If you look at the 01 screen game today, this angular, chunky piece of plastic with yellow buttons and an obviously pragmatic design, you could almost dismiss it as a footnote in the history of technology. But to do so is to miss the true significance of this object. Because what rolled out of the factory halls of VEB Halbleiterwerk Frankfurt/Oder in 1979 under the label “RFT” was not just a console. It was a technological and ideological experiment that began with a great deal of pathos and ended in history with a shrug of the shoulders.

In technical terms, the BSS 01 is a child of its time, or rather: its late period. Based on the AY-3-8500, a pong-on-a-chip from the USA, which had already passed its zenith there in 1976, the console comes with exactly what you would expect: four game modes (tennis, soccer, squash, pelota), simple vector graphics, no colors, no sound chip, no storage media. It was what had already reached junk table level in the West at the time, but was supposed to be a revolution in the GDR. The reason for this is simple: the GDR had a lot of catching up to do technologically. In the mid-1970s, the SED decided to declare microelectronics a “key technology”. Billions of East German marks flowed into semiconductor factories, research institutes and attempts to copy Western technologies in their own way or, if necessary, to secretly import them. The Pong chip AY-3-8500 was a rare stroke of luck: not on embargo lists, easy to procure, technically manageable. The rest of the console? GDR engineering under conditions of scarcity. Components from the ČSSR, power supply units from state production, housing from what was available. Recycling before it was hip.

Source: Simplicissimus

But there was more to the console than just the urge to play. It was an educational tool. The aim was to get children interested in technology, not just for the fun of it, but to breed future “socialist skilled workers”. Gaming as an ideological vehicle, a double-edged sword between entertainment and re-education. The price? A whopping 550 Ostmarks, half a month’s wages for the proletariat. Anyone who believes that this thing was in every child’s bedroom has not understood socialism. The reality was that youth clubs, pioneer houses and perhaps a few children of functionaries were allowed to get their hands on it. The serial number was individual, production was limited, probably not even the full 1000 units were made. And yet a handful have survived to this day, some in museum condition, others lovingly restored. The white version with white controllers is considered the holy grail among collectors.

But the story does not end with the BSS 01. It is the beginning of a short, tragicomic episode in East German gaming history. This was followed by the Poliplay, a coin-operated gaming machine that was technically more advanced and at least halfway functional. Home computers such as the KC series arrived, but never really became available. And in the meantime, people in the East preferred to play on imported Western computers, if they could find one. What remains? A technical curiosity that today acts as a memorial to an industrial policy that tried to catch up in the shadow of global development and ultimately failed because of its own system. The Bildschirmspiel 01 is not a technological milestone, but a monument to what technology can mean in an ideological corset.

While China is now using Tencent, Black Myth Wukong and esports politics to attempt to exert geopolitical soft power through gaming, BSS 01 remains silent proof that even dictatorships see video games not just as entertainment, but as a means of exercising power, then as now.

Source: Simplicissimus via Youtube