How a design museum unearthed a treasure trove of classic Slovak games
Late last year, the Slovak Design Museum released a translated collection of ’80s text adventures from the region. The games, often programmed by teenagers, capture a moment in history when the first generation of Slovak developers were learning their craft to share among their friends.
The museum didn’t always cover games. Maroš Brojo, the general manager of the Slovak Game Developers Association, pitched the multimedia collection that he now curates. “When you get the patronage of a museum… it gives you much more credibility,” he says. “Suddenly, people start to have a very different view of this actually being part of something important. Our culture and our heritage.”
The 10 games that make up this first batch of translations and re-releases were selected for their historical significance. They capture a part of the late ’80s in what was then Czechoslovakia, a Soviet satellite state. In one, Šatochín, the titular Soviet Major fights with Rambo in Vietnam. “I don’t want to say [it was] against the regime, but it’s very subversive,” says Brojo.
One of the developers behind Šatochín, Stanislav Hrda, was also involved in the translation and preservation project. He was 16 when he and some friends published Šatochín after being fascinated by the American movies that made it across the border on VHS tapes. “This game is making jokes [about] the regime… and the Soviet army,” he says. “It’s hard to win. So when you are playing, Rambo will kill you 10 times because you [were] not lucky, and you made the wrong choice. It was very funny for my friends.”
Ten may be underselling it — in my experimentation with Šatochín, the Soviet soldier lost his life in a handful of gruesome ways, including being crushed against a coral reef,
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