Rare East German Arcade Game Unearthed 368
Lancey writes "While hunting for work stuff I found this press release about an old Soviet games machine, apparently there are only three surviving units from a production of 1500 - most of them were destroyed after the Berlin wall came down. Thought you might find it interesting..." There are screenshots and photos in this BBC story.
literal translations rule (Score:5, Informative)
Re:literal translations rule (Score:5, Funny)
Schiessbude (Score:3, Informative)
Re:literal translations rule (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:literal translations rule (Score:5, Funny)
Re:? for the experts... (Score:2)
Re:literal translations rule (Score:3, Interesting)
Well, I guess that fuxoft is right, it is most likely a shooting game :-)
BTW, folks, Frantisek was a great ZX Spectrum guru east of the Iron Curtain. That was quite a few years ago, but your games had quite a following :-)
Re:literal translations rule (Score:2, Informative)
It is. (Score:5, Informative)
Is it just me, or do a lot of native English speaking people seem to have a problem with the difference between "ie" and "ei"? I would understand if they always wrote "ei", but I see too many instances of "wierd" for that to be true. Odd...
Re:It is. (Score:5, Funny)
If you want to play it yourself (Score:4, Informative)
Re:If you want to play it yourself (Score:3, Interesting)
How can MAME emulate hardware which is 'Apparently based on a Russian minicomputer/PC of the day'? Doesn't the fact that the software works on MAME mean that the basic game hardware must be some stock system from the west?
Re:If you want to play it yourself (Score:3, Informative)
If it's a special minicomputer, then they wrote a driver for it. As a case in point, several MAME drivers have to emulate early 3dfx chips, hard drives, and weird controllers, which are most definitely not a stock systems.
Re:If you want to play it yourself (Score:5, Interesting)
A MAME status report from April 2000 [mame.net] states that "Martin Buchholz sent in a Poly-Play driver (the only arcade machine ever produced in GDR, the former East Germany) with thanks to Jürgen Oppermann, Volker Hann and the Videogame Museum [computerspielemuseum.de] in Berlin (especially to Jan-Ole Christian) - without them, the driver would not have been reality."
This German article [heise.de] elaborates on that a little bit. Basically, they analyzed existing hardware and built a MAME driver for it. That's what they do for other games, too - usually, however, implementing a platform will give you more than one box to emulate...
(The museum people were quite happy to have the MAME emulation, of course, because one of these days, the hardware is going to fail, and now they'll at least still have the games in working order.)
The second article also talks about four missing games: Their names are in the software and people in the comments section remember playing them, but none of the surviving machines seems to have the games.
Their names are:
"Der Gaertner" (The gardener)
"Im Gewaechshaus" (In the greenhouse)
"Hagelnde Wolken" (Hail clouds - apparently some kind of Space Invaders clone)
"Der Taucher" (The diver)
Jens
Re:It is. (Score:3, Funny)
Yes. My landlord (in DC) is named Bernstein, but he always pronounces his name as if it were spelled Bernstien. Makes me want to give him a German textbook so he can learn how his name is supposed to be said.
Re:It is. (Score:5, Funny)
The full version of the saying is:
"I before E, except after C or when sounding like A as in neighbor and wiegh, or on weekends and holidays and all throughout May, you'll always be wrong no matter what you say!"
From the mighty Brian Reagan, who is probably being chased by a flock of moosen through woodenses.
Re:It is. (Score:5, Funny)
Don't you mean 'weigh'?
Re:It is. (Score:3, Funny)
-B
Re:It is. (Score:3, Funny)
On a more serious note, the version I learned was something along the lines of "I before E, except after C, and weird is weird".
Re:literal translations rule (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:literal translations rule (Score:2)
That wouldn't be a game based on 'Noo, Pagadee' ('I'll get you!' sorry for the transliteration) would it? My father-in-law gave me one of the handheld 'Noo, Pagadee' games after I found a derived game for the Palm Pilot.
