[HN Gopher] Video games made in the USSR
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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-...
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(page generated 2022-12-11 23:00 UTC)