You might remember a few years ago there was some photos of a Soviet arcade museum doing the rounds.
Well, I was in Moscow and stopped in for a visit 😀

The museum itself is located quite close to the centre of the city, about 15 minutes walk from red square. It's colocated with a burger bar.

Entry is normally 500 rubles but our hotel had flyers for half price.

Once you walk in and pay the entry fee, you are given 15 coins to play the machines and a large binder showing the different machines and how to play them.

Here's some shots of the info binder. Some of the machines weren't there, or were not operational.

These are the coins you get, worth 15 Kapeek each. I believe these are still legal tender, however there are 100 Kapeek to a ruble and pretty much everything costs in the hundreds of rubles... cheapest thing I've found so far is a single metro ticket for 50 rubles 😀

Once you walk past the counter you are greeted by this collection of machines.

I tried this hunting game first, called 'Zimnyaya ohota' - 'Winter Hunt'. the animals light up and you need to shot them, pretty straight forward. Note the nixie tubes on the top left, a lot of the machines had these.

This one is table hockey, (named 'hokkei') like table soccer but the players move up and down the field rather than side to side.

'Ledokol' - 'Ice Breaker' is about navigating your ship through the ice field. The lever controls the speed; to move through ice you had to use half speed. The steering wheel moves as small plastic boat at the bottom of the playfield. The graphics appear to be displayed by a looping projection; it repeats every half a minute or so.

This is a road sign quiz, called 'Viktorina'. The definition of the signs would light up and you had to hit the button next to the matching sign as fast as possible.

'Torpednaya Ataka' - 'Torpedo Attack'. Look through the periscope, you'd see silhouettes of ships moving about, you had to lead them and press fire to launch a torpedo. If your timing is right you scored a hit.

This is 'Magistral' - 'Highway', a two player racing game. You can play by yourself for points, but the other car will just sit there and another player can jump in at any time. It plays a lot like DONKEY.BAS but your car doesn't advance up the screen (and with other cars instead of donkeys). The bearded guy with glasses on the screen is part of the attract mode.

'Perehvatchik' - 'Interceptor' is kind of like a shmup, you control a plane and have to shoot the other plane; only one appears at a time. you have to avoid the wreck after shooting it. The big blobs on screen are just clouds.

This is simply called '01' but is a fire engine game. Very similar to 'highway', uses a looping projection. You control a fire truck and have to avoid other traffic. Above the projection is a silhouette of a burning building, the windowe light up to show the fire. After about a minute or so of driving, you use the red hose nozzle to aim and put out the fires.

This is 'Tankodrom' or in english, Tankodrome. (I was told this name might be a play on words of 'sexodrome'...) You drive the blue tank around using the two joysticks, one for acceleration, one for rotation. Presumably there is a magnet under the table that moves the tank. You have to line up the tank with one of the flashing green targets to blow it up, while avoiding land mines on the field. Harder than it sounds as you have to drive directly at the target, you can't just sit next to it and rotate towards it.

'Zond' is the soviet version of a modern skill tester/claw machine that you can still find around the place. Move the claw above a chocolate or toy, the claw will drop and grab it and if successful, will drop it in the chute.

'Minikigli M' - a ten pin bowling game (I didn't try this one). To the right is a car ride for kids like the ones you find in shopping centres today (I also didn't try this!)

'Penalti' - This is basically Pachinko with a soccer theme, pull the lever to shoot your ball, and try to get it to go down the centre 'goal'.

'Avtoralli M' or Autorally, a top down driving game- steer your car around, avoiding obstacles and driving into the flashing goal which changes location.

This is 'Tele-Sport' which is very similar to the old Atari 2600 Video Olympics game - versions of tennis, soccer, basketball, and hockey.

'Skorohod' or 'race-walker' - this is kind of like an primitive version of dance dance revolution! The flashing red light shows your location, you have to stomp on the correct arrow to move through the maze as fast as possible until you get to the house in the centre.

'Bilyard' or billiards, move the handle to change your shot's angle, and then you have two different buttons for the shot - strong or weak. The CRT needed some TLC, it was very washed out (not just a bad photo!).
Unfortunately there were a couple of CRT games that really needed attention - one I didn't get a photo of looks like it had misaligned electron guns.

This is 'Piton' or Python, similar to the old Snake game. You steer your snake around and must avoid bumping into yourself as you eat the rabbits. The rabbits can move around (and usually do just as you get close to them!) and if you run into a carrot you lose a life (snakes are carnivores after all).

'Petushok' meaning 'rooster' - another ride for the kids. I think it looks more like a turkey...

'Tsirk' or 'Circus', a pinball game, pretty similar to western pinball.

This is 'Repka seelomer' - 'Turnip strength measure'. A strength tester, pull as hard as you can and it rates your strength. Based on an old fairy tale about a turnip that nobody could pull out, until a little mouse helped them.

'Gazirovannaya Voda' and 'Soki' (Soda water and juices) - vending machines.

This is an old style photo booth - you could stick some shapes to the mirror behind you and it would come out in the photo. It took about 5 minutes to develop the photos. The '#15KOPMSK' isn't part of this system, that's the hashtag of the museum.

Overall it was a fun way to spend a few hours. Some of the machines were a bit flaky but that's par for the course for stuff this old. I imagine spare parts or donor machines might be hard to come by 😀