Reviving Video Games Made by Teens Behind the Iron Curtain
“Experience the collapse of Soviet-style Communism by playing the video games designed by angry teenagers living under it,” quipped a recent article at Vice.com.
It points readers to a surprisingly inspiring new web page promising “Playable English Localizations of Slovak Digital Games From the Late 80s Period.” Using public funding from the Slovak Arts Council, the Slovak Design Museum has teamed up with the Slovak Game Developers Association on a multiyear project to translate the Slovak-language games into English, to help make them more visible worldwide.
The organizers hope the project will give everyone from games-history researchers and gaming-industry professionals “direct contact with our gaming history.”
Even sociologists and media historians could study the material, the post argued, since the project’s ultimate goal is to translate nearly every 8-bit computer game produced in Slovakia from the early days of personal computers — and “with the permission of the authors, freely distributable for research and non-commercial purposes.”
