A long while back, I recall a story showing up on the blogs where someone had come across several arcade games that had been made in the Soviet Union back in the late 70’s/early 80’s. As these were developed behind the Iron Curtain, knowledge about these titles didn’t spread very far but it’s interesting to see how the explosive growth of arcade gaming at the time affected even the USSR. From the looks of it the graphical capabilities of these machines seem to be on par with some early Atari 2600 games and the games themselves seemed to borrow from elements found in many western games although they did not seem to many produce bootlegs of titles that we all know so well, except for one title that looks a lot like Midway’s Sea Raider (1969). Apparently these games were made in secret military factories and have mostly been forgotten even in Russia but one group is collecting and restoring the machines, where you can know see them via the online Musuem of Soviet Arcade machines. You can even play the games in Flash on the site in case you are curious to see how they play. For more, visit the links below.
[The Museum of Soviet Arcade Machines] [English page] [Technabob] [Discuss on the Forums]