Deep-Sixing Boredom
Produced in same facilities as the nuclear submarines it sought to imitate, Boi was the first in a long line of government-produced arcade titles beginning in the late 1970s. And while it may not have matched up to the early Atari consoles in terms of bells and whistles, the game’s funky design and addictive gameplay make it an iconic emissary from the parallel universe of Soviet arcade culture.
The game itself, in contrast to its shadowy beginnings, is straightforward – although it may not seem that way as you approach the machine. With its cryptic green and red gauges, it appears to require naval training. But these instruments are just stickers. The only authentic thing here is the periscope, and you can bet it’s very authentic, having been made in a submarine factory.
What you glimpse through the periscope is “real,” too, in the sense that it is not a field of colored pixels, but a cardboard diorama built inside the machine. The scene: an armada of tiny model cruisers coasts along a horizon of 3-D mountains and faded blue sky. Your objective is to pick off said cruisers with your set of 10 “torpedoes,” tiny diamonds of red light that blink, Vegas-strip-style, across the cardboard sea toward their target. There is only one button – FIRE – and timing is crucial.
As much as Morskoi Boi sounds like it should suck (it doesn’t even qualify as a video game), it’s remarkably fun. Pursuing the holy grail of a perfect 10 keeps you hooked, but it’s the game’s reaction whenever you score a hit that makes it worth all 15 kopeks. First, disconcertingly, the sun winks out. This sets the stage for a fiery explosion against the backdrop, silhouetting the enemy vessel as it scuttles off, defeated.
Unsurprisingly for a Soviet toy, the original factory documentation for Morskoi Boi insists its purpose is not purely recreational. Rather, it was designed to develop players’ “visual estimation and shooting abilities.” And due to the classified nature of the technology, the games were constructed at hidden military sites, by unknown hands. This all suggests a war game, yes? But Maxim Pinigin, one of the two founders and operators of Moscow’s Museum of Soviet Arcade Games, thinks not. “They just had to do something to entertain people – because they hadn't before that. At all.”
What you glimpse through the periscope is “real,” too, in the sense that it is not a field of colored pixels, but a cardboard diorama built inside the machine.
The recreational aspect of the games was certainly what stuck with Pinigan and childhood friend Alexander Stakhanov, who collaborated to open the space last year. Housed in the bunker-like basement of an engineering school on the eastern outskirts of the city, the museum consists of three rooms and 40 machines, 20 of which are in working order, and is one of the few places in the former Soviet Union where one can still experience the joys of Boi or any of the other 80 games released by the Attractions Union, a branch of the Ministry of Culture. There are four Morskoi Bois at the museum, two of which are available to play on the one night a week the curators can afford to keep it open. As one might expect given the operators’ looks (each a synthesis of tech-ed nerd and college dropout), the place is not filled with dull displays. Instead, it’s almost exclusively interactive, transforming weekly into a modern-day House of Recreation and Culture, the Soviet Union’s quaint answer to the video arcade. By far the most popular machine, Morskoi Boi causes lines to form on some nights.
But for all the Soviet nostalgia surrounding it, the game harbors an embarrassing secret: it’s a clone. The original is an American game called Sea Battle, a direct translation of the Russian title. In fact, around 90 percent of the games released by the Attractions Union were crude copies of first- and second-generation arcade titles from the U.S. and Japan, including the Atari racing simulator Night Driver and the Model T of the gaming world, Computer Space.
Despite their foreign origins, Morskoi Boi and its clunky brethren assimilated perfectly. They offered children and game designers alike a much-needed distraction from Brezhnev’s cultural malaise, and Boi in particular is a fitting metaphor for the Soviet Union at the end of the Cold War: on the outside, an impressive arcade machine; inside, a decidedly analog carnival attraction.