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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. '"
In Soviet Russia, Comrade Sandiego finds 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.
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.