Perestroika by Nikita Skripkin and Locis (1998-1990)

“Perestroika” created by Nikita Skripkin in 1988 and released by Locis in 1990, represents the first post-Soviet video game, by what would soon become one of the most ambitious post-Soviet game studios. “Perestroika” was not a particularly interesting game, being clearly far more indebted by arcade games, and their repetitive and reflexive gameplay, than to its own ambitious theme. While the game’s cover image represents Gorbachev rupturing Soviet reality in a symbolic gesture that tears apart the wall of the Kremlin, the gameplay itself was rather different. The player controlled the “Democrat”, a globular creature apparently derived from Hewson Consultant’s 1987 platformer Nebulus. The “Democrat” had to cross the screen from one side to the other, maneuvering across unstable and shrinking green platforms that the game identified as “laws”. Landing on empty spaces lead to the avatar’s demise. You could also receive boosts, colorful circles identified as “progressive taxes” (yellow), “consumer goods” (blue), “venture” (crimson) and “currency operations” (red). The player is perpetually pursued by “Bureaucrats”, who look like larger, redder versions of the player’s green avatar, but act much like the ghosts in Pac-Man: as malevolent pursuers against this already unstable terrain. This representation of Petestroika is notable, not only for the ludic attempt to represent new economic circumstances, but by the total incoherence of that attempt, which aside from demonizing the red bureaucrats and glamorizing democrats, only succeeds at mystifying the issue, while creating an implausibly political post-Soviet Pac-Man. Locis, which became NIKITA in 1991, would go on to become a major Post-Soviet game developer with several iconic titles that achieved international acclaim. Perestroika is still playable in the browser via an emulator (https://www.retrogames.cz/play_477-DOS.php?language=EN). It is doubtful that any 1990s player learned anything about “progressive taxes” or “venture capitalism” in the course of navigating shrinking disks, while chasing colorful circles, the game still exemplifies major features in post-Soviet game design: appropriation and borrowing, ambitious political representations with limited technical means, and inseparable ties between independent developers and financially successful game studios.