Soviet Game Machines Simulator

Dear friends! Many years ago, in 2009, when Njoll did not yet exist but our Kyiv-based publishing house Sky Horse was already operating, we released a CD with the computer simulator Soviet Game Machines. Today, this game can be downloaded for free here: https://bit.ly/SovietGameMachines

You are offered the famous games: Sea Battle, Gorodki, Sniper, Horse Races, Safari, Magistral-M, and Interceptor. Of course, the number of virtual 15-kopek coins is unlimited 🙂

Since the game was created for Windows and Mac OS of its time, it may not work on modern systems. Nevertheless, if desired, it can be run through a virtual machine (instructions are on the program’s download page).

Taking the opportunity, we will explain why and how we made this game.

Since the early 2000s, we have been preparing various software products on CD and DVD for the markets of the former USSR: multimedia encyclopedias, collections of freely distributed software, simple casual games, and audiobooks. In the first five years of activity, we released more than 500 disc titles, which sold a total of about 3 million copies. But by 2007, it became clear: the “disc era” was coming to an end — fast and inexpensive internet became available to everyone, and the need for physical media gradually disappeared. We hoped to stay in this market for a few more years, but the financial crisis of 2008 accelerated the irreversible process: disc sales dropped dramatically in just a few months, and after a year, having thought it over, we switched to developing applications for mobile platforms and founded a full-fledged book publishing house.

It was in this transitional period that the desire arose to create a special product on a disc, which would complete our little disc history — to make it not so much for profit, but for our own pleasure. And since we have always been interested in the history of electronics and gaming and fondly remembered the halls with arcade machines of the 1980s, we decided to develop precisely such a game, through which one could travel for an hour, as in a time machine, into the exciting world of childhood.

From the very beginning, it was decided to create not just an arcade game based on Soviet arcade machines, but a full simulator, where the machines are reproduced in detail and with maximum accuracy of the 3D models, sound, and gameplay itself. It seems this goal was achieved, although, to some extent, at the expense of gameplay: the player really immerses themselves in the Soviet past, into a hall with machines located somewhere in the basement of a cinema, but the game itself does not hold attention for long — only about ten minutes per each of the seven machines.

From the dozens of machines produced in the USSR, seven of the most popular and recognizable were selected for implementation in the game. In addition to the ones mentioned above, we also considered including Penalty, Air Combat, Basketball, and Telesport, but postponed them for a second version, which was never started.

To begin work, it was necessary to find working machines to measure all elements of their cabinets, photograph panels, study gameplay, and record original sounds. And here problems arose: there were almost no “live” machines in Kyiv, where in 2005 we moved our development department from Moscow.
Fortunately, in the city park called Nivki, an arcade hall from Soviet times had somehow been preserved, by the way, with an electric racetrack and a hall of distorted mirrors — the Soviet version of a funhouse.

It had Sea Battle (though its sound did not work), Sniper, and dozens of other machines, which did not interest us much. The director of the establishment kindly allowed us to work with the equipment all day and even closed the entrance to visitors.

Unfortunately, this arcade hall was destroyed by fire in the early 2010s, and all the machines burned down.

Then it remained to find the other machines from our list. Fortunately, at that time, the Museum of Soviet Arcade Machines opened in Moscow, where everything necessary was found! The founders of the museum, Alexander Vugman and Alexander Stakhanov, provided help with the materials, allowing us not only to photograph everything, but also sending videos of gameplay, scans of large books with documentation, and so on.

Before proceeding directly to the programming part, it was necessary to prepare 3D models. The in-house 3D designer Klimentiy Ranchukov did a great job on this task, spending one and a half years of hard work on seven models. To make the machines look as if they had just arrived from the factory, photographs of all cabinet panels, which contained inscriptions and drawings, were converted by designer Andrey Chernenko into vector form, and only after that “skins” for the models were made. More precisely, not “converted,” but redrawn in Corel, reproducing all the original fonts letter by letter.

The game had many details insignificant for the user, but which nevertheless required serious work. For example, for two weeks we could not achieve that the 3D model of the fifteen-kopeck coin, which serves as the button to start the game, looked metallic when rotated around its axis — with the correct reflection, and not just a gray circle.

The coin itself was entirely made in 3D. And it is not a simple round object with a skin: all drawings and inscriptions are volumetric parts of the model.

Sounds were recorded and edited (and some synthesized) by DJ and composer Andrey Vakhnenko (Andy Vax). Of course, background music was also written for the game — a track seven minutes long. We tried to make something similar in style to the sound of Depeche Mode and Camouflage. Some users did not like the music, finding it gloomy and depressing, while others were delighted — several times people asked us where to download this track separately.

Finally, about two years after the start of work, the game was ready and released in Moscow by the company Novy Disk, and in Kyiv we published the game ourselves. Although the game initially had an English version, it was not released in other countries.

Now the reader has the opportunity to legally download this product for free and evaluate it.

© Vladimir Nevzorov / Njoll.com, 2026