Part 7 - The Museum of Soviet Arcade Machines

The brilliance of this place speaks for itself in the title. Someone acquired dozens of old Soviet arcade machines from the 70s and 80s - all in very good condition and many of them still playable. They then found an old warehouse to house them in, and there you go, a museum like any other in the world. Try not to think British Museum in terms of budget and grandeur, think more "room full of old video games".

All of the games were made in the USSR and nearly all of them were knock-offs of American games being produced at the same time.

Even the entrance is fantastic.



As part of the entrance fee, which was 350 roubles (£7.20), you're given a number of 15 kopek coins from the 80s to feed the machines with. Already this is even quirkier - why would you mint a 15 anything coin? Apparently there were 5, 10, 20 and 25 kopek coins too which must have been a nightmare.









I played a few of these. This one is pronounced "sniper". I think the sight was dodgy (or my aim not so good when trying to take photos).



"hockey"



Love the high resolution graphics on the middle one here.



This one was quite enjoyable. Hard to describe, you were basically knocking things over with a stick that was spinning round and round. Come to think of it my excitement doesn't translate too well now I've typed that out.



"tankodrome"



This one seemed to be based on guessing certain highway code symbols from a bank of buttons that looked like it came out of a 60s spy film. What fun Soviet kids must have had with that one.



This one was very playable too. It was a bit like Centipede except that you could stop the snake, it wasn't moving continually. You had to eat the rabbits (yeah, poor bunnies!) who were in turn eating the cabbages (very Russian) but if you ate a cabbage you lost a life.



This was bizarre. You were in a police car but you had a gun, so it was a driving and shooting game. But you never caught the other cars, which were just lit up on a backdrop, and the gun didn't seem to do anything either. Didn't play this, too many weird dials.



Pong. Wasn't quite working properly.



No idea what this one was all about and couldn't work out the aim of the game either. Good to have these additional challenges but I'm just not ready for them.