[HN Gopher] 1988: P.R.E.S.T.A.V.B.A.
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1988: P.R.E.S.T.A.V.B.A.
Author : aaronareed
Score : 177 points
Date : 2021-05-06 15:01 UTC (7 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (if50.substack.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (if50.substack.com)
| gxqoz wrote:
| There are some good stories like this from other countries like
| Poland and Mexico in the book Video Games Around the World:
| https://mitpress.mit.edu/books/video-games-around-world
| peraspera wrote:
| Since Substack is currently down, the following Ars Technica
| article on the same subject (AFAIK) is a good alternative:
|
| https://arstechnica.com/gaming/2020/10/how-indiana-jones-fou...
| js8 wrote:
| "Mrazik" was another text game in this genre - you were some kind
| of agent infiltrating a Soviet military base.
| inglor_cz wrote:
| There is a lot left of the 1980s spirit in Czechia.
|
| * Willingness to do things by hand (such as sewing improvised
| masks in spring of 2020 at home).
|
| * General distrust towards authorities.
|
| * Caustic, dark sense of humor.
|
| * Readiness to be cynical/heretical about every Sacred Cause
| pushed by the media or activists. Americans would probably be
| genuinely shocked at the reception of the BLM movement here.
|
| * Corruption, unfortunately. Or at least high perception of
| corruption. Reality may not be as bad anymore, but we refuse to
| believe that things have gotten better.
|
| * And, yes, the latent fear of Russian tanks rolling through the
| country again.
| pjc50 wrote:
| > Americans would probably be genuinely shocked at the
| reception of the BLM movement here
|
| It's not really surprising that a country that wasn't itself a
| colonizer nor exactly colonized (Hitler aside) and has few
| nonwhite immigrants wouldn't understand the American situation
| while also being naively racist.
| inglor_cz wrote:
| "nor exactly colonized (Hitler aside)"
|
| You would have to put a lot more aside. Pretty much the only
| two eras of national self-determination since 1621 were
| 1918-1938 and 1989-today. This nation is located on a
| crossroads of powerful interests.
|
| We have two major non-white communities in CZ. One of them
| are the Vietnamese, who came as guest workers in the 1980s
| and are climbing rapidly on the societal ladder. Their kids
| are integrating into the elite of the nation very fast,
| universities are full of them.
|
| The second one is Roma (Gypsies), with whom the mutual
| relations are pretty bad. Welfare dependency, crime etc. Once
| Roma start moving into some neighbourhood, an exodus of
| everyone else follows. This is not unique for CZ, though,
| this pattern of failure is seen everywhere with sizable Roma
| communities, from France to Bulgaria and Russia.
|
| One of the reasons might be that successful Roma leave the
| community and intermarry with whites. That was case of my
| dear friend from the ground school. She is 100 per cent Roma,
| her kids are 50 per cent, but they no longer have any contact
| to the community. She says it would be too dangerous; too
| much of a drug habit there, kids not exempt.
| smcl wrote:
| > Willingness to do things by hand (such as sewing improvised
| masks in spring of 2020 at home).
|
| This is good and bad. Nobody I know can recommend me a plumber
| because "we all know how to do that ourselves" - ironically the
| _reason_ I need a plumber is because of a shoddy DIY job
| performed by previous owners of my flat :D
|
| And as an aside - I was really sad when N95 and FFP2 masks were
| mandated. The psychological boost of everyone wearing their own
| lovely little custom masks together was really cool and
| bonding. They were the last connection to the early successful
| response to covid, when they were deprecated it seemed to be
| around the time where everyone just sort of gave up.
| povik wrote:
| > The psychological boost of everyone wearing their own
| lovely little custom masks together was really cool and
| bonding. They were the last connection to the early
| successful response to covid, when they were deprecated it
| seemed to be around the time where everyone just sort of gave
| up.
|
| True. Now that I think of it, it was an interesting time when
| the masks were first mandated virtually overnight. Back then
| it was okay to wear a mask which was obviously made from a
| kitchen towel, then people gradually shifted towards wearing
| neatly-made ones.
| smcl wrote:
| Yeah that period was really something! I was among the
| first few hundred positive cases here, and ended up
| quarantined in my flat for six weeks due to some testing
| anomalies. The "masks everywhere" stuff started while I was
| indoors, and when I finally emerged it was totally surreal
| to walk around in streets which were empty other than a
| handful people in masks all with their own colours and
| patterns.
