lost arcade games of the soviet union

[rossman]

Nice article on wired

http://www.wired.com/gaming/hardware/multimedia/2007/06/gallery_soviet_games

[wehrwulf]

where is the soviet equivalent of Rush n Attack ?

[charlesr]

http://www.wired.com/gaming/hardware/multimedia/2007/06/gallery_soviet_games?currentPage=2&slideView=2

I've played a game just like that. Not soviet obviously. Big mirror thing. Forgotten all about it. Must have been about 8.

[Strolls]

I absolutely love this photo - it harks back to those more innocent days when people actually repaired stuff.

The photo is of some schematics - not "blueprints" - and implies that every console came with a full set.

My Dad used to repair TVs as a sideline when I was kid and I remember him having sheets of these, although nothing as comprehensive as that set - he usually had one or two single sheets at a time so I presume that over here you had to buy the schematic for each board within the telly. The schematic is a full diagram of every electrical connection on the board with each component annotated, so that using basic electronics knowledge - and heaps of experience - you could test for the resistance of components, damaged capacitors, open circuits and things like that.

The way I read this photo and description is that every cabinet was supplied with a full set of the diagrams so that if it developed a fault you could simply call out your local TV repairman & he had everything he needed to fix it. This would have made a lot of sense in the Soviet Union, especially at the time - the size of the country was such that the shipping the arcade cabinet back to the manufacturer would be expensive and risky, yet labour was very cheap.

Compared to the modern philosophy of binning a console when it overheats a few weeks outside manufacturers warranty I find the thought of cabinets that are basically designed for a lifetime's service to be very appealing.

Stroller.