Flashback: BBC journalist about childhood in the 90s and machines with Mortal Kombat

Hello!

This is Pasha Karasev, the editor -in -chief of the gambling.

Today we are launching a new section – "flashback".

Once a week, on Thursdays, the authors, which no one usually connects with video games, will tell you how they met them, became fans and looked forward to continuing. Journalists, entrepreneurs, politicians, scientists and actors – everyone can be a little gamer.

Video games have always been ambiguous: for example, they are blamed in the propaganda of violence and excessive cruelty. After all, in games the easiest way is to find an enemy – because their value is difficult to understand. Gambling will become a platform on which gamers will try to explain the importance of their hobby through the most valuable thing that they have, through their experience.

The first in the new heading about your acquaintance with the series Mortal Kombat tell the correspondent of the Russian BBC service Andrey Zakharov.

“Give“ Fataliy ”I will do!" – growls in my ear of Bych, and I understand that happiness has ended for me.

Action time – 1993, place – House of Culture named after Mayakovsky in the village of Metallostroy. Despite the proletarian name with an allusion to something deeply Siberian, Metallostroy is the administrative part of St. Petersburg, the city of granite embankments and equestrian monuments to harsh kings.

However, in the village, which has become part of the city only by the will of the cartographer, there is nothing Petersburg. In the 93rd, its population was divided into those who work in the closed atomic institute of electrophysical equipment, and those who make money on bread at a machine-building plant and in a local colony for minors. Children of the former are non -aggressive intelligent guys, accustomed to parental love, children of the second are harsh boys with strong fists. I am in the first group, Bych – in the second. That is why I was just deprived of the whole round of the game in the great Mortal Kombat II.

The same recreation center for them. Mayakovsky about ten years ago

Slot machines have been in the Mayakovsky recreation center from the late 1980s, when the borders of my country still extended from Tashkent to Riga, and the hometown was called Leningrad. Memory builds this shimmering machines in a darkened lobby, from left to right: first – the famous “sea battle”, which excitedly cracking at every entering the ship, then ridiculous races with a poorly controlled pixel machine, behind them – exhaustingly complex “towns”, and,, and,, and,,,,,,,,,, by. Finally, a “sniper” with a dumb of a rifle that aroused hunting instincts in any boy.

In 1991, the borders of the country narrowed, Tashkent and Riga became the capitals of independent states, and Leningrad-St. Petersburg, but the line of entertainment in the House of Culture did not change. Primitive Soviet machine guns were sophisticated to magical Prince of Persia, in which we took turns cut in the apartment of Kolya Tuchin: his father, an employee of the same atomic institute, managed to buy a real computer from IBM. Kolya did not call everyone, but soon he had a competitor for the title of the center of the company: another father, this time Emphasovsky’s bones, accumulated money for the Dendy prefix.

Soviet arcade machines can be found today in museums

But in 1993, when Soviet machine guns were already like the characters in the film about the robot dump, the leadership of the House of Culture purchased cars with Mortal Kombat II, which immediately replaced in our hearts an eight-bit squeaky Dendy. You played the game on Dendy – and you lived in Mortal Kombat. The characters seemed not flat figures, but real fighters with embossed muscles. The flushing blood was yours, and the impassive voice of the judge announcing: “Round One. FIGHT!", Motivated more than a coach in the Metallostroevsky SDUSHOR in freestyle wrestling. And most importantly – what's at the computer at Tuchin, what was with the joystick in the hands of Ambruisovsky, everywhere you were a guest who was graciously allowed to play. In the lobby of the recreation center, paying money for two fights, you did not depend on anyone. It was only your happiness.

However, for any independence you need to pay. Pocket money remaining after the school cafeteria was enough for a couple of games a month. For those who wanted to hear the groan of the opponent after the bloody uppercott, there were bottles. In those years, it was possible to hand over empty glassot in any bench with dirty plastic boxes inside. The brewers were more expensive, from under the lemonade-cheaper, but we scoured in search of any.

Now compare them with bright and spectacular Midway automatic machines

But the money does not provide complete independence. It was not enough to throw a coin in the machine gun – it was important to defend the right to play. The guys older and more daring gaze quickly realized how to squeeze the joystick from the baby like me. “Give“ Fataliy ”I will show,” they said after the first fight and in fact pressed such a magical combination of keys that the vanquished opponent did not just fall dead. It was possible to turn into Queen Vegas Casino a dragon and eat his head (Li Kan), tear off the body (cage) or tear into pieces, throwing the snowball (sub-ziro).

Knowledge of the combinations was akin to alchemical secrets: they were learned from magazines such as "peer" and reluctantly shared with others. But “Fatalii” was only an occasion: the second fraud of such a craftsman took himself by default, without reacting to tearful requests to return access to the joystick, and if you played with a friend, then soon they wiped it off from the Office. In this sense, gopniks from the House of Culture were similar to modern raiders: a formal occasion to capture the company is taken – and then views and muscles come into business.

By the way, in Mortal Kombat advertising was positioned precisely as a children's game, and worried parents were indignant. And it seems that everyone did not care that the screen floods the blood

The most memorable gaze was at the bull – a hunching, squat guy with a dull face and famous for the entire metal -building series of strokes. He studied in the classroom a year older, lived across the road, and I often saw him on weekends with my mother – either the most watchman, or the wardrobe at the same machine -building plant. In Mortal Kombat, Bych played poorly and never could make “fatalics”, although he regularly used this pretext to squeeze the game. Then I watched other people's happiness, and then I wandered in Ponuro to the remnants of Soviet machine guns, lowering anger in primitive sea battle.

After a couple of years, my mother bought me a set -top box Sega Mega Drive II, and I am a cartridge with Ultimate Mortal Kombat with his shooting cyberningia, a htonic night wolf and a police officer who knew how to throw grenades into his opponent. In the Apraxin courtyard – an eternal flea market in the center of St. Petersburg – I acquired a book with combinations and "Fatali" and chopped with friends for days. Now I was the master of the situation, I chose when we play, and when – no, but I did not remember a single fight. It was fun, but just like a machine gun in a recreation center, the spirit did not take a breath. Probably, when there is a lot of pleasures, it is no longer so pleasant, rather – the usual.

Bych taped his first term in the beginning of the zero. Already studying at the university, I saw him a couple of times-even more hunched over, a little flashed, with some kind of clogged gaze. Where is he now? Still “shows“ fatalics ”” to those who are weaker? Or stumbled upon the one who spent the "fatali" on him?