If this doesn't dethrone Pit Fighter, I don't know what will. Perhaps that earlier bum fights in Saint Petersburg game?

The gem is available for a hefty sum of 6.49 Canadian. Make no mistake: it is not Steam shovelware, it is a true commercial release from 2007 re-released on Steam, translated into English to boot:

store.steampowered.com/app/3061900/...

...and a gameplay straight from early 80es. No, I'm not kidding: no specials, some blocks, stamina bar, and absolutely zero tactics.

Yet not only was it commercially released, but made it way to Steam in 2024 (somehow, this happened with sanctions against Russia in place).

It is hard to say which one was worse. "Saint Petersburg Fights Without Rules" could roughly be described as "bum fights on GTA3 engine that are more shallow than melee in GTA3". The second one, Revenge of the Boxer, has at least some semblance of plot, intros in the style of the original Postal...

Their shooters, which exploited some other local cultural output, like Mysteries of Moscow Subway, were firmly stuck in very early 2000's, and overall held worse. But the true abomination were the fighters, of which there were two.

Both of them, however, were commercially released.

...of racing games, that exploited LADA tuning, crappy local roads, and local geography. Moscow Lada Racing, Moscow vs. St.Pb., Moscow Winter Rally were reasonably shitty racing sims (by the standards of early 2000s, not late 2000s when they came out), which were somewhat playable.

Which builds the development philosophy of sorts that consist of:

- Simple graphics. Their PC's suck, anyways
- Everything has to be in Russian
- The content has to be LOCAL
- The games have to be cheap

This combination was most successful (commercially, not critically) in their series...

Their vision is simple: while there is plenty of content on PC, it is all FOREIGN content. Yet the PC penetration already captures middle class and go towards lower middle classes and below, where family don't speak English and have different tastes.

They need to be served, too!

...but it was a market. A rather sizeable market, of over 200 million people, still held together by common history.

So, a Russian outlet Bug Hunter Software decides to exploit that niche to blatantly make some money.

Early 2000's. Russian (and, by extension, CIS) economy finally starts a bounceback from the doldrums of the 90es. Incomes (and, most importantly - dollar incomes) rise, which means that more and more families can afford PC. Yes, it would be mid-specked PC held together by pirated software...

Bug Hunter Software (later renamed into Alligator Friends) was an outlet with a VISION. The vision was kina crappy one, but since it spawned 11 games on PC alone, not completely unprofitable. But here's the story.

It's definitely not terribly bad. Nothing special.

Synchronize the videos based on helicopter shadows. All is not what it seems.

He was an expert in what? A surgeon whose top cited articles with him in the first three authors have nothing to do with surgery?

This same IRS contract is still there, I checked.

Every Soviet family will have their own apartment by the year 2000....