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Soviet Video Games from the 70s
vigmeister writes "A group of Russian kids have uncovered and rebuilt some arcade games from the Soviet era. These games apparently offered free play when someone played well, but no list of hi-scores. Roughly 32 of them have been found and although they are based on other arcade games, I hope these games were unique enough to offer playability for the present day arcade game lovers. 'Based largely (and crudely) on early Japanese designs, the games were distributed -- in the words of one military manual -- for the purposes of "entertainment and active leisure, as well as the development of visual-estimation abilities." Production of the games ceased with the collapse of communism, and as Nintendo consoles and PCs flooded the former Soviet states, the old arcade games were either destroyed or disappeared into warehouses and basements. It was mostly out of nostalgia that four friends at Moscow State Technical University began scouring the country to rescue these old games. '"
aww heck. It's too easy.
In Soviet Russia, Comrade Sandiego finds YOU!
In Soviet Russia, pole positions you!
Come on. The Soviet Union was largely a dictatorship/oligarchy, but that doesn't mean everything done within it has to be part of some sinister conspiracy.
The inhabitants of the USSR clearly desired some luxuries that were widely enjoyed in the west, and state-supplied video games(everything being state supplied, that would be the only alternative to no video games) were one "luxury" the state was able to offer. So the state offered it.
Don't confuse the actual USSR with the USSR as portrayed in Cold War propaganda(in the west): the actual Russians of the era were likely not mindless robots single-mindedly bent on assisting the state in the destruction of the capitalist enemy, but rather ordinary people who were occasionally interested in having fun.
You could say that every state-supplied luxury was a part of a sinister conspiracy to keep the people happy, so they wouldn't revolt based on a lack of luxuries, but that would be so general a definition of a "conspiracy" that pretty much any action taken by any government ever would be a governmental conspiracy to stifle revolt.
Because under Communism, everyone is equal.
Wonder if there are any MAME Dev's around here....
Insert witty comment *here*. I'm fresh out of wit...
Not surprising in a country where in the 50s physics textbooks had to justify presenting the theory of relativity by its correct alignment with Marxist philosophy! By the 70s and 80s, fewer people actually believed in those standard justifications, but one still had to formally have some connection to the "goals set by the Communist Party". People had to play by the rules (no pun intended), whether they actually believed the propaganda or not.
As for the military connection, some of the youth-oriented recreational facilities had been run by an organization that specifically was charged with getting young people ready for military service. Usually, they ran sports-related activities, like parachute jumping or shooting ranges (both funfair-style and for sports like biathlon), but I wouldn't be surprised if the same outfit sponsored some of the arcades, especially in smaller towns.
You have to understand, though, that in the USSR the state controlled and owned everything. So it's only natural that all services were also owned and paid-for by the state.
If enough people wanted to dance, the state built some discos. If enough people wanted to drink, the state built bars and vodka distilleries. (Though they did try to curb alcohol consumption too.) If people wanted to go to the beach on vacation, the state built some hotels near a beach. If people wanted to see movies, the state built cinemas and TV stations, and paid some directors and actors to make movies. Etc.
The fact that you get those from some private companies, while they got them from state-owned companies, isn't necessarily some sinister conspiracy. It's just the way a state-owned economy is supposed to work: it essentially does the same things, but via companies owned by the state.
Some of them aren't even just part of some "keeping the population happy" plan. (Although even then, I see nothing fundamentally wrong with a government wanting to raise the standard of living of its citizens. You wouldn't mind it too much if your government cared about that, would you?)
They're also part of the idea that the "soviet socialist" economy, at least in Lenin's view, wasn't supposed to be _that_ different from a capitalist free-market society. They never got to the utopian part where everyone gets according to their needs, so it was still based on money, like in the west. The economy was still supposed to be match supply and demand, and it was still supposed to keep the money circulating, etc. The only difference was supposed to be that it's the state who does that matching (e.g., by building another car factory if demand for cars outstrips supply by too much), and in a carefully planned way.
Now that planning never actually worked too well, but that was at least the idea(l).
At any rate, they were still supposed to give people some stuff to spend their money on, and preferrably the same things a private company would have offered. (Or at least those things which weren't against the communist ideals.) So basically if they paid someone X rubles per month, they still had to offer the possibilities to spend that money on, and hopefully those would also be the things that people actually want. At least theoretically, anyway.
What I'm getting at is that it really made just as much sense for them to let people blow their coins on arcade games, as it made in the USA. From a simple economic point of view, if there's enough demand for X, it makes sense to take people's money by creating a supply. And it made just as much sense in the USSR as in the USA. Just because that money gets back into the state's pocket, doesn't mean that it doesn't want them back eventually.
Now, as I was saying, they weren't too good at that planning part, and the economy went increasingly off the intended track. But you don't have to assume conspiracies where it's just that, well, they just hadn't figured out a way for it to work without the money circulating like in any other market. For better or worse, they still had to play a pseudo-capitalism game.
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