"Noo, Ziatz! Pagadee!" ("I'll get you, hare!")
Re:literal translations rule (Score:3, Informative)
Yep. That's the one. The modern version is so damn cheap that it's almost as fun trying to get the buttons work right as it is playing the game.
The Palm game is called "CatchIT" and can be downloaded here [pilotzone.com].
Re:literal translations rule (Score:2)
Would that make it Virtual Reality Soviet bloc style?
Re:literal translations rule (Score:5, Funny)
Ok, the latest extimate is that we have x people.
Figure we can let them go to the bathroom y times per day.
When they go we'll let them use z squares of TP.
As a result, annual production of TP shall henceforth be set at x*y*z*365 squares of TP. Success to our five year plan!
Remember - your TP belongs to the people. If you use z+1 squares you're stealing from the old lady down the street...
Re:literal translations rule (Score:2, Informative)
http://www.andys-arcade.net/personal/polyplay/p
Re:literal translations rule (Score:2, Informative)
Hirschjagd
Abfahrtslauf is a skiing game (downhill racing)
and Scheissbude should be Schiessbude (shooting booth) *g*
English? (Score:2)
Re:English? (Score:3, Interesting)
Ordinarily, I'd chalk it up to the way German borrows fairly heavily from English (have a look here [heise.de] if you don't believe me). I suspect the East Germans didn't do nearly as much borrowing from English as the West did, though...do you suppose they ended up appropriating Russian words?
Re:literal translations rule (Score:5, Funny)
It's a First Person Shitter.
Re:literal translations rule (Score:2)
Re:literal translations rule (Score:3, Informative)
Re:literal translations rule (Score:3, Funny)
Wait, that's just here in Texas. Aw, shoot.
Re:literal translations rule (Score:4, Funny)
MAME? (Score:2)
Re:MAME? (Score:5, Informative)
PolyPlay is one of the the (few) legal ROMs for MAME. From Mameworld.net: [mameworld.net]
(C) 1985 VEB Polytechnik Karl-Marx-Stadt.
Owing to the collapse of East Germany, there does not appear to be any copyright holder for this software.
There's a link there to download the game. So go grab your favorite version of MAME and play the game! Interactive news! It's the future!
Re:MAME? (Score:5, Informative)
I'm not certain the MAME guys should be so sure of that though. Had it had any commercial value whatsoever, you can bet someone would've claimed it.
There have been cases [themoscowtimes.com] of rights disputes over Soviet creations, not to mention the big fuss over Tetris [atarihq.com] back in the day.
Re:MAME? (Score:5, Insightful)
You make the mistake of assuming people really care about the legality of MAME (or any emulator, really, although at least for most of the single-console emulators, they have homebrew games to justify their existance).
Really, how many arcade machines can you fit in your living room? Even (former) arcade owners would realistically only have the right to use a few dozen games at most. Yet most MAME users have literally hundreds, if not thousands, of games.
Not to say that strictly legal users don't exist, but I would consider them in the tiny minority.
Re:MAME? (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:MAME? (Score:3, Informative)
This is the biggest news since Adult Swim... (Score:2, Funny)
Well (Score:4, Funny)
Re:Well (Score:2)
Imagine.. (Score:3, Funny)
Re:Imagine.. (Score:2, Funny)
Re:Imagine.. (Score:2)
FOOL!
Bang goes MY karma.....
Re:Imagine.. (Score:3, Funny)
Here we go... (Score:3, Funny)
Hmmm what's the communist scoring system like? (Score:5, Funny)
other features (Score:2, Funny)
The old "hunting for work stuff" ploy (Score:3, Funny)
Google search on "Soviet Video Games".... Hey, does this guy post on slashdot? [canada.com]
BBC blows up (Score:5, Funny)
-m
[nt] not to mention their editing... yuck! (Score:2)
Re:BBC blows up (Score:3, Informative)
History! (Score:4, Insightful)
How are East German women like arcade games? (Score:3, Funny)
Screenshots of actual gameplay (Score:5, Informative)
"Crap booth" is not as interesting as it seems, but apparently communist Germany and capitalist America aren't really that different.