| smcl wrote:
| Sorry, I'm adding _another_ reply as I re-read and realised
| this point was interesting too. I hope I 'm not derailing this
| too much but I don't get to speak openly about CZ stuff with
| people so when it pops up on HN I get very interested. Re BLM,
| this one is a bit of a mixed bag in my experience - the
| categories I see are:
|
| 1. people who are on-board with BLM (most/all of my friends)
|
| 2. people who naively take it on face value that there's no
| explicit laws against people of colour, there is no problem and
| the idea of systemic racism is just stupid reactionary
| western[0] snowflakes being a bit try-hard
|
| 3. people who believe they are sort of _post-racism_ - they can
| crack racist jokes because "I don't see race", oof
|
| 4. far right wingnuts, the same stripe as everywhere else (US,
| UK, Germany etc) - no more numerous than anywhere
|
| 5. people who don't really understand - they're relying on
| second-hand explanations which are often badly explained
|
| I am curious if this is the same as what you have observed. I
| feel like #2 and #3 are misguided but not beyond help. #5 are
| really interesting, it's easy to miss that the majority of the
| population are completely at the mercy of whatever
| interpretation or translateion they've read, heard or watched.
| One instance I am aware of was someone in the comments of idnes
| on FB or something with an "ALL LIVES MATTER" banner on their
| profile. My friend engaged her politely to figure out what was
| going on and was kinda shocked. This was a person with a
| disability who'd _completely_ sympathised with the BLM
| movement, and wanted to show solidarity. Keenly aware she wasn
| 't black and possessing only rudimentary English she had seen
| "all lives matter" dotted around the place and never clicked
| that it was a _reaction against_ the BLM movement rather than
| one in solidarity with it. Maybe this is obvious but it was a
| bit of an eye opener for me.
|
| [0] = I haven't heard anyone refer to "westerners" in English
| or Czech, but there is definitely an attitude of "you guys over
| _there_ are too sensitive with some folks
| anotha1 wrote:
| This isn't loading for me(mobile or wifi), which I find weird
| since it's hosted on substack.
|
| Edit: seems like all substack pages are down for me (except
| home). Not a good look for a service that hosts something so
| simple to get right. And too bad for this guy who is missing out
| on the HN subscriber wave.
| neonate wrote:
| It's working for me now but https://archive.is/XnAFC also has
| it.
| ddingus wrote:
| I must have got in early. Great read!
|
| Capable people enduring in and working against hard times and
| painful leadership.
| peraspera wrote:
| Indeed.
|
| https://substack.statuspage.io/
| laviroman wrote:
| For non CZ/SK people reading this. This story is an extremely
| niche example of "anti" communist games.
|
| For example, transgoogle this article https://gaudeo.sk/jaro-
| filip-online/ and watch the video posted there, which is from
| 1986 and it was airtimed in the state television as an 8-episode-
| long series.
|
| Jaro Filip, the guy from the '86 video is openly saying that he
| is playing Alien 8 and
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Qv6yLoibUS0 and he is joking
| about it quite casually.
|
| By the way, Fuxoft - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DWfQH6o8T9I
| nowadays a crypto-millionaire (part of Golden Triangle, together
| with the guy mentioned in the OA,
| https://cs.wikipedia.org/wiki/Golden_Triangle ) did some nice
| text adventures like this one
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x1P56S5vdW0.
|
| By the way, the first official games/programs distributor for
| CZ/SK and even UK/US titles was probably Ultrasoft. These games
| in the article were not official games, well, there wasn't a
| market for this thing in the 80's.
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ultrasoft Maybe you will know
| titles like Quadrax, Jet-Story or Tetris 2.
| adamnemecek wrote:
| He's not a USD millionaire, only CZK millionaire.
| laviroman wrote:
| > od roku 2013 jste od svych prispevatelu v 75 transakcich
| vybral 112 bitcoinu.
|
| He still has some more, didn't cash out everything this year
| ;)
| klohto wrote:
| Considering he sold 15M CZK of Bitcoin two months ago and has
| much more left, he is USD millionaire.
| stephenhuey wrote:
| Pretty fascinating niche. On one of my trips over there a Czech
| cousin told me how they had to be careful even dubbing Michael
| Jackson tapes in the 80s since American media was not allowed
| at all. These games seem a lot riskier.
|
| Edit: Thanks to the comments on this it seems things weren't so
| dire in the 80s. My cousin was a kid then--perhaps he was
| recounting more 70s era stories from his older sister or
| something! In any case, it's fun hearing about all of your
| memories since my first visit over there was in 1990. :)
| rebolek wrote:
| That must be some kind of joke on their side because e. g.
| Michael Jackon's Thriller was released in CS in 1984 by
| Supraphon (LP monopoly at the time).
