Soviet-era arcade games for Nerd Enthusiasts

By Staff and Utne Reader
Published on April 1, 2009
article image
Varvara Lozenko / www.flickr.com/photos/varvara_lozenko

The next time you’re in Moscow, try your evil capitalist hand at some Soviet-era arcade games. The city’s interactive Museum of Soviet Arcade Games, opened in 2007 by a group of nerd-enthusiasts, boasts 40 classic machines, including Konek-Gorbunok, a Zelda-esque quest game, and 01, a firefighting game with a hoselike joystick.

The museum is also home to four copies of Morskoi Boi (pictured), a popular submarine-battle game that was, incredibly, produced by the government alongside actual nuclear submarines. The machine comes complete with periscope, observes RUSSIA! (Winter 2009), but that’s about the only authentic thing about it: “With its cryptic green and red gauges, it appears to require naval training. But these instruments are just stickers.”

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