Sink Capitalism

May 20, 2016 1:18 AM

If you can't make it to the Museum of Soviet Arcade Machines (previously, previouslier), don't fret, you can experience it in the comfort of your own browser!

While the English website only includes Morskoi Boi (Sea Battle), more games are available through the Russian language website, including Magistral, Gorodki, Autorally-M, and Zimnyaya Ohota.

posted by ckape (11 comments total)

OK, I'll be "that guy" - whazzup with the arcade games that just look like crates?
posted by milnews.ca at 4:28 AM on May 20, 2016 [1 favorite]

OK, I'll be "that guy" - whazzup with the arcade games that just look like crates?

Those were the games they brought back from that Arctic Expedition in 1834. Don't play those games!
posted by lagomorphius at 5:47 AM on May 20, 2016 [4 favorites]

From the post title, I was expecting something a bit more Discordian.
posted by Foosnark at 6:08 AM on May 20, 2016 [1 favorite]

I'm visiting Russia in a few months. Thanks for putting something new right at the top of my itinerary.
posted by Itaxpica at 6:20 AM on May 20, 2016 [1 favorite]

FWIW, requires Flash.
posted by RobotVoodooPower at 10:02 AM on May 20, 2016

My guess is that the crates are games that have been acquired but not yet restored. Zimnyaya Ohota is a crate on the English site but shows the actual cabinet on the Russian site, presumably because the English site isn't as up-to-date.
posted by ckape at 11:20 AM on May 20, 2016

I like that the ship one has little paper cutouts of ships that you're shooting at.

I played a game one time when I was little that was kind of like that. You sat in the seat, and in front of you, a painting of flying through a canyon was projected. Squares inside of that painting were projected separately, and showed the backs of jets. You had a joystick that controlled where a crosshair was pointed. I think the crosshair was projected from a separate projector that rotated around as you moved the joystick or something.

When you were pointing at a jet, and hit the fire button, the little picture of the jet would sllide-project-switch to a little picture of an explosion. After a few seconds, it flipped back to being the jet.

All the while, radical guitar music was playing.

The game ended after a fixed amount of time.

I played this game at some sort of "fun zone", where there was mini-golf and go-karts. I was like "what in the heck is this supposed to be???"

It seemed to have been built by a person after a time traveller had come from the future and explained what videogames were. But in my timeline, videogames totally existed, so I didn't understand why this thing was built.
posted by Galaxor Nebulon at 12:16 PM on May 20, 2016

There's also a gallery that includes some of the internals.
posted by ckape at 1:41 PM on May 20, 2016

Wow, I knew we had it good in the west back in the late 70s and early 80s, but I had no idea we had it so much better than our soviet counterparts.
posted by InsertNiftyNameHere at 2:04 PM on May 20, 2016

The mechanical arcade games that preceded video games were quite complex. Many of them relied on the Pepper's Ghost mirror trick (or something like it) to combine backgrounds and mechanics mounted in different parts of the cabinet. I remember playing this one.
posted by lagomorphius at 2:06 PM on May 20, 2016 [2 favorites]

The mechanical arcade games that preceded video games were quite complex. Many of them relied on the Pepper's Ghost mirror trick (or something like it) to combine backgrounds and mechanics mounted in different parts of the cabinet. I remember playing this one yt .
posted by lagomorphius at 4:06 PM

Thanks for that comment and link. Those ancient electro-mechanical games were great. I sure miss 'em.
posted by InsertNiftyNameHere at 8:30 PM on May 20, 2016 [1 favorite]