Abstract
Red Comrades Save the Galaxy is one of the most popular adventure game series from the early period of game development in Russia in the late 1990s. It presents adventures of characters borrowed from the century-long tradition of the Russian anecdote, most fertile in Soviet times. The majority of late Soviet anecdotes reused tropes from popular films, such as Chapayev (1934), and TV series, such as Seventeen Moments of Spring (1973) or Sherlock Holmes and Dr. Watson (1979). Some of the first experiments with the ludic medium relied on the same folklore material, which led to the birth of the ‘Russian quest’ adventure game. The same anecdotes inspired the new post-Soviet Russian novel in the 1990s, such as Chapayev and Void ([1996] 2001) by Victor Pelevin. In this chapter, we will examine this particular sub-genre to find out what was specific about Soviet/post-Soviet humour, and how exactly it revealed itself in early Russian adventure games.
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
References
Adams, D. 1985. The Original Hitchhiker Radio Scripts. Harmony Books.
Astapova, A. 2020. Soviet meta-jokes: Tradition and continuity. The European Journal of Humour Research 8 (3): 60. https://doi.org/10.7592/EJHR2020.8.3.Astapova.
Auric Vision and Zes’t Studio. 1997. GAG The Impotent Mystery. Novyj Disk.
Bakhtin, M. M. 2010. The Problem of Speech Genres. In Speech Genres and Other Late Essays. Austin, Texas: University of Texas Press.
Bakhtin, V. S., and Moldavskiy, D. M. 1962. Russkij lubok XVII-XIX vv. Gosudarstvennoe izdatelstvo izobrazitelnogo iskusstva.
Belousov, A. F. 1995. Anekdoty o Shtirlitze. Zhivaja Starina 1: 16–18. Captain Pronin 1997, Zaitsev M., Home Computer.
Bonello Rutter Giappone, K. 2015. Self-Reflexivity and Humor in Adventure Games. Game Studies 15 (1): 1. http://gamestudies.org/1501/articles/bonello_k.
Davies, C. 2007. Humour and Protest: Jokes under Communism. International Review of Social History 52 (S15): 291–305. https://doi.org/10.1017/S0020859007003252.
Dubrovskaya, N., and O. Tsykalova. 1997. Rossija—Rodina kvestov. Game.EXE 8: 6–17.
Gamos. 1997. Pilot Brothers 1: Following the Striped Elephant. PC. 1C Entertainment.
Gel’man, V. 2015. Authoritarian Russia: Analyzing Post-Soviet Regime Changes. Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press.
Ioffe, D.G., and S.A. Oushakine. 2013. Introduction: The Amusing Disturbance of Soviet Laughter. Russian Literature 74 (1): 1–10. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ruslit.2013.10.001.
Jens, E. 2017. Cold War Spy Fiction in Russian Popular Culture: From Suspicion to Acceptance via Seventeen Moments of Spring. Studies in Intelligence 61 (2): 31–41.
Kapitsyn S. 1997. Interesnoje delo! Game.EXE 10: 58–60.
Krysha. 2000. Styrlitz: Operation BUST. PC. Buka Entertainment.
Kuritsyn, V. N. 2000. Russkij literaturnyj postmodernism. OGI.
Leont’eva, S. G. 2005. Zhizneopisanije pionera-geroja: tekstovaja traditsija i ritualnyj kontekst. Sovremennaja rossijskaja mifologija. RGGU. 89-123.
Likhachev, D. 2001. Istoricheskaja poetika russkoj literatury: Smeh kak mirovozzrenije i drugije raboty. Aleteja.
Lioznova, T., and Y. Semyonov. 1973. Seventeen Moments of Spring. Moscow: Gosteleradio, Soviet Union.
Lipovetskiy, M. 2007. Iskusstvo alibi: “Semnadtsat’ mgnovenij vesny” v svete nashego opyta. Neprikosnovennyi zapas.
Marx, K., and F. Engels. 2008. The Communist Manifesto. Auckland: The Floating Press.
Maslennikov, I. 1979–1986. Sherlock Holmes and Dr. Watson. Leningrad, Soviet Union: Lenfilm.
Mechner, Jordan. 1989. Prince of Persia. Apple II/PC. Broderbund.
Melnichenko, M. 2015. Sovetskij anekdot (ukazatel’ s’uzhetov). Novoje Literaturnoje Obozrenije.
Nikiforov, K. 2020, August 13. Russkij kvest: Bessmyslennyj i besposhchadnyj. Kak rodils’a i umer legendarnyj zhanr. Igromania. https://www.igromania.ru/article/31389/Russkiy_kvest_bessmyslennyy_i_besposchadnyy._Kak_rodilsya_i_umer_legendarnyy_zhanr.html Accessed November 30, 2020.
Oushakine, S.A. 2013. Smehom po uzhasu: O tonkom oruzhii shutov proletariata. Novoe Literaturnoye Obozrenie 121: 130–163.
Pelevin, V. 2001. Buddha’s Little Finger. New York: Penguin.
———. 1998. Prince of Gosplan. In A Werewolf Problem in Central Russia and Other Stories, 159–196. New York: New Directions Publishing.
Propp, V.I. 1984. Russian Heroic Epic Poetry. In Theory and History of Folklore. Manchester: Manchester University Press.
Propp Vladimir. 1998. Zhanrovyj sostav russkogo folklora. In: Propp V. Folklor i dejstvitelnost’: Izbrannyje statji. Labirint, pp. 28–69.
Propp, V. Y. 2012. The Russian Folktale. Detroit: Wayne State University Press.
S.K.I.F. 2016. Red Comrades Save the Galaxy: Reloaded (remaster of the 1998 version). PC. Buka Entertainment.
Saprykin, Y. 2019. Chapayev i Pustota. Polka. https://polka.academy/articles/667
Saturn-Plus. 2000. Adventures of Lieutenant Rzhevsky. PC. Buka Entertainment.
Shah, I. 1983. The Pleasantries of the Incredible Mulla Nasrudin. London: Octagon Press Ltd.
Shmeleva, B. Y. and Shmelev, A. D. 2002. Russkij anekdot: tekst i rechevoj zhanr. Jazyki slav’anskoj kultury.
Smirnova, M. 2014. What is the Shortest Russian Joke? Communism. Russian Cultural Consciousness Expressed Through Soviet Humor. Qualitative Sociology 37 (3): 323–343. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11133-014-9281-0.
Vasilyev, G., and S. Vasilyev. 1934. Chapayev. Leningrad, Soviet Union: Lenfilm.
Yurchak, A. 2005. Everything Was Forever, Until It Was No More: The Last Soviet Generation. Princeton: Princeton University Press.
Acknowledgements
The author expresses their gratitude to Morendil for his work on the indexed archive of early Russian game journalism Retroindex.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Editor information
Editors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 2022 The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG
About this chapter
Cite this chapter
Serada, A. (2022). Red Comrades Save the Galaxy: Early Russian Adventure Games and the Tradition of Anecdote. In: Bonello Rutter Giappone, K., Majkowski, T.Z., Švelch, J. (eds) Video Games and Comedy. Palgrave Studies in Comedy. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-88338-6_8
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-88338-6_8
Publisher Name: Palgrave Macmillan, Cham
Print ISBN: 978-3-030-88337-9
Online ISBN: 978-3-030-88338-6
eBook Packages: Literature, Cultural and Media StudiesLiterature, Cultural and Media Studies (R0)