal translations rule by fuxoft · · Score: 5, Insightful

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

    --

    --- Frantisek Fuka (Yes, that's my real name and you have no idea how it's pronounced)

  2. History! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Hey! Have SOME respect. This is history being preserved here.

  3. Re:Screenshots of actual gameplay by garcia · · Score: 3, Insightful

    I thought it was funny that they said it was nothing more than a TV and a wooden box...

    I have an original Ms. Pacman machine. The tubes inside were never meant to make it more than a couple years (according to websites I have read) because they never expected video games to remain popular that long...

    So anyway, this Ms. Pacman machine is basically nothing more than an old, stripped down TV tube, in a wooden box... I don't see how that is any different than the Poly Play description.

  4. Priceless? by Concerned+Onlooker · · Score: 3, Insightful
    And what about it's value? Simon says it's hard to say; as it's only one of three in existence, it could be priceless.

    Well, it certainly could be worth quite a bit and it is a fascinating find, but priceless? Perhaps they should list it with Sotheby's. Do you think it will fetch more than a Vermeer?

    --
    http://www.rootstrikers.org/
  5. Of course, in the Soviet Pac Man game... by b0r0din · · Score: 2, Insightful

    naturally, being a commie Pac Man game, you would team up with your commie buddies as comrades (ghosts) fighting against the capitalist pig (ie. Pac-Man).

    Makes you wonder if that was subconsciously the point of the original Pac-man, in reverse.

  6. Re:MAME? by pla · · Score: 4, Insightful

    I'm not certain the MAME guys should be so sure of that though.

    You make the mistake of assuming people really care about the legality of MAME (or any emulator, really, although at least for most of the single-console emulators, they have homebrew games to justify their existance).

    Really, how many arcade machines can you fit in your living room? Even (former) arcade owners would realistically only have the right to use a few dozen games at most. Yet most MAME users have literally hundreds, if not thousands, of games.

    Not to say that strictly legal users don't exist, but I would consider them in the tiny minority.

  7. Re:Itchy & Scratchy by vhold · · Score: 2, Insightful

    Never heard of the Trabant before.

  8. Re:MAME? by Hatta · · Score: 2, Insightful

    Indeed. We're fortunate MAME is as comprehensive and functional as it is today. As DRM becomes more commonplace, and games become as crappy as the movies they're spun off from, you can expect MAME's popularity to increase. Concurrently, you can expect the making and/or use of emulators to be crushed legally, by stuff like the INDUCE act which doesn't even care if there's a legit use.

    --
    Give me Classic Slashdot or give me death!