|
| Access to the west music was certainly limited but not
| impossible, due to proximity to Austria and Germany it was
| very easy to watch and listen to their stations and as
| described above, some LPs were even released in CS. I
| remember drooling over Depeche Mode's Music For The Masses
| back in cca 1988 but it was above may pocket money-grade.
|
| But I'm talking about the eighties when the gerontocracy was
| unable to deal with people's desires, the regime was
| certainly much tougher in 70's.
| Tade0 wrote:
| It wasn't banned per se - it was just that with a non-
| exchangable currency getting hold of a copy of anything was
| difficult.
|
| Some western productions would make it through the iron
| curtain, but they needed to be checked and usually censored
| beforehand. Politically correct (in the original meaning of
| the expression) poster art was a genre in and of itself:
|
| https://www.fanthatracks.com/news/collecting/star-wars-
| poste...
| YeGoblynQueenne wrote:
| Woa. Those posters are really good. Totally different
| aesthetic than the film, but I think they draw from the
| Eastern Block's long tradition of Sci Fi that was more
| artsy and less action, far as I understand it.
| Tade0 wrote:
| Ironically because of the political system back then -
| censors did only a cursory check whether the work meets
| the guidelines (no gore, nudity, positive depictions of
| "imperialist" America) and there obviously was no push to
| make the poster "sell" the movie - authors had a lot of
| artistic freedom, so they experimented.
| laviroman wrote:
| 50s yes, 60s maybe, But in the 80's? Nah. 80s especially were
| the very best, my friend ;). Think of it like a more
| prosperous Cuba of 2021.
|
| Check this out: Gumeni chlapci (Rubber Boys) 1984 -
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IFnmy6q9d8M
|
| 1987 Diskopribeh (Disco story) -
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Pac_Uabo-hY
|
| 1988 Kamarat do deste (A friend through the rain) -
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0b-DC7GJIe8
|
| I mean, unless your friend was into politics, it wasn't so
| tough in the 80s. At lest for the more commercial music. Punk
| or Metal people have it hard, but Jazz or Pop/Rock was ok.
|
| This is one rock band from 1985
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Mz_y401AFOo
|
| Paradoxically they made an anti communist anthem a few years
| later, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kJucQNdBJo4
| rebolek wrote:
| Don't forget 1987's Bony a klid which had Frankie goes to
| Hollywood's "Relax" as a main music theme (legaly)
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rg2w5uE-814
|
| And then there are also Navstevnici (The visitors) which is
| basically Daft Punk, just 30 years earlier
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cSjda4QF9wI
| laviroman wrote:
| Yeah, of course: https://youtu.be/BxIxvQgdR7Q?t=62
| dvh wrote:
| The visitors soundtrack was done by Karel Svoboda, my
| favorite piece from him is this:
| https://youtu.be/TexUnMWTk04
| _0ffh wrote:
| I really liked those Czecheslovakian-German coproduced
| kids movies quite a lot!
| protomyth wrote:
| That was the amazing thing about being a kid in the late 70's and
| early 80's. Cheap computers existed that had the tools to allow
| you to pass programs to others like a mix tape.
|
| Now with iDevices, you need permission from a corporation to pass
| programs to others. I would guess this might be problematic with
| protest games.
| kmeisthax wrote:
| Might be? It already is: Apple has gone on record to oppose
| political statements in videogames.
|
| The clickbait pullquote for this is, "If you want to criticize
| a religion, write a book".
| spacebear wrote:
| It's so tragic. We all have these supercomputers in our pocket
| and we're not allowed to really use them. Imagine what kids
| would make if they could code apps on device and Airdrop them
| to their friends.
| aero-glide2 wrote:
| just use an android? Super easy to install.apk
| tdrgabi wrote:
| You can make a small website. Even airdrop some html file with
| js included if you want it interactive and don't want to host
| it.
| navanchauhan wrote:
| Wouldn't you say it is easier now?
|
| Just create a web based adventure game (you can export HTML/CSS
| with Twine for text based adventure games), encode the URL as a
| QR code and simply swap those with people?
| protomyth wrote:
| Easier to get an maintain a website versus handing someone a
| cassette with a program on it? No, I think the program was
| easier.
| agumonkey wrote:
| Fair point. It seems that the web doesn't forbid you to do
| your own stuff on the side, it's just that the mainstream has
| become a commercial enterprise with its (large) share of
| constraint. Probably nothing new under the sun.
| Nextgrid wrote:
| You'd still need to host it, which involves money, a way to
| pay for it (credit card), which includes proving/disclosing
| your identity (which would be dangerous if you're speaking
| out against an authoritarian government), sometimes you
| legally have to be over 18 or 21 to enter into contracts (so
| if the service provider finds out you're underage they can
| shut down your account even if you otherwise pay the bill),
| and hosting anything controversial or that goes against the
| mainstream is unlikely to stay up for long if it gets
| popular.
