Gorby no Pipeline Daisakusen – Gorbachev’s Cold War Plumbing Simulator

Gorby no Pipeline Daisakusen – Gorbachev’s Cold War Plumbing Simulator

 

You ever stumble upon a game so weirdly specific it could only exist in Japan during the late ‘80s? Gorby no Pipeline Daisakusen (1991) is exactly that — a Soviet–Japanese goodwill puzzle game starring none other than Mikhail Gorbachev himself, fully licensed and everything. Yeah, the actual Gorbachev.

Developed by Compile (the same studio behind Puyo Puyo), the game came out on the MSX2, Famicom, and FM Towns. The idea is… oddly diplomatic: you’re building a water pipeline from Moscow to Tokyo to “strengthen international relations.” In practice, it plays like a mashup of Pipe Dream and Tetris — pipe segments fall from the top, you rotate and fit them, and when water flows through, the pipeline disappears for points. Miss the connection and the leftover bits crumble under gravity. It’s surprisingly tight and stressful in that ‘90s puzzle way.

But the real kicker is the context. This was 1991, peak Gorbachev era — glasnost, perestroika, all that. The Japanese publisher Tokuma Shoten actually licensed his image through the Soviet Embassy. The cover art (by Takamasa Shimaura) has Gorbachev posing in front of the Buran space shuttle, because apparently nothing says “international friendship” like space plumbing.

Then the USSR collapsed later that same year. The whole “Moscow to Tokyo” optimism evaporated overnight, turning Gorby no Pipeline Daisakusen into an accidental time capsule — a relic of that brief, hopeful window when everyone thought cooperation was the future.

Sega even jumped on the bandwagon with Ganbare Gorby! for the Game Gear, another short-lived experiment in turning a world leader into a mascot. By the time the Soviet flag came down, both games already felt like fossils.

Interestingly, the Famicom version was re-released digitally years later (on iOS and PC), but all references to Gorbachev got scrubbed. Just pipes now — no politics. sad.

It’s a strange little game, but that’s what makes it worth remembering: a mix of Cold War optimism, economic diplomacy, and genuinely solid puzzle design — all wrapped up in one of the most unexpected crossovers in gaming history.