Re:Screenshots of actual gameplay (Score:4, Insightful)
I have an original Ms. Pacman machine. The tubes inside were never meant to make it more than a couple years (according to websites I have read) because they never expected video games to remain popular that long...
So anyway, this Ms. Pacman machine is basically nothing more than an old, stripped down TV tube, in a wooden box... I don't see how that is any different than the Poly Play description.
Re:Screenshots of actual gameplay (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Screenshots of actual gameplay (Score:2, Interesting)
U of Bath is in the UK (Score:4, Informative)
Re:U of Bath is in the UK (Score:5, Funny)
Re:U of Bath is in the UK (Score:5, Funny)
Ah, but the museum is at the Swindon campus of the University of Bath. Swindon is between Bath and London, about 1.5 hours west of the capital. The glorious Eddie Izzard [eddieizzard.com] once described Swindon [swindonweb.com] as being like Fresno [fresno.ca.us] without the charm. Which is about right.
Re:U of Bath is in the UK (Score:2)
I've been to Fresno several times, and each time I think only what an icky, hot, traffic-filled, polluted city it is.
Wow, this Swindon place must be pretty bad.
Re:U of Bath is in the UK (Score:2)
It's not great..
But we do have the Magic Roundabout [swindonweb.com]
Comment removed (Score:5, Funny)
Pac Man was a capitalist (Score:5, Funny)
" So Pac Man was a communist?"
Not a chance. Else Pac Man would have stood waiting in line for hours to get one dot, and all the bonus items would been deemed decadent Western evils. Unless you entered the secret "Member of the Politburo" code, in which case see below.
No, Pac Man was purely a consumerism capitalist, endlessly gobbling up things, the faster the better in order to gobble still MORE things, all while dodging the tax collectors to the best of his ability.
What (Score:4, Informative)
In 1985 where was MY 16 bit game console and 32 bit arcade machines?
Hell, Super Mario Bros 2 came out in 1985. "Western life" wasn't that advanced.
Re:What (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:What (Score:3, Informative)
Well, while the first 32bit arcade games [arcade-history.com] weren't around until 1990 or so, I believe your 16bit console [intellivisionlives.com] had been around for 5 years or so already.
Which Super Mario 2? (Score:3, Informative)
Japanese (basically extra levels to original): 1986
USA (Doki Doki Panic + Mario sprites): 1988
-l
Re:What (Score:3, Informative)
However, for arcade games, state of the art then was 16 bit. Pole Position was released about then I think, and the arcade I worked at for a summer job got a brand new one. I checked out the schematics. It had two Z80 peripheral CPUs, one to do the quadraphonic sound and some other tasks, and one to draw clouds and other background stuff. The main CPU was a Z-8000, which was the 16-bit version of the Z-80.
There were o
Re:What (Score:5, Informative)
Furthermore, many mainframe systems used the 68000 with some version of Unix.
Furthermore, in 1985, you could buy an Amiga 1000 in US.
Re:What (Score:3, Funny)
Hell, Super Mario Bros 2 came out in 1985. "Western life" wasn't that advanced.
Yeah, but I bet you had soap powder, toothpaste, and pantyhose.
MIKHAIL GORBACHEV, General Secretary, Communist Party, 1985-1991: There was a government commission to examine the problem of women's pantyhose. Imagine a country that flies into space, launches Sputniks, creates such a defense system, and it can't resolve the problem of women's pantyhose. There's no toothpaste, no soap powder, not the basic necessities of life.
Why Dismantle? (Score:2)
"Look! Secret Service in front of Saudi Embassy! <snaps picture>"
They had another game, too. (Score:5, Funny)
Re:They had another game, too. (Score:5, Funny)
Re:They had another game, too. (Score:2, Interesting)
(So why's it taking so long with Microsoft?)