| pvg wrote:
| Every desktop browser comes with a development environment
| far more capable than any 8-bitter BASIC. You can paste
| your code in an email or an IM and send it to whomever you
| like. Teens interested in swapping 'subversive' code today
| would have a vastly easier time than they did in 80s
| Czechoslovakia.
| Nextgrid wrote:
| How many people are capable of that though? Tech literacy
| (in terms of using a general-purpose computer and not a
| walled-garden) seems to be decreasing and the industry
| trend is to isolate users from it even more.
|
| If nothing gets done it's probably a matter of time
| before general-purpose _browsers_ end up only allowing
| "signed" web pages by default (this is already happening
| with extension API being deprecated, making things like
| powerful ad-blocking impossible on certain browsers).
| pmarreck wrote:
| > How many people are capable of that though?
|
| Anyone with Google? It's not... rocket science
| pvg wrote:
| _How many people are capable of that though?_
|
| Anyone who cares to? It's not like 'tech literacy' was
| higher then and the point the original comment was making
| was that somehow, the kids today have it harder than 80s
| Czech teens. I don't think it stands up to scrutiny -
| it's not true factually now and to salvage the argument
| you have to come up with hypotheticals like 'only signed
| web pages allowed' and broadly complain about 'walled
| gardens' (you couldn't write your own game for your NES
| back then, either)
|
| Even 'fantasy' versions of 80s-style environments exist,
| one of them was used to develop an actual hit game.
| Aspiring tinkerers have never had more choice.
| pmarreck wrote:
| There are plenty of sites that will host a static site for
| free, and static sites can host client-side JS games or
| more.
| hoyd wrote:
| That is such an amazing title
| dang wrote:
| The submitted title was "Teens in '80s Czechoslovakia swapped
| tapes of text adventure protest games". We changed it that of
| the article. Not sure which one you mean :)
|
| The article title is obscure, but in the best way--the way that
| invites exactly the sort of interest this site exists for ("I
| wonder what that is"...)
| tyingq wrote:
| _" Rylek dryly remembers a then-typical experience with magazine
| program listings"_
|
| Ahh, yep. I remember the fun of typing lots of BASIC DATA line
| entries from a magazine into my C64, and getting something very
| unexpected, and no obvious way to find/fix the typo. Getting a
| VicModem was a godsend, so I could just download things and go.
| cronix wrote:
| Same here. Compute!'s Gazette. There's an archive if you ever
| get the hankering for nostalgia lol.
| https://archive.org/details/compute-gazette
|
| I don't know how many times I spent many hours over several
| days typing pages of code from the magazines into the C64, have
| it be buggy, spend hours trying to fix the bugs only to have
| them release the code for their bug fixes the next issue, which
| took a month. It was very slow learning.
| tut-urut-utut wrote:
| I remember buck in the time in Yugoslavia one of the federal
| radio stations broadcasted Spectrum computer games over the air
| (FM). You could record the game to the tape and actually play
| it later.
|
| Copying games was as simple as copying a music tape, you only
| needed a tape recorder with two heads, those were very popular
| at the time for the same reason.
| jhgb wrote:
| You used VicModem from behind the Iron Curtain?
| tyingq wrote:
| I was commenting on solely the "typing in code from a
| magazine" experience.
| gostsamo wrote:
| Yugoslavia wasn't exactly part of the USSR block after 1956
| and it actually was part of the group of independent nations.
| jhgb wrote:
| I didn't notice anything about Yugoslavia in the
| article...? I thought the comment referred to
| Czechoslovakia.
| gostsamo wrote:
| My bad, HN doesn't make obvious to screen readers who is
| answering to whom and I thought that you mean the comment
| with the Yugo radio programs.
| StavrosK wrote:
| Maybe it would be helpful if the devs added some sort of
| "reply to" ARIA tag to each comment? That wouldn't be too
| hard, would it?
| jhgb wrote:
| So basically screen readers blindly stumble into comment
| trees? Never thought of that.
| tyingq wrote:
| HN markup for comments isn't great. It's table cells and
| spacer gifs. Visually, threads are clear, semantically,
| they aren't.
| gostsamo wrote:
| Usually, a comment tree is made as list of lists. HN does
| not bother with semantic tags though and the information
| does not reach the SR.
| smcl wrote:
| Oh my, this sounds like a really valuable feature. I
| wonder if the folks maintaining HN would consider adding
| accessibility enhancements like this.
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(page generated 2021-05-06 23:00 UTC)