Tetris creator Aleksey and few of his company were bought out and borught to Seattle in early oughts by Microsoft and they made a bunch of games for MSN Zone. There was one called Hexic that I remember him posting into a Russian email alias with an offer to take whoever got 5 black pearls first to dinner with him, which I think took out od a good portion of Russians on that channel out of circulation for a day or two (I got up to 3 of those pearls but could not make it past that).<p>I had dinner with him at his house later via connections through my incredibly sociable and connected mother, he was a delight, very, very clever, and had lots of physical puzzles that he invented and made himself. I am glad he made money off it eventually.
Because of the war against Ukraine, I’ve become more aware of Ukraine’s role in the USSR when reading up on history. One thing I’ve noticed is just how much of the most impressive technological feats came from Ukraine.
This website gives strong Russian propaganda vibes. Apparently it is owned by the Russian state. <a href="https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russia_Beyond" rel="nofollow">https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russia_Beyond</a><p>Given all that's going on, I found it jarring that it uses the Russian spellings of Kharkiv and Kyiv. I did find the content a little interesting. The other articles on that site seem rather strange, like they exist purely to give westerners more favorable views of the Russian state.
There is a joke about how Tetris has been the most effective soviet weapon against the US, causing more damage in productivity losses than anything else the USSR did during the cold war.
Not exactly USSR, but I was a big fan of the very popular 1993 game based on the Russian "Wheel of Fortune" knock off show. The game participants were characters from classic Soviet cartoons. <a href="https://youtu.be/RlnsWw-YHlY" rel="nofollow">https://youtu.be/RlnsWw-YHlY</a><p>EDIT: Just read an interview with the author. Looks like he built the game in just one week. His email and personal phone number were included in the title screen, so he often got phone calls, including from mafia demanding he send them the prizes they won (hilarious things like "shoelaces from Procter & Gamble" and toilet seats). Even though the game was not officially sponsored, the actual show had two rooms filled with letters with similar demands.
The Youtube video for Perestroika is missing the sound from the intro because the game was skipping it if the CPU was too fast. I remember hearing it on a "Victor" 286 (16 MHz, but I am not sure). This recording has the sound intro: <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_IpYuXJ6u6A" rel="nofollow">https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_IpYuXJ6u6A</a>. This was quite amazing to get something like that out of a PC speaker. I don't think other games of this era was able to do that.
On Tetris, everyone got the Brick Game Tetris handheld in Russia and Europe, because the Game Boy was expensive.<p>The machine was composed of a 4 bit HT1130 CPU.<p>IDK if the MAME programmers RE it yet.<p><a href="http://web.archive.org/web/20150417011515/http://brickgame.blog.com/informacoes-tecnicas-e-manutencao/" rel="nofollow">http://web.archive.org/web/20150417011515/http://brickgame.b...</a> (Portuguese).<p><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Handheld_electronic_game#Handhelds_today" rel="nofollow">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Handheld_electronic_game#Handh...</a><p><a href="https://forums.nesdev.org/viewtopic.php?t=14115" rel="nofollow">https://forums.nesdev.org/viewtopic.php?t=14115</a><p><a href="http://www.seanriddle.com/tms1100.html" rel="nofollow">http://www.seanriddle.com/tms1100.html</a>
That Welltris screenshot reminds me of another, though younger, great 3D game from an ex-ussr country I played around the early 2000 iirc. It was a 3D version of snake, playing on a cube's surface, looked like something out of the demoscene and had an awesome selfcomposed soundtrack. I think the developer was from Ukraine or Belarus, not sure anymore. Never found it again unfortunately ...
[1] is an excellent and fascinating documentary on the history of Tetris, how it came about and the different business struggles in the West to license the game, which was challenging given that it originated in the USSR<p>[1] <a href="https://youtu.be/_fQtxKmgJC8" rel="nofollow">https://youtu.be/_fQtxKmgJC8</a>
The dudes on the Perestroika screenshot looked eerily familiar. After checking MobyGames [1], it dawned on me that Nikita Skripkin, the author, later founded Nikita - the first video game company in Russia [2], the logo [3] of which used to feature a dude from Perestroika. The more you know!<p>[1] <a href="https://www.mobygames.com/developer/sheet/view/developerId,283171/#" rel="nofollow">https://www.mobygames.com/developer/sheet/view/developerId,2...</a><p>[2] <a href="https://www.mobygames.com/company/nikita-online" rel="nofollow">https://www.mobygames.com/company/nikita-online</a><p>[3] <a href="https://www.mobygames.com/company/nikita-online/logos" rel="nofollow">https://www.mobygames.com/company/nikita-online/logos</a>
I remember some of these. Man, PC gaming was crap back then, wasn't it. Russian arcades I remember somewhat fondly, though. The mechanical *ball games, that space battle thing with its illuminator and mirrors. Not as good as the Japanese games at the time but still fun.
Link didn't open; archive.org version: <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20221212005820/https://www.rbth.com/lifestyle/332384-video-games-soviet-russian-tetris" rel="nofollow">https://web.archive.org/web/20221212005820/https://www.rbth....</a><p>Fun fact: Skype creators Jaan Tallinn, Ahti Heinla and Priit Kasesalu also started as game devs in the late Soviet Estonia. A game from 1989, Kosmonaut, is still available on the company's old website, along with other stuff from that era: <a href="http://bluemoon.ee/history/index.html" rel="nofollow">http://bluemoon.ee/history/index.html</a><p>Keeping this old website online is a nice representation of humility and humbleness of the programmers -- and, it also adds a particular sort of quirkiness which is common for many Estonians (okay, I'm biased). Like, these hyper-successful startup founders still seem to be equally proud of those early creations, alongside Skype.
Eastern Germany was very big in industrial espionage and they shared everything with their big brother.<p>Ofcourse just having access to the latest chip designs doesn't mean you can mass produce them so it never amounted to anything even remotely challenging Western technological hegemony.
Oh wow... Perestroika does bring early memories. I must have been 6 or so? Living in Portugal, playing on my father's 286. Owned my own ZX Spectrum +2A at the time as well but was already graduating from it by this time it seems.
> For a Soviet citizen, not yet familiar with how the market economy worked, the game was a sort of guide to capitalism.<p>It's not like people just didn't know how market economies worked, especially when this game was made. There were still individual and family enterprises in the Soviet Union: <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Enterprises_in_the_Soviet_Union" rel="nofollow">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Enterprises_in_the_Soviet_Unio...</a><p>And by the 90s "blue jeans" integration was to the point that we shouldn't pretend Soviet gamers would be agape at the intricacies of capitalism in the wee simulation in Kommersant lol.
Compare what happened to the creators of these games with the creators of popular titles in the USA and Japan.<p>Tetris is an especially interesting one; Tetris was a worldwide phenomenon, a huge hit in the US that sold a huge number of copies. The creators of Tetris saw none of the profits from their creation. Their game was seized by the state as soon as it became popular and they never really profited. Compare to similar Western or Japanese game developers who became rich and famous, started world-renowned companies, and generally had amazing careers that created an industry.<p>Good example of why communism sucks, in my opinion.