24/7 Hotline for these games... (Score:2, Funny)
(Sorry, karma be damned) (Score:4, Funny)
East German fun (Score:3, Funny)
Priceless? (Score:4, Insightful)
Well, it certainly could be worth quite a bit and it is a fascinating find, but priceless? Perhaps they should list it with Sotheby's. Do you think it will fetch more than a Vermeer?
Of course, in the Soviet Pac Man game... (Score:3, Insightful)
Makes you wonder if that was subconsciously the point of the original Pac-man, in reverse.
Re:Of course, in the Soviet Pac Man game... (Score:4, Funny)
More Missing Titles: (Score:5, Funny)
Soulkrauten (soulblade...but everyone looks like Sigfreid)
Aryan 51 (a shoot-em-up game)
Operation Wulf (a Taito port)
Building Castle Wolfenstein (Tetris clone)
And the yet-to-be-released:
Kaiser Gassem Forever (hey, it's about as bad as Nukem)
You forgot... (Score:5, Funny)
k.
I remember that (Score:5, Interesting)
In the lobby there was a PolyPlay and a couple other old "mechanical" video games... I recall a light-gun shooter and something else.
That array of games--being a 13 year old proto-geek--was actually the creepiest thing I experienced on the entire trip. The thought of Russian kids having "fun" on these creepy old bland games just kinda chilled my spine for some reason.
Re:I remember that (Score:3, Informative)
Poly play explained (Score:3, Funny)
In short, the object of the game is for the ghosts to crush the despotic tyrant McPacMan. After voting two of the ghosts as their representatives in the socialist ghosts party these two ghosts share all the dots between them leaving one dot for the other two ghosts to share. The number of votes each ghost gets is based on the number of dots in their region of the screen.
I knew it! (Score:4, Funny)
Funniest post in the thread! (Score:3, Informative)
Just a shame today's mods don't get it...
For those who don't get the joke it's a play on words (or acronyms rather):
DDR = Dance Dance Revolution (popular arcade dancing game)
DDR = Deutsche Demokratische Republik (the official name of the state of East Germany)
Green Mode (Score:4, Informative)
3 in existance ? (Score:5, Informative)
Its rare, but not that rare. there are more PolyPlays in Germany (east&west) than PacMans.
There are several different cab versions of it (due to lack of rescoureces)
And its really not worth anything........not really.
book (Score:4, Interesting)
East Vs West (Score:2)
Sadly, for many of the games on the shelf these days, the answer is yes. I'm willing to be ploy play could still stand up to a lot of the fare they sell for 60 euro in east(ern) germany today.
"Capitalist Fools! Only classless video game offer true excitement!
Itchy & Scratchy (Score:3, Interesting)
And to think in west Germany they were making Porsches and such, and just over the border, crap technology like the Lada car. Funny!
Re:Itchy & Scratchy (Score:4, Informative)
if you did the same thing in West Germany - an act that would admittedly take tremendous willpower - you could afford a 911, easy. A 911 is only about ten times as fast from 0-60 as a Trabant. Well, a Trabant can't even make it to 60 (it has a top speed of 56mph) but you get the idea.
Not much of a joke if you have to live it, alas
D
Not so rare, really... (Score:5, Interesting)
if you run the opening through babelfish... (Score:3, Funny)
TROLL TROLL TROLL! (Score:2)
however this is cool (and k3wl) on many levels- but the most important being the paralellism that occured on the other side of the iron curtain (perchance you, being a mental midget, are in actuality too young to remember the race with the Red Menace)
The east/west one-upmanship is interesting in itself, but taken to a geeky subculture of video games, and its really cool. And 31337.
Good luck on all future trolling attempt, Hacker Dave.
Re:What about Polybius? (Score:3, Interesting)
you know, as cool as this may be, i almost feel let down: I still want to find a Po