Eastern European game scene?

From my understanding, PC FPS gaming in Eastern Europe during the 90s, for those that could afford it, was pretty damn huge.

I don't have any sources and my memory is a bit fuzzy, but it went kind of like this:

Piracy was massive in Eastern Europe simply because poor people couldn't be assed to pay so many rubles for an operating system. So some genius-ass Russians managed to pirate Windows 95 really quickly after it came out, we're talking like a couple of weeks, mostly because there's nothing else to do in Russia. These cutting-edge pirates then put the bootleg Windows 95 copies on CD's, and along with that, they threw in some pirated games while they were at it, like Doom, Duke, and Blood. Specifically, Blood was extremely popular in Russia compared to other 2.5D FPSes: Most of the fansites for Blood that are still around today are in Russian, not to mention the various Russian-made games made now like Lifeweb that are directly influenced by it.

So you'd have these bootleggers passing around and copying CD's with Windows 95/98 on them, selling them for a pack of cigarettes a pop, all of them bundled with Doom or Blood or some other FPS of that type, meaning that pretty much anybody who had a computer then also had one of those games on there.

Of course, everybody was poor as fuck then, so not everybody could own Doom, but those who did have a computer very likely also had some FPS installed with it.

me on the right

>>4081335
Nice info< but hey why they keep playing old-school games and keep old-school game servers full?

seems like a lot of games there is already almost fully abandonware everyhere else in the world, has a russian server running and full of player? i always find it cool that they keep playing some old good games when the entire world just forgot about it.

>>4081537
Probably because many can't afford beefier computers and/or nostalgia factor?

>>4081537
>why they keep playing old-school games and keep old-school game servers full?

I'm gonna have to assume it's cause there are still a lot of people with shitty old computers. There's still a pretty healthy population in CS 1.6 that's all south americans. It's fun to talk shit in english after you kill a bunch of them one round and get kicked

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>>4081335
>Piracy was massive in Eastern Europe
For years I had no idea there is such thing as pirate copy.
I just bought game on bazar and thought they all come with rus dubbing (now that part is actually amazing, many games were actually localized by pirates)
Only years later I realised the truth.

We had lots of gaming saloons with consoles plugged into tv and you would pay per hour.
Kids had notebooks with codes and secrets and those codes for MK you had to input during loading screen the priziest possession

Rich kids had game boy or a console and that shit was rare.

PC games were the king in those gaming saloons, imagine.
>Warm summer, whole gaming saloon full with people, most of them playing Quake by LAN and most of them first met in such saloon because its summer and they just come to rest at the shore of the black sea.
Most people are smocking, drinking beer while playing, chomp on chips, music from nearby disco are pretty well heard inside since the doors are open and no one gives a shit.
Its all big family even tho they all just met for the first time.

brb googling suicide methods
lol jk
I already decided to go with hibachi

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>>4081873
sounds comfy

Only few kids had computers during the eatly 90 i was lucky coz my best friend's father was a university teacher so he had one. we played Doom and Xcom alot... there was this university guy who was a cracker and he always aipplid us with personally cracked games. i haven't seen anybody with a non bootleged pc game collection.

NES was big, very few kids owned a SEGA and i literally saw SNES for the first time on a garage sale 5 years ago...

The NES which most of us owned was a bootleged aswell. Ironically mine looked like a SNES. I donated it to a hospital for cancer kids along with my cartridge collection when i was 16...

My first PC was a win 98 machine had a voodoo banshee GPU. wss pretty sweet. the net was slowww back then. so we bought pirated CD games from various PC hardware shops. Some were actually nice enough to make the CD case eith a cover and all...

>>4081936
I think nes bootleg was called dendy or something.

>>4081394
Nice list. Are there any significant must plays here? What would be the most accessible way to get them?

>>4081948
Dendy was the most popular NES clone. Actually, only a few years after that I figured out that original console is called NES.
I got a Dendy at 1994, and it was like a miracle - to see that I can control a character in a virtual world

