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The Binatone TV Master was the first computer game experience witnessed by many Cream era households, nestling as it did in the Argos catalogue alongside the portable b/w TVs (with which it shared a parasitic relationship). Aeons before kids sat hypnotised in front of the latest Grand Theft Auto clone, sacrificing great chunks of their lives to completing the next level, this slab of circuit-based entertainment dragged us in off the streets to watch a box-shaped pixel zig-zag its way across the screen. What a choking irony, therefore, that this gatekeeper of the soon-to-be-ushered-in console era attempted to mimic a selection of sports games.

Pre-SCART cable connections, the Binatone would have you scrabbling behind the family telly to plug in the RF aerial lead. That is, if you were lucky enough - in the days before a plasma screens in every room - to be allowed to use it in the first place. Typically, you’d be pushed to squeeze in a game of Binatone Tennis between dinner and the start of Nationwide (and only then if your parents weren’t wanting to watch the news). Otherwise, play meant sacrificing valuable Swap Shop or TISWAS time - oh how we would wish for a week-long bout of chicken pox.

As for the games themselves, they were clunky interpretations of bat ‘n’ ball favourites such as squash or, erm, football (actually more like doubles tennis¹) on the basic, easyJet orange model. The beige variant promised some capacity for Tin Can Alley style shooting games with a so-called “light gun”, which inevitably didn’t work unless you were holding it so close to the telly you left scratches on the screen². The two standard controller “bats” were chunky boxes with Etch-A-Sketch-type knobs that, fantastically, could be packed away into the Binatone’s battery compartment for storage.

The Binatone logo (was it pronounced By-na-tone or Bin-a-tone?) was a lovely crown-bedecked affair that wouldn’t have looked out of place on the bass drum of a ‘Sixties Merseybeat band. Those sporty games icons, however, were a constant reminder of the local leisