Crisis in the Kremlin

The game was developed and released at a time when the Soviet Union was collapsing and breaking apart with the game's events making reference to that. Indeed, the Soviet Union dissolved in the same year as the game's release. A remake and spiritual successor of the game was published in 2017 on the game platform Steam.

• Title — Crisis in the Kremlin • Developer — Barbu Corporation Spectrum HoloByte • Designer — Larry Barbu • Artist — Daniel L. Guerra • Composer — Paul Mogg • Genre — Strategy • Modes — Single-player • Platforms — MS-DOS

• Illustration — A scene set in January 2013 with the Russian people in turmoil. A food shortage is about to turn into a crisis. Starting in 1985, the player handles various governing tasks, from policies such as civil rights and the workweek to budgets. It was the first game to include the individual allocation of funding in a budget. A significant portion of the game involves special events, such as the 1988 Armenian earthquake or the Chernobyl disaster. The player's responses to these events can involve taking the historical route or a dramatically different approach; the player is given usually three to five choices after picking up the appropriate telephone. The player must walk a line between radicals, reformists, and hardliners. Overly scorning any side can cause the player to fall out of favor with it, which may lead to a vote of no confidence in the Politburo. Warsaw Pact states will also begin to shy away from the Soviet Union, as will the Baltic states, the Ukraine, and other Union Republics. The player may cut or increase spending to various parts of the nation, such as construction, environment, the military, pensions, Soviet Republics, and so on. The player can spend toward different groups, such as bureaucrats or conservatives, to gain their support. A food shortage can occur, for example, if not enough money is being spent on agriculture and transport (roads, buses, railroads, trucks, highways, etc.). Extra events occur if the player lasts past the Soviet Union's (and the game's own) time frame, such as American intervention in North Korea or the ability to renegotiate a new Union treaty to form a confederation or disband the Soviet Union altogether in favor of a British-style commonwealth. New technology will also develop, as will fears of an asteroid hitting the earth. The new technology can include things like vaccines for AIDS (developed by Soviet scientists that will improve diplomatic relationships with other nations) and animal cloning solutions that will prevent world hunger - using in vitro meat.

The developer Kremlingames released a remake and spiritual successor to the 1991 version under the same name. The game was released in 2017, which is the final playable year in the 1991 version and marks 100 years since the October Revolution. Unlike the original, the goal is not just to preserve the USSR and the Warsaw Pact but to expand the communist bloc to other countries. Unlike the 1991 version, it is possible to win the Cold War by weakening the United States until it is no longer is a superpower. The game introduced additional factions, which included Stalinist, conservative, moderate, reformist, and liberal. It also introduced multiple endings, such as perestroika, nuclear war, world communism, and parades of sovereignty. The economic, domestic, and diplomatic systems were also made more complex. Kremlingames later developed Ostalgie: The Berlin Wall and China: Mao's Legacy, in which players control Eastern European communist states and communist China, respectively. The prominent Russian gaming magazine Game World Navigator gave the game a rating of 6.2/10. Another prominent Russian gaming magazine, Igromania, rated the game 8/10. A sequel to the remake of Crisis in the Kremlin, entitled Crisis in the Kremlin: The Cold War, was released in 2025.