The Central Planning Committee decided that Soviet people need arcade machines (there were some lobbying, of course, and the idea was probably suggested by an o

The Central Planning Committee decided that Soviet people need arcade machines (there were some lobbying, of course, and the idea was probably suggested by an official who visited Western countries and have seen them before). After the idea was approved in principle, the task was given to engineers to develop them: some were copied from Western devices, others developed from scratch. Then, factories were upgraded to mass produce these machines. Then, they were everywhere: in every large (government-managed) store, looking exactly the same. Soviet economy was strange and surreal.