Tinker Troupe Gamer Spy — The Hunt for the Otherness of Eastern European Gaming Culture
Gazing along the glistening ebb of the Vistula river with the sun searing my back and the leviathanic Wawel Castle by my side, I am struck by the strangeness of it all. During my time in the somewhat stoic surroundings of Kraków — a beautiful city teeming with beautifully honest people — it struck me that the esoteric complexity of that nation’s history was acutely summarised and condensed for many tourists mostly into the period surrounding World War Two. Little care or due explanation was provided to the Cold War period following 1945 when Poland effectively became a satellite state belonging to Soviet Russia (officially being declared in 1952).
I found this odd.
I found this odd, not for the seeming gloss placed over a tumultuous post-war society that often ran to a different beat politically from the rest of the Soviet Bloc but rather for the exact point that it ran to a different beat culturally from the rest of the Soviet Bloc and Western Europe.
I like games. This isn’t a secret. In fact, I love games — they often inform my manner of thinking in a way that also only literature can do, and so I often yearn to explore what new places or countries can afford me in the way of electronically cultural enrichment. I seek the old and retro for it is new to me and the experiences I discover in gaming culture usually underlines for me a newness or otherness from which I can learn and understand. I think that I’m getting slightly ahead of myself. Perhaps a dash of context is required…
Poland is a stunning country and I wanted to revisit the wonderful city of Kraków with my wife as she had never visited before. I wanted to walk with her, hand-in-hand, along the bustling, narrow, cobble-stoned streets of the Old Town soaking up its typically European vibrancy. I wanted to engage with the locals and understand their history and how they managed to overcome the myriad of terrible 20th century atrocities committed within its borders, normalising themselves with Westernised mores against the backdrop of historical adversity. And so, we visited Poland and had an incredibly fulfilling and culturally educational time that did not solely revolve around the usual tourist haunts.
You see… as aforementioned, video gaming in all of its forms and history often provides me with a chance to escape the drudgery of a stressful modern working life. But I often wondered how a historically ‘communist’ country, in one of the most economically restricted and politically controlled areas of the world in the 20th century, managed to afford its citizens the very same opportunity for escape from their drudgery. I decided to undertake some very cursory research on local game shops and any potential arcades before I departed and lo… there were not only game shops in Kraków, but also a pinball museum! Immediately, I set about visiting the Kraków Pinball Museum, dragging my reluctant wife along to see what delights an Eastern European arcade could afford us. An incredibly inexpensive place to visit, with all machines on freeplay, this subterranean den of delights was entirely US focused in terms of its pinball tables and arcade cabinets. Getting the opportunity to experience Winter Hunt or other utilitarian mechanised arcade cabinets of Cold War-era Eastern Europe was not on the table — a behemothic Cyrillic stamped encounter this wasn’t to be.
But… it did give me pause for thought. Regardless of what I expected, I very much enjoyed my time at the Kraków Pinball Museum. Cheap entry, freeplay arcade cabinets and beer are a heady mix, especially when my wife really became enamoured with the pinball tables and had fun. There was a full complement of tables available from Williams’ Jolly Roger (1967) to Midway’s Elvira: Scared Stiff (1996), and arcade cabinets ranging from Namco’s Galaxian (1979) to Capcom’s Street Fighter II (1991); literally dozens of items packed in to a large basement providing a gaming cornucopia! Nevertheless, it left me wanting an experience that was other to what I already knew.
I knew that there was an opportunity for redemptive learning at hand. Those game shops that were aforementioned still lingered in my mind. You see… I’m not only a gamer, but I’m a collector. I want to collect those systems and games that I owned and encountered as a child, as it informed my cultural leanings to make me the person I am today. However, I also want to experience the systems and games that not only my ‘western’ peers had, but also the entirely different video game culture that permeated beyond the Iron Curtain throughout the Eastern Bloc and wider Soviet Union. I’m a longtime student of history, both political and social, and I want to learn beyond the text books; I want to both see and get my grubby mitts on the Russian NES clones, the Czechoslovakian produced ZX Spectrum clones and the beautifully utilitarian Electronika BK-0010 which preceeded them. A game shop was my best opportunity to pick something up…
My excitement was curtailed however on my first visit to a Polish ‘retro game’ store. Shop Gracz, located just south of the Jewish Quarter and the Vistula River was a sobering antidote to my misguided notions of diving amongst a heavenly array of Soviet-era microcomputers and games. A decently stocked store in itself it mostly focused on modern fare, particularly the seemingly soulless corporate Sony Playstation and Microsoft Xbox range of consoles. The oldest games they had in stock were some tokenistic Playstation 1 titles that wouldn’t warrant a second glance at a disappointing car boot sale. I left disheartened, and my wife could sense the palpable sour mood on my behalf, leading her to suggest we alleviate my misgivings with some ice cold Polish beer. She’s too good for me. But, I remembered… there was another ‘retro game’ shop not far from the apartment in which we were staying. Maybe, maybe I could get that opportunity to purchase something that was different to what I grew up with. My mind raced with thoughts of Didaktik M and Elwro computers, fuelled by the intoxicating blend of local Polish lager and surreal summer heat. I told as much of my desire for these machines to my somewhat disinterested yet strangely understanding wife. And so, she agreed to accompany me the following day to the other retro game shop, with promises of shopping proffered to her as recompense.
