[HN Gopher] Video games made in the USSR ___________________________________________________________________ Video games made in the USSR Author : Bondi_Blue Score : 66 points Date : 2022-12-11 19:16 UTC (3 hours ago) (HTM) web link (www.rbth.com) (TXT) w3m dump (www.rbth.com) | indigodaddy wrote: | Not Russian, Polish I believe, but Soldat is one of the best | games I've played.. | yetanotherforg wrote: | If only russia put as much effort into country building as they | did into propaganda and genocide. | RugnirViking wrote: | The soviets made a pretty good go of turning a theistic feudal | monarchy largely with an economy focused on agriculture into | the second biggest industrial power in the world for almost a | hundred years. Certainly not perfect, and horrible to live in | in many ways, but better at building an economy than a lot of | other similarly sized places. | batter wrote: | 'second biggest industrial power' assume this is a joke. Poor | quality: anything that was made was so bad, this habit is | still alive and even russians hate their own products. | Stealing: ancient car designs and engineering is good | example. And as you know it never improved. Millions of lives | were taken to achieve nonsense goals, people were starved, | frozen, deprevated from food. What kind of human you have to | be justify that? Well, but it didn't touch you or your | family, so it's fine. Lets continue glorifying crazy stuff, | we're just engineers, right? | qaq wrote: | That's pretty bold statement considering USSR collapse was | caused by economic weakness. It never was "second biggest | industrial power " outside of it's own propaganda. | RugnirViking wrote: | That's true. I feel like there is a bit of both here. | Around the 1950s to 1970s, they were capable of some pretty | impressive projects, civillian and millitary. Things like | mass rollout of power infrastructure, road networks, city | construction, the space race, etc. their GDP is today | estimated to have been around half that of the US had at | the time. Their growth in production numbers for | tanks/planes etc throughout ww2 was extrodinary as well. | However they hit a real period of stagnation in the 1970s | which just got worse and worse over time, i'm not an expert | as to exactly why but my guess would be they developed a | culture of corruption that continues to plague russia to | this day | batter wrote: | Yeah, just 100k+ of wasted lives on single project only, | but engineering worth it, right? | https://soviethistory.msu.edu/1980-2/bam/ | RugnirViking wrote: | You are engaging in severely bad faith. I never mentioned | that project, and certainly never said 100k lives were a | worthwhile cost. That is not how we do things here on | hacker news. | qaq wrote: | USSR spent most of it's GDP on military plus central | planing is unworkable system especially with all the | idiotic soviet KPI's on top of it. | RugnirViking wrote: | Is that true? I would be interested to see the numbers on | that. I would have expected their spending to be on a | similar-ish level to the US at the time (which while | high, probably never crossed the 50% mark) | qaq wrote: | It's more you have to realise that the way things were | structured there was never an honest count. As an | anecdotal example my father in-law was chief eng. at | Kharkov factory that was producing Nuclear Missile | guidance systems and other high end mil. parts. Factory | had 10,000 employees yet officially it was producing | electric razors and things like this were the norm. | RugnirViking wrote: | I can believe that. They certainly had a lot of | corruption and behind-the-scenes lying to make things | fit, especially towards the end. However it seems to me | that there must have been at least some growth there | underpinning things for some time, else they would have | collapsed much easiler, right? They also seemed to have | an outsized economic impact abroad compared to other | places with similar population that started the 20th | century in a similar economic place (india, china, south | america). | lottin wrote: | And somehow they managed to starve millions of people in the | process. If you call this a good job.... okay. | RugnirViking wrote: | Did I ever say they were/are saints? The OP was commenting | on their poor "country building" which I interpret largely | as economy building. It was a horrible place to be | mardifoufs wrote: | Russia or the ussr? | lvl102 wrote: | I am really not a fan of anything made in USSR and Russia | anymore. Nearly everything they created and released to the world | has been toxic. | xkcd1963 wrote: | You gotta google a bit more my friend | GuB-42 wrote: | 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. | flandish wrote: | One could say similar things about the differences between | tiktok algorithms in the US vs China. | fmajid wrote: | The Information had an interview of the founders back when it | was called Musical.ly. When asked why the service was not | available in China itself, they responded "Oh no, Chinese | kids must study". | themodelplumber wrote: | As long as you don't care about the duty cycle concept, and | the value of human expression, everything on TikTok looks | like a silly waste of time. A lot of tech content included. | | Fortunately the Party sees humans as cogs in a perpetual | motion machine, so their machinery will break down soon, | moreso the more they FakeTok... | bombcar wrote: | Microsoft's Solitaire might compete, being bundled with windows | itself. | kemitchell wrote: | Maybe old Netscape folks shouldn't feel so bad. | | Microsoft even did it to the Soviet Union. And they got away | with it that time! ;-P | beebeepka wrote: | 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. | joe__f wrote: | [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 | | [1] https://youtu.be/_fQtxKmgJC8 | asveikau wrote: | This website gives strong Russian propaganda vibes. Apparently it | is owned by the Russian state. | https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russia_Beyond | | 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. | Waterluvian wrote: | Written years ago when, let's admit it, most of us were still | writing "Kiev" because we didn't know better and were, of | course, ignorant. | asveikau wrote: | I didn't realize the article was from 2020. | | Anyway, it is true this website is state owned and the other | articles have heavy propaganda vibes. | Jensson wrote: | But is there anything wrong with the linked article? | shmerl wrote: | The article looks neutral (besides for spelling of city | names using Russian