Клюквенная статья из журнала Electronic Fun Vol.1 11 sept 1983 (стр. 66) с “обзором” компьютерных игр в СССР.

OFF THE BEATEN TRAKBALL

The Russians are playing!

An exclusive peek behind the Iron Curtain

While there are no electrical outlets in the Iron Curtain, there are video games behind it. Information about the hot games of the Soviet Union is scarce. Fortunately, we’ve got an informant and it is because of him that we are able to bring you this exclusive expose of games of Russia. So, come, Tovarisch. Plug in Atarski system and play furious round of Comrade Pac-Man or, perhaps, you would prefer spirited game of Fast Food Shortage, da?

By Randi Hacker

Whether or not you’re aware of it, it’s possible that many of you have been doing Russia a grave disservice over the years. You probably think they don’t play games in the Motherland. This is untrue. They play lots of games and some of them even have rules. Russians, in fact, are well-known for their keen sense of fun.

Look at Rasputin (if you dare). Now that was one fun monk. And not only was he a real joker, he was the kind of guy who could take a practical joke pulled on him in good spirit as well. His friends once threw a party for him and gave him a drink laced with poison. As if that wasn’t funny enough, the topper of the evening (and perhaps one of the most humorous things to ever happen in Russian history) was that they then gave him several blows to the head with a sharp axe after which they threw him in the river. Yet, did he hold it against them? No way, Yuri! He dragged himself out of the water to laugh in their faces. It was that attitude – that and the way he pronounced “v’s” so they sounded like “w’s” – that made him so popular in imperial circles.

Grounded (or buried, if you prefer) in a tradition like that, how can we accuse the Russians of being workhorses? We can’t. Especially when we are reminded of the age-old Russian saying “Rastvyetali yabloni y grushi” which loosely translated means “The pear trees are in bloom” or, even more loosely, “All work and no pay makes comrades more obedient to the mandates of the State.”

Collective Fun

Before the Bolshevik Revolution in 1917, jokes were more or less a private and individualized matter. If someone told a joke and someone else in the group didn’t get it, he was humiliated when the group broke into raucous laughter, stomped their cossack boots and jiggled their persian lamb caps and he didn’t.

After the Revolution, all jokes became property of the State and were told at given intervals (determined by the government) throughout the year. A joke was told and each and every citizen was obligated to hear it. After a period of five years was up and everyone had had the chance to get it or have it explained to them, there was collective laughter. This was known as the Five Year Plan.

Naturally, this profound sense of the ridiculous made Russia a fertile crescent for video games, but news of the games – and which ones are hot – is hard to come by. Our comrade in the Kremlin has managed to smuggle out through the Iron Curtain via the underground railway and the Lexington Avenue IRT, certain exclusive information about the games of the USSR. We are the only magazine privy to this inside stuff. As odd as it may seem, Russians play games that are remarkably similar to our own. The main difference is that high scores are not entered on the machine. High scores become property of the State.

As you can probably imagine, it’s pretty tough to get any information from behind the Iron Curtain. This is because they rarely open it up. It’s kept closed primarily to prevent the sun from fading the furniture. This then is an exclusive peek behind the drapes at games that are played in the Soviet Union.

Russians love games. Pictured an the begining is a graphic from COMRADE PAC-MAN, one of the most popular games in the Soviet Union. It’s similar to our own PAC-MAN only red. Above is a scene from FAST FOOD SHORTAGE in which you’ve got to try to get enough food to feed your family before government officials grab it for themselves.

One of the most popular games to appear on the Soviet scene in recent years was Comrade Pac-Man. The main character resembles our own Pac-Man except that he wears a hat and leans toward the color red. The object of the game is to eat all the little dots in a maze. You are pursued by your comrades who want to turn you in so that they can have the dots. Located in the four corners of the maze are hammers and sickles which, if eaten, render you impervious to Western Propaganda. There is no way out. Comrade Pac-Man is beloved by all Russians particularly because of the sounds he makes: “Vodka, vodka, vodka.”

