Soviet Arcade Museum part 3: Serious Games
Several games in the SAM collection bear witness to the desire to improve, educate, etc the player, presumably so they can better contribute to the Fiver Year Plan. Like many of today’s Serious Games For Change And The Furtherance Of Progressive Ideals Etc, they can’t quite decide whether to entertain or lecture the player and as a result often fail to do either.
Motogonki — or Motorace — is a prime example. At first glance, it seems to promise exciting, no-holds-barred motorcycle-on-motorcyle motorcycle racing action. Behold the cabinet:
Note the lifelike speeding motorcycles skillfully painted around and “behind” the display area.
You start out in last place and have the regulation Soviet Arcade Cabinet 2 minute time limit to make your way to the front of the pack. The road ahead of you is clear, so you grip the handlebars tightly and punch the throttle! Go go go!……STOP
….huh?
Go go go gogogo gogo! ….STOP
WHAT IS HAPPENING
This is when you decide to take a closer look at the instructions:
“blah blah don’t put in bent or souvenir coins blah….you have 120 seconds.”
“….try to get first place in the race while avoiding collisions and FOLLOWING THE RULES OF THE ROAD [emphasis mine]”
Just to recap: go as fast as you can and try to win the race, because this is a motorcycle racing game, but DO NOT BREAK THE SPEED LIMIT. Or disobey any of the other road signs that randomly appear during gameplay, for which a handy legend is provided:
My personal favorite is the enigmatic “Other Dangers” (left column, 2nd from bottom)
I actually kinda love how this twist flies in the face of “traditional” racing game design and wanna see more racing game designers experiment with changing rules on the fly like this. But I’m even more fascinated by how this game dramatizes the tension between free individual enterprise and centralized regulation, a tension so especially pertinent and live in 1980s USSR.
:P
….Well, that’s all for tonight — I’m off to the book launch talk/panel/party for Clara Fernandez-Vara’s “Introduction To Game Analysis”! Tune in tomorrow for Soviet Arcade Museum part 4: Serious Games part 2