>>4084179
Games that are worth mentioning:
Злaтoгopьe/Zlatogorye. Slavic fantasy world is a unusual fantasy setting. Diablo clone. Idk does it have english translation or not.
Пeтькa и Bacилий Ивaнoвич/Pet'ka and Vasily Ivanovich (A very quest, but you have to be familiar with russian culture to understand the most of jokes. No english translation)
HoMM 5. Good TBS. If you're familiar with HoMM 3, you know what to expect from it.
Mor. Utopia. I havent played it, but people who have says that its a masterpiece. Idk about english translation but I think it exists
Typгop/Tension. Like Mor. Utopia (I havent played it, but people who have says that its a masterpiece). Have an english translation.
Кaзaки/Cossacs. I havent played it, but people says its a pretty good RTS. I think this game have an english translation.
Кocмичecкиe peйнджepы/Space Rangers. RPG/Economic sim/TBS. Idk about the translation
Дaльнoбoйщики 2/Hard Truck (but its better to search by russian title). Great trucker's sim. Idk about the translation
Кoд дocтyпa: Paй/Paradise Cracked. Turn-based RPG. I have started playing it not so long ago. People who have played it says it have a great scenery plot. There is an english translation, but a shitty one.
S.T.A.L.K.E.R. One of the most famous russian game series. There are some games in it (Shadow of Chernobyl, Clear Sky, etc.). Of course it have an english translation.
Baнгepы/Vangers. Voxel engine, open world. It seems that the setting was created under LSD. Idk about the translation, probably it doesnt have one
TimeShift. Pretty good FPS, I have played it and I like it a lot. Have an english translation
Ядepный Tитбит/Nuclear Titbit. A quest based on russian internet folklore from first half of 2000-s. Dont have a translation

Where to get:
Buy: steam and GOG
Pirate: thepiratebay, rutracker.org and old-games.ru

>>4081335
I could add that a lot of games on pirate CD's were repacked to shtink their size, so it was hard to find an intact game with CGIs and movie clips.
Also, I should say that pirate translations made by semi-legal compaines like Fargus and 7Wolf were complete shit, but people who didnt know english have been buying it anyway

>>4081394
>no Adventures of Pioneer Ksenia
Unacceptable.
https://archive.org/details/msdos_Priklyuchenia_Pionerki_Ksenii_shareware

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>>4081335
Bиктop Пeлeвин - Пpинц Гocплaнa
Victor Pelevin - The Prince of GosPlan
A fantasmagoric novel about gaming in various state institutes in 90's

I posted this too early. Trying again.

>>4084179
>Are there any significant must plays here?
If you play only one game on that list (besides Tetris), play Vangers. It's an open world vehicular combat/trading game with a complex narrative -- think Elite meets StarControl II. It is hard to get into, but if you like an unusual setting, challenging real-time combat, character customization and exploration there is a chance that it will end up on your list of all-time favorites. The English translation is mediocre. However, if you find yourself confused at first keep in mind that the game's text is deliberately obtuse. Even in original Russian you have to figure out what all the made-up words mean.

>>4084521
Other than Vangers:
* Color Lines, a former Soviet casual gaming classic. Along with BabyType, a touch typing trainer game, is was omnipresent on office and school computers in the 1990s and the early 2000s.
* Cossacks: European Wars, Perimeter and Steamland if you're an RTS fan. Perimeter is set in the same universe as Vangers. Steamland is unique among RTS games in that your and your opponents' units are trains.
* Disciples I-II and King's Bounty: The Legend if you can't get enough HoMM.
* Echelon is an arcade combat flight sim and fun for a few hours. IL-2 Sturmovik, another flight sim on the list, is a whole different story. It takes days just to learn how to fly in but hardcore fans of the genre swear by it.
* Full Pipe and Pathologic if weird adventure games are your thing. I haven't played played Pathologic, but people who have warn that it is even bleaker and more depressing than it seems and requires a lot of dedication.
* Hard Truck 2 was at one point THE long-distance truck racing/trading sim.
* Nuclear Titbit is infamous. It pretty much tried to be so bad it was good and failed.
* Rage of Mages and Evil Islands if you enjoy action RPG/RTS/click things until they die type of game.
* Sea Dogs is basically Sid Meier's Pirates! in 3D with a major RPG component.
* Silent Storm is a WWII /m/ turn-based tactics game. The picture rightfully compares it to Jagged Alliance.
* Space Rangers is a turn-based space combat/trading sim/choose your own adventure hybrid with an old school science fiction plot and memorable ambient music.
* S.T.A.L.K.E.R. You know this one already.

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>>4084336
Here it is in all of its surrealist perestroika druggie Buddhist Prince of Persia fan fiction glory.
https://gist.github.com/anonymous/75a7bc6bc83ec1a9a2f35beedfca25ba

always found it odd that games like parkan were cutting edge and received no western adaptation
1C had to produce english games in order to get recognition and they subcontract too most western european developers
might not have the best concepts but russians are uparalleled for efforts in the gaming industry

>>4086058
It was easier for developers to get noticed in their local game market before services like Steam made the video game market global. I think a lot of ex-USSR companies back in the '90s counted on the local market because they though it was easy to get a piece of it.

>>4081330
>what was the gaming scene like in Eastern Europe?
Great. Lots of piracy and demoscene also.

>Of course I know that Famicom bootlegs were big and so was the PSX, but what else?
When? Early 90's?
Yes, bootleg consoles, specially the NES.
Also machines like the Amiga, Atari, Amstrad, Spectrum, all the popular micros.
AT, 386 and 486 machines.