Sound And Furry

Another big favorite among the Soviet gamers is KGB’s Krazy Chase. Also a maze game, this one involves a furry little creature with great legs who is trying to escape from a passel of KGB secret police who want to capture him and send him to Siberia. The central character has to find his way clear of the agents. Every once in a while, an exit appears on one of the sides of the maze. If our hero is quick, he can zip out of this doorway and defect to the West where he gets to join the American Ballet Theater.

KGB’s Krazy Chase is one of the few Russian cartridges with a voice feature. Every once in a while, your man chimes in with helpful hints such as “Leningrad!” or “Boycott the 1980 Olympics!” or “Everyone choose your partner for the troika!” While these don’t actually get you out of any dangerous situations, they do afford you an excellent opportunity to improve your Russian pronunciation.

One of the games whose title really shows off the Russian comedic sense to perfection is called Capitalist Mutants from New Jersey in which communist ideals are pitted in a laser fight against capitalist propaganda. In the first screen, a mother mutant dressed in an Yves St. Laurent suit, Capezio shoes and carrying a Gucci shopping bag, floats over the skies of Moscow directly above the Kremlin. In the background, “Ohh la la Sassoon” plays over and over again.

After this brief introduction, she reaches into her bag and begins to sow small seeds which, while falling, transform into Wall Street brokers in top hats, cutaways and diamond stickpins. They fall slowly to earth in a sort of humanoid rainstorm pattern. As they fall, they distribute all sorts of leaflets from the latest Dow Jones averages to brochures on Club Med. If you fail to shoot them down before they hit the steppes, you’re faced with the unpleasant task of shoveling them all into a deep pit and burying them before they turn the minds of the workers into ruble-hungry vacuums.

One Potato…

Never let it be said that the Russians can’t laugh at their own short-comings. The game Fast Food Shortage is testament to their rapier wit when it comes to themselves. In this game you are several poor but happy workers on your way home from the tractor factory. Suddenly a free-floating mouth resembling those chattering wind-up teeth that used to be sold in novelty stores informs you that a fresh shipment of potatoes has just arrived at your neighborhood grocery story. If you hurry, you can probably still get one for dinner for the family.

Using your joystick, you hyperspace down the block only to find that the rest of your little village has gotten there ahead of you. You’ve got to shoot them one by one while avoiding members of the Kremlin who flash priority cards in your face and demand “frontsies.”

If you succeed in clearing the screen, you find yourself in a second screen in which potatoes fly at you from all sides. No matter what you do here you lose. If you catch them all, you are accused of anti-socialist tendencies and are never heard from again. If you drop one, you’re never heard from again.

Czar’s Revenge is one of the most well-loved games. It transports the Russians back to the time of the Czar when everyone was stone broke except the royal family – which had hemophilia. It takes place in the Winter Palace. Ivan the Terrible, dressed in what appears to be his bathrobe, wants to put down a peasant revolt. Your job is either to prevent this or not. Your weapons consist of a hammer, sickle and the ability to dance a mean kazatski. Lashing out with your boots, you render the Czar unconscious and take over the government in the name of the people. Later, you change it to your own name.

In addition to being able to play games on cartridges and tapes, the Russians also have the option of receiving games on-line. This service is known as Games Nyet-work and it offers such popular titles as Krushchev, Crumble and Chomp and Crimea Wave. This is a new service and currently they are working on getting the bugs out of the programs and putting them into the telephone wires where they belong.

If you think that playing Russian games is difficult, you ought to try programming in Russian BASIC which is similar to our own only a lot more imperative. In Russian BASIC there is no GOTO statement. There is only a GOTO OR ELSE command. And Russian GOSUB commands are generally nuclear GOSUBS many of which were sighted off the coast of Sweden.

More games from the Motherland: On the opposite page, a screen from CAPITALIST MUTANTS FROM NEW JERSEY in which it rains cats and Capitalist dogs. Above, a scene from CZAR’S REVENGE which transports you back to the time of imperial Russia and lets you play the Winter Palace. Most of the video game cartridges are sold at Tolstoys R Us outlets.