The games of our childhood in Russia: 8-bit masterpieces

We talked earlier about the era of Flash games. But the 1990s, for most children of that time, and not only children, were primarily Dendy games with duck shooting at the TV, sometimes a “Subor” that was in the form of a keyboard, and for the real rich and lucky there was a Sega Mega Drive and Super Nintendo.

This time we have collected the most popular 8-bit video games, modern games from Russian developers for this platform, In addition, we will plunge into the incredible world of peripherals for the Nintendo Entertainment System — gloves for controlling games, virtual reality helmets, printers and so on.

How do you like the idea of rating video games on Dendy? Write in the comments what you remember the most, what the best childhood memories are associated with and what you would like to play right now!

• Dendy is a series of video game consoles, an unoriginal hardware clone of the third — generation Famicom console of the Japanese company Nintendo. The dandy appeared in Steepler since the end of 1992, assembled in Taiwan from a Chinese kit ordered by Steepler and eventually appeared in Russia.

Top 10 NES games by sales

While we are only preparing the rating under the conditional name “Games that have passed the test of time” with your help, friends, I suggest you look at the rating of the best-selling games on the NES. Of course, it is, to put it mildly, “slightly” different from the games in Russia.

Super Mario Bros. Duck hunting. Super Mario Bros. 3. Tetris. Super Mario Bros. 2. The Legend of Zelda. Dr. Mario. Zelda II: The Adventure of Link. Excitebike. Golf.

The rating is quite expected. Firstly, Super Mario occupies four positions at once — this is the Nintendo symbol that came with the console. And duck hunting came complete with a set–top box and a light pistol. It makes no sense to comment on Tetris. Dr. Mario, by the way, is very similar to Tetris — also a glass, but with pills of different colors.

Dandy: a new reality

NES games were brought to Russia via the Dendy platform. If you didn’t have it as a child, then it means that you watched the letsplays on Sergei Suponev’s show or went to friends. And now you can plunge into 1995 for 25 minutes…

The author of the prefix was Viktor Savyuk. It was he who came to the Stipler company, offered to start selling consoles with cartridges and headed the business. Viktor Savyuk has entered the Hall of Fame of the Russian video game industry.

Interesting fact. The Steepler company imported those Dendy into the country, did not violate the rights of Nintendo. She bought a Taiwanese Famicom clone. Branding took over a million dollars and three months of work. And then they even found a company in Taiwan that tested consoles. We checked the quality and safety of plastic for children.

This video, released in 1993, went viral.

The same situation with the prefix was not only in Russia. When I was in Brazil (as part of the VIDEOGAME INDUSTRY DEVELOPMENT ORGANIZATION business mission) at the University of Porto Alegre’s video game museum, we discussed a clone that was in that country. And the Brazilians were proud of their clone and the fact that their console was better and better than the original. And that market, apparently, was not important for Nintendo, so the company was not against the release of a Famicom clone.

A lot of cartridges were sold in Russia. They were often produced by enterprises that were not at all associated with Steepler and Nintendo. Some had thousands of video games on them.

The legendary games of our childhood

If you remember what time the Disney Club started, then cartoon games may be especially important for you. For example, “Aladdin”, “Chip and Dale”, “Black Cloak”, “Duck Stories”. Interestingly, “Aladdin” was first released on the 16-bit Super NES, but they managed to transfer it to an 8-bit console, preserving the atmosphere and almost preserving the graphics. At that time, it was probably one of the most beautiful games for Dendy. “Aladdin” is very similar in spirit to the “Prince of Persia”, which appeared on the Apple II in 1989.

It was necessary to play Chip and Dale together, as this allowed you to pick up a teammate and throw him into the abyss or at the opponent. A great reason for siblings to quarrel, followed by throwing joysticks into a kinescope, perhaps even a black-and-white screen.

The game about Felix the cat was characterized by an abundance of vehicles. It contained a tank, a spaceship, a dolphin, an airplane.

“Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles”, especially their third part, with pseudo-3D, was a great series of games. It was especially interesting to play together. Each turtle had its own unique techniques and skills.

The Flintstones are familiar to many from the animated series and the movie. A fun game for kids and adults.

Action games were not made in such a colorful style. Remember the oppressive atmosphere of “Terminator”, “Robocop” and “Terminator vs Robocop”.

The game Mortal Kombat, on the contrary, itself became the reason for the filming of films, TV series and animated series. First it was released on arcade machines, then on consoles like Super NES and Sega. And pirates from Asia have already ported it to Dendy, which allowed children to play dozens, if not hundreds of very different versions of the game of varying degrees of sophistication. Some versions were of quite good quality. On the computer, of course, the graphics were better.

Sports games like hockey, football, and motocross could be played for hours. Especially when it was possible to do it together.

The graphics in the Dendy races seemed amazing. As it is now in the last parts of NFS. But only until you played Need For Speed III on the first Sony PlayStation.

The Galaxian game came from arcade machines. You are a fighter pilot who must save the earth from alien invaders. Another game that, despite the simple gameplay, could keep a child busy for several hours.

What kind of review of NES games can there be without a genius — Hideo Kojima? In 1987, Metal Gear was released on the NES and a number of other platforms. In fact, thanks to this series, we got a whole genre of stealth action video games. Kojima copied the main character, Solid Snake, from the Snake Pliskin, who was played by Kurt Russell in the film Escape from New York. And the gameplay was invented, among other things, thanks to the James Bond films.

Have they created games for Dandy in Russia? Yes, and it wasn’t just transfers and ports. For example, there was an educational game “Guessing Game”, “Sea Battle”, “Field of Wonders”.

One of the first authors of Russian Dandy games was Alexander Chudov. He also made “Balda”, “Fortune”, “Rules of the Road”. “A Journey through Europe”. And under the Sega Mega Drive, he made a codebreaker. According to the information that was found, Alexander continues to work in the field of military electronics. Have you ever had such cartridges? Write in the comments!

Surprisingly, even now, completely new video games are probably being made for old consoles against the background of a love of retro.

In 2009, a Russian developer with the nickname AnS made Binary City — this is a mod of the famous “tankers”. Only you have to control two tanks at once, which move in a mirror relative to each other. So you need to keep an eye on them at the same time in order to shoot at the right moment and not catch a projectile from an enemy tank.

And this is footage from Black Jewel Reborn, which the PSCD studio is porting to the SNES.

And how do you like Dune 2 on Dandy?

The periphery

Perhaps you remember such a short film — Kung Fury, and the hacker guy in it, who went on memes. On the character’s right hand is a Power Glove for Nintendo. There was something very similar in the movie “A Nightmare on Elm Street”. In 1989, it cost $80. More than 100,000 of them have been sold in the USA.

It was one of the first video game controllers capable of tracking the position of a player’s hand in space. To do this, special receivers were installed on the TV. It is very similar to how modern similar systems like PS Eye work.

In an excerpt from the movie “The Wizard” you can see how the system worked. Judging by the phrase “I love PowerGlove. It’s so bad” is not very good.

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If PowerGlove could be used even for Super Mario, then 3D glasses — already for a limited number of video games — for only eight. The gadget was sold only in Japan.

The device works in this way: there are shutters on each eye in glasses; they close their eyes alternately; the screen shows images for the left and right eyes alternately with the same frequency. The result is a three–dimensional picture. But only with a TV with a kinescope.

And this robot named R.O.B. allowed you to play as many as two games! The probability that you even knew about its existence is minimal. Or did you have one? Write in the comments.

The Internet for jokes about Nintendo was made in 1988. Even before the advent of the modern Internet, the Family Computer Network System allowed you to see data on stock trading, learn about cheats in video games, and monitor the weather forecast.

What consoles did you have as a child? What games did you play? Tell us in the comments!