Wired has published an article about a small museum set up by two Russian geeks, who are restoring a collection of soviet arcade machines. Besides the aesthetic factor, it’s an interesting show of fanciful analog controls, with more emphasys on driving wheels than on shotguns.

By looking at the comments, it looks like many of those machines have been spotted outside the Soviet Union, in various eastern european countries. I’ve always spent a lot of time in the former Yugoslavia but, alas, I never caught sight of any of those.

If you are wondering about the title of this post, check this image to see what I mean (especially the mechanical score counter). But the whole gallery is quite fascinating.