Latter on sure, Doom and Duke Nukem where popular as fuck, people where playing them in multiplayer in schools and internet cafes.

>>4081335
>Piracy was massive in Eastern Europe simply because poor people couldn't be assed to pay so many rubles for an operating system.
The "yuropoor" is a meme you know, it had mostly nothing to do with money but market, it was nothing weird for people to buy games and hardware from other countries like Germany, Sweden, Finland, depending were you where. People had quite a lot of money after getting rid of the USSR, just it took like 5 years for the local hardware and software market to catch up to other countries. The bootlegs were there because you literally couldn't get the games from anywhere else.


It's very off putting to read posts from people who have no idea but just a vague image of the things and how life was here back then. Cringe.

>>4088695
>The "yuropoor" is a meme you know
Ukraine here.
No its not, its true even now and back then I still remember people literally starving.
In Russia also people could barely afford anything, Poland was better off but now, in 2017 you work shitty jobs for $370 monthly because no one have to pay more.

I seen my share of Yuropoor and it is actually fucking poor.
That said it is not rare to see in Ukraine Zaporozhets, Zhiguli and them Bentley and Lamborghini, actually pretty common.
No idea where people get cash tho, its like the mystery that separates the poor from the rich.

>>4088752
>The bootlegs were there because you literally couldn't get the games from anywhere else.
Agree with that part tho, for years I had no idea there is such thing as original game or a pirate, I thought you would just buy your game on a bazar and that was normal.

The thing that blows my mind is that most of those games were localized.
Imagine getting Resident Evil or some JRPG and people speaking your native language trough nose or something, I mean its shit but damn, it was better than Yakuza 1 dub for sure and gives me nostalgia.

One Russian TV show about games was called Dendy World, where 'dendy' is the name of nes clone. :)))
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pXMNgebPPJY

>>4089110
Needs subs.

>>4089134
Eh, just kids talking over basic game stuff. Now, before internet you MADE SURE you did not skip the show. For millions who couldn't even dream about having anything other than a NES clone, it was you only window into the gaming world.

>>4088752
>common to see Bentley and Lamborghini

It's not the first time I read this about Ukraine.

This reminds me of something similar in my country: I'm French and the place where I saw the most Porsches in my life (mostly 911, sometimes Cayenne) was Corsica, an island that's supposedly the poorest region of France. You see at least 7 or 8 Porsches every day, and it's like every small village in the mountains has its Porsche too.

Meanwhile, around Paris which is supposed to be the richest place in the country, you don't see as many fancy cars... except in my terrible African neighborhood where I recently spotted a brand new Ferrari parked all night near the mosque, also some young nignog driving a Bentley while blasting loud rap, etc. And that's the trashiest hood you can imagine.

A mystery, indeed.

>>4090224
In Mexico, you see natives driving ferraris in some places. They rent the lands to the narcos. What I mean is, probably some ilegal shit going on. Due to the status of the internet right now, I have considered learning russian, they still dont care about copyright.

>>4081335
>These cutting-edge pirates then put the bootleg Windows 95 copies on CD's, and along with that, they threw in some pirated games while they were at it, like Doom, Duke, and Blood.
Bro tier af.

And yes I've noticed that slavs really love blood and I've mentioned it here before but didn't really get a response to it.

Is Russia in 2017 really the shithole they portray it to be in all western media?

One peculiar thing being raised in Eastern Europe in terms of gaming, that SNES era was pretty much skipped over to the PSX era. Lack of funds I guess, people could barely afford some games on NES clones. After PSX it was pretty much the same as in the west, just that more people owned PC, because of economic reasons. Also it was easier to get copies of games on PC with broadband internet.(which was introduced in PS2 era)

>>4090652
Very few kids had the SNES where I lived (as far as I could tell, two in a town of circa 10'000), but the Genesis was fairly popular.

>>4090645
1. Depends on city. Moscow and Saint-Petersburg are kinda europe-tier.
2. Justice system is corrupt, so you probably want to interact with authorities as less as possible.

>>4090645
Are the Japanese all weirdos who watch anime? All Americans are fat, all Eastern Europe women are hot, all black people listen to hip-hop, Russians are poor and drink vodka every day etc. etc.
Media feeds you what you want to believe, it's always been that way.

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http://www.skyscrapercity.com/forumdisplay.php?f=477
Enjoy your dystopia.

>>4090224
The Bentley and Ferrari-driving nignogs must be some African dictator's sons

>>4084536
Disciples 1-2 aren't russian games, actually. Only 3.
Speaking of TBS - Eador is really good.

>>4090976
If that skyscraper had an underground parking, it would be not so bad.

>>4090984
>sons of African dictators
>in a suburban hood

No way, they live exclusively in the most expensive areas and never get out of them.