We set off early the next morning, strategically timing our arrival for just after the store’s opening time. The sun was already violently upon us, pushing temperatures beyond what pasty Irish people are usually able to cope with. This wasn’t the cold, grey Eastern Europe that was pushed in Western Cold War propaganda — it was a bright, leafy walk in roasting hot summer temperatures that belied my childish sense of being an undercover Le Carré-esque spy in snow covered ‘communist’ territory. With the sweat slowly making an appearance and the trudged walk to the store being guided by a smartphone-led hand, we finally reached a veritable oasis…
NoGame in Kraków is probably one of the finest examples of a retro game shop that I have seen in continental Europe. Upon entering the store I immediately noticed a stack of 1980s home microcomputers to my right whilst I was flanked to the left by a long counter with an abundance of cartridge games lurking beneath it. This was a much better experience than I had the previous day. I instantly set upon the pile of home microcomputers looking for that unique experience that I just cannot get at home in Ireland — the allure of the strange: Meritums, Mazovias and Didaktik M computers. I was somewhat disappointed. I was met with Westernised computing staples such as a Commodore Amiga 500, a Schneider CPC (a rebadged Amstrad computer for the 1980s West German market), and an Atari XE. Don’t get me wrong. These computers aren’t exactly common in Ireland, given the dearth of old computing hardware that is strangely available there, but there just wasn’t the items there that I was expecting or hoping for. I moved my attention towards the shelf of games and it was, predictably, filled with Playstation 1-era games and beyond. However, glancing through the titles, I noted that many of the games were perhaps some of the more desirable or more uncommon ones… titles such as Bust-a-Move and Kurushi sat nestled amongst 32-bit pillars including Metal Gear Solid and Final Fantasy VII. I somewhat felt buoyed by this. Perhaps I wouldn’t be able to gain some rare Eastern European 8-bit microcomputer but I would be able to gain some excellent games for established systems. I moved onwards to the other shelves and the counter area: Playstation 2, Nintendo Gamecube, NES and SNES… Xbox, Sega Mega Drive, Atari 7800…
This was excellent. I didn’t care anymore about the desired experience for the strange. I just wanted an experience. I set about picking up a couple of games, and finally decided upon a couple of games for common systems that I already own: Mr. Nutz (a 2D side-scrolling platform game released in 1992) for the Super Nintendo, and Zombies Ate My Neighbours (a top down comedic run-and-gun game released in 1993) for the Sega Mega Drive. The excellent pricing on these titles made it impossible to pass up, and after sharing some conversation, jokes and anecdotes of respective gaming pasts with the owner, I decided to leave the store with my purchases buoyed by a new found realisation about video gaming in Poland.
Kraków is a beautiful city. The historical cultural hub of Poland, it provided me with some essential lessons about its past, beyond the atrocities committed in World War II by Nazi Germany and the tough living conditions that etched itself upon the citizens during its Communist years. I learned a lot about their culture, their art and their music. But what struck me most culturally, was that their video game culture and subsequent experience wasn’t dissimilar to mine. It was somewhat stifled in the 1980s by restrictive market policies, but there was a genuine softening of market conditions during this time period that not only afforded Polish people with an opportunity to use the Soviet clone computers of the Eastern Bloc, but to also experience Westernised ‘capitalist’ game consoles and computers of the rest of Europe, the United States and Japan. A porous border led to popular microcomputers and game consoles being smuggled in to the country and despite them being at a premium cost to an admittedly low income country, they nevertheless had those same experiences that I had. I was poor. My upbringing wasn’t exactly fruitful in terms of what my parents afforded me, and so that otherness… that uniqueness… wasn’t actually all that unique. Maybe they had a few strange home grown computers with Cyrillic (or rather Polish) letters adorning the keyboards, but their overarching cultural experience through video games was essentially the very same as mine.
I departed Kraków with a new found appreciation of not only the highly interesting history of Poland, but also the unifying experience of video games. It’s an experience that can transcend financial status, borders, political systems, cultural upbringings and language barriers. I love video games.
