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So back in the day, when the Supreme Soviet issued its Five-Year Plan, was there a line item in the Plan allocating so much sheet metal and paint to People’s Vi

by sethg 16y ago

So back in the day, when the Supreme Soviet issued its Five-Year Plan, was there a line item in the Plan allocating so much sheet metal and paint to People’s Video-Game Console Factory Number One? Or did some factory that produced military hardware make a few “Snaiper-2” machines on the side, so that young comrades on the home front could develop their skills and boost morale? Did the workers in the video-game factories struggle with shortages, or did they get bonuses under the table so that members of the nomenklatura could have the prestige of video games in their dachas?

_delirium 16y ago
According to a Wired article whose accuracy I can't vouch for, but which seems plausible, it appears to be your second option, military factories producing them on the side for entertainment/morale, perhaps with a secondary goal of motorvisual-skills training (http://www.wired.com/gaming/hardware/news/2007/06/soviet_games http://www.wired.com/gaming/hardware/news/2007/06/soviet_gam...): "From the late '70s to the early '90s, Soviet military factories produced some 70 different video game models. Based largely (and crudely) on early Japanese designs, the games were distributed -- in the words of one military manual -- for the purposes of 'entertainment and active leisure, as well as the development of visual-estimation abilities.'"