Russia

Abstract

The history of video games in Russia goes back to the early 1980s. In the beginning of the computer era, Soviet arcade games, very primitive compared to today’s standard, included a large number of slot machines or electromechanical arcade games such as Morskoi Boi (Sea Battle, 1981), Tankodrom (1981), Rally-M (1981), Sniper (1981), and Safari (1982). In Sea Battle, the player had to shell enemy ships, while Rally-M was a racing game, and in Sniper, the player had to shell the target. These games were coin- operated; it was necessary to insert fifteen kopecks into the machine, which gave you about three minutes of play. These kinds of gaming machines were usually installed in urban parks and cinema lobbies, and they were very popular among Soviet children and adults. From the late 1970s to the early 1990s, Soviet military factories produced some seventy different arcade game models like these, but “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”

Keywords: video games, coputer games, Russia, media