notation). | rosnd wrote: | Which, to be fair, is something that much of the | Ukrainian population still does. It's mostly foreigners | that see this as something important. | asveikau wrote: | A lot of Ukrainians I know seem to be speaking much more | Ukrainian than they did a few years ago. People from | Russian speaking towns. | | There does seem to be a serious de-russification vibe, | stronger than ever and definitely not just something | foreigners are interested in. | | I'll give just one small example that I'm reminded of... | There's been a lot of drama about signs when you enter a | town. Russians will capture a town, paint the sign with | their flag, change spellings to replace i with i, etc. | Ukrainians will recapture, repaint, and switch to their | spelling... It's a thing. | danielodievich wrote: | 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 of | of cieculation for a day or two (I got up to 3 of those pearls | but could not make it past that). | | 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. | kemitchell wrote: | Thank you for sharing this story! | awiesenhofer wrote: | 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 ... | Dig1t wrote: | Compare what happened to the creators of these games with the | creators of popular titles in the USA and Japan. | | 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. | | Good example of why communism sucks, in my opinion. | Adraghast wrote: | What is your opinion on FOSS? | bombcar wrote: | Has FOSS produced a popular game that isn't a copy of an | existing one? | bombcar wrote: | Thought of one - Nethack and friends. | sdkgames wrote: | >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. | | Wiki tells a different story | mafuyu wrote: | The creator, Alexey Pajitnov, was eventually able to see some | money from his creation after emigrating to the US and | cofounding The Tetris Company. The Gaming Historian channel has | a great documentary video on it here: | https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_fQtxKmgJC8 | asveikau wrote: | Kind of a tangent, but it'd weird to me that this man chooses | to transcribe zh as j in his surname. Typically zh would be | zh, and I think of j as a palatal consonant. | | I had to look up the Cyrillic spelling of his name to be sure | I wasn't misunderstanding. | | I guess some English speakers would be more comfortable with | J for that sound. | romanhn wrote: | 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. | https://youtu.be/RlnsWw-YHlY | | 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. | Waterluvian wrote: | 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. | lvl102 wrote: | Yeah I learned that the Russians constantly harassed Ukraine | for hundreds of years. | qsort wrote: | The association "USSR = Russians" is part of the systematic | attempt by the soviet regime at cultural (and sometimes | literal) genocide. The 90th anniversary of the Holodomor was | just two weeks ago. | xkcd1963 wrote: | I've to step in here, because also native Russians starved | during the Holodomor. My grandmother saw half-starved people | and corpses as a child in the city | anotherstalker wrote: | Care to highlight interesting examples and industries for us | unlearned? | qaq wrote: | Most high end Soviet Nuclear weapons were designed by KB | Yuzhnoye and built by Yuzhmash in Dnepr(Dnepropetrovsk). | shmerl wrote: | As well as rocket engines like RD-8. | p_l wrote: | A lot of rocket/spaceship control systems and related | components were designed and produced in Electrophibor in | Kharkiv, East Ukraine. | | Yangel OKB, designers of the frankly speaking ridiculously | overpowered R-36 ICBM series was in Ukraine (including work | for turning R-36 into Tsyklon and Dnepr satellite launchers), | as well as teams responsible for Zenit carrier rocket (also | used as boosters on Energia). | | There was also other R&D and manufacturing works scattered | across Ukraine, but outside of those and already mentioned | Antonov they were mostly related to areas that weren't my | hobby so I can't recite them from memory. Lots of heavy | industry related to tanks and related vehicles near Kharkiv, | at least. | | EDIT: Also, post USSR breakup Ukraine ended up having to run | a nuclear "weapons" program despite disavowing nuclear | weapons - because they had full chain nuclear weapons | industry from raw materials to final warhead assembly, and it | was considered good idea to keep those people employed lest | they be hired out by more militant places. | nosianu wrote: | I just wanted to ask Google to find a more comprehensive | list, but I was reminded of a serious search issue that I | would like to see addressed at some point: | | Especially whenever there is a current event with lots of | news it is nearly impossible to find anything that is too | close to the subject. | | It would be great to be able to restrict search to _older_ | results, to avoid being in the shadow of more recent | articles. Even adding "USSR" did not help at all, almost | everything I got was related to recent events. | | I've had this problem sooo many times in the past already. | Google is way too focused on the latest information. Just | yesterday somebody also pointed this out in a comment, about | that website link that made it to the HN homepage that help | find the right glue for two different materials, which was an | example for an old rarely changing but still relevant | website. | | Anyway, on topic, here's a list that I found starting out | from trying to widen the search from the starting point that | I knew Antonov is Ukrainian: | | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_design_bureaus_in_Ukra. | .. | | https://www.value.today/headquarters/ukraine | | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_companies_of_Ukraine | | "Donbas: What's Ukraine Losing--Industrial Hub, Breadbasket | or Both?" -- https://www.russiamatters.org/blog/donbas-whats- | ukraine-losi... | | Here is a video showing a pretty cool - albeit pretty | unreliable, according to what I read - 1960s motorbike that | was made in Ukraine: https://youtu.be/DvxcK645HF0 -- | Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dnepr_(motorcycle). | Dnepr (Ukrainian: Dnipro) is a motorcycle brand produced in | Kyiv. I became interested in this bike while reading this RR | story from a Ukrainian author - with lots of brilliant | author-made painting-illustratiuons: | https://www.royalroad.com/fiction/54085/the-armorer-and- | the-... ___________________________________________________________________ (page generated 2022-12-11 23:00 UTC)