As part of a project by the Slovak Game Developers Association, a collection of early communist-era video games received their first English translation and digital publication that offers a unique glimpse into Eastern Europe in the early 1980s.
The development of video games in the early 1980s was a really exciting time. While big names were already converging (Activision, Ubisoft, etc.), there was also a wild west vibe where anyone with a home computer and a little bit of ambition had the tools to create a competitive game release. And with the proliferation of cheaper computers like the ZX Spectrum, it meant that even those who grew up within Czechoslovak communism could express themselves through the development of games.
In an essay accompanying the digital publication of this collection of classic, almost unknown games, the Slovak Design Center Maroš Brojo describes the project as revealing “an essential part of the history of self-production which, like other historical works, is part of our cultural heritage”.
The motivation behind the translation work was to make Slovak game development more easily recognized by researchers and historians while studying or teaching game history.
Information rich text adventure games that often touched various sociocultural phenomena reflected in our territory or even on the previous regime can therefore only be described by researchers from the indirect narratives of the Slovaks who played them. Translations of these games would enable a broader professional and scientific public worldwide to have direct contact with our game history and give it greater visibility worldwide.
This collection of creations behind the iron curtain contains a total of ten games from 1987 to ’89, including one with the rather intriguing title Pepsi Cola. (Unfortunately, it has the most amusing text interface and some terrible instant deaths, and I recommend turning off the (excellent) music if you want it to play smoothly.) The whole can be downloaded as .TAP files and then played in your Speccy emulator of your choice – they link to Fuse.
It is also worth reading everything about the project from those involved to find out why it was so important to them and how games could still be made despite the communist regime at the time.
(Big thanks to Andrada Fiscutean for the link.)
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