Website and games for the Museum of Soviet Arcade Machines

An online catalog of Soviet arcade machines where visitors can play games and explore detailed information about each showpiece, can explore their design, and even discover game cheats and secrets.

Challenge

I worked on the website of the Museum of Soviet Aracde Machines and transformed the experience of playing arcade games into the digital space. The challenge was to take visitors back to their Soviet childhood.

The Museum

There are moments when you want to return to your childhood even just for a short while because there were so many interesting things that we have remembered with delight.

Alexander Vugman, Maxim Pinigin, Alexander Stakhanov

Arcade Games were a part of the childhood and youth of soviet people. They were made at secret military factories from the seventies up to the time of Perestroika. Forgotten and broken Soviet-era arcade games have been restored by three enthusiasts for Moscow’s newest museum and it is now possible to play and feel the atmosphere of an epoch that has passed.

In the museum the visitors can try their luck with games like “Sea Battle” where the player looks through a periscope and pretends to be a submarine commander and attempts to torpedo passing ships. The site is abundant with relevant information, from high resolution photographs of the machines to detailed PDF manuals in the once popular facsimile format.

Sea Fight

Who among us never dreamed of growing up to be a sailor? Only after we went to space, naturally. This arcade game was created for those who never forgot their childhood dreams. And so, you are now looking through the periscope of a submarine and the enemy ships are audaciously sailing across the horizon, back and forth.

A page about the “Sea Battle” machine

Default and an exploded view of the machine

A page about types of vessels. Each type of warship was represented by a unique icon

A video clip that shows the gameplay of “Sea Battle”

Magistral

The project included a second game called “Magistral”, a racing which is very similar to the Atari 2600's Grand Prix. The main difference between Magistral and Grand Prix was that the track ran vertically and the other cars moved back and forth across the road. There are 5 different versions of the game with their own unique obstacles and rules.