Museum of Soviet Arcade Machines in Moscow

The Museum of Soviet Arcade Machines in Moscow is, in my opinion, something that you should do if you visit Russia’s capital. I don’t know about you but just the name of this place made me want to go. It’s not everyday you get to relive some of your childhood playing games.

When you enter the museum and buy your ticket, you will also be given a matchbox with a collection of 15 kopek coins. Each of these coins gets you one play of each of the games in the museum. You will find the usual shooting type games and racing games. There are some others as well which, even after 2 or 3 goes, I have still no idea what you are supposed to do!

 

 

The museum also has a bar/cafe where you can get pretty tasty looking burgers and beers after all the exercise 😉

 

 

 

 

The Games

The aim of some of the games are fairly obvious. If you have to hold a gun and theres a target, then its pretty simple really. One of the games, Snaiper-2, involved a static gun and static targets that you had to hit. Another game involved a moving target – a light that would move across the screen. The woman I watched playing this was very good and barely missed a shot.

 

 

 

The game Morskoi Boi (Sea Battle) is basically a periscope of a submarine that you look through, viewing enemy ships in the distance crossing from left-to-right and right-to-left. You aim, and fire. When you fire, a torpedo is launched towards the ship which you can view via a green ‘dot line’. If you miss, try again. If you hit, you see an explosion and take aim at the next ship. Great fun!.

Sports

The football game will look familiar to most people. The basketball game, you had to press a button from 1-15. Whichever player pressed theirs first, the ball would go towards their opponents net. It looked like good fun and seemed to very popular with families during my visit. There is also an ice hockey table game as well.

 

 

 

There are also racing games of different types. One of these is set in space and you have to race between different markers on the screen. Once you reach that marker, a new marker appears for you to reach. Another is where you race in a straight line with obstacles in the way which you have to avoid as well as others crashing into the back of you.

 

 

The Strange

Some of the slightly different games include a soviet style claw machine where you could win sweets. The sweets looked too small to hold onto for me and unsurprisingly i didn’t win. There is also an old school pinball machine. This one was very popular among the older men that I saw there!

 

This one I have no idea about. You move the tank via the two controls at the bottom and fire using the white button. Despite many attempts, I never seemed to get any kills. Maybe I was doing it wrong, who knows!

 

Me in Action

Check out the video below of me in the Museum of Soviet Arcade machines, playing one of the games. Apart from a couple of shots in the middle, I don’t think i did too badly, especially as i was recording with my free hand. Let me know what you think of this place. Would you want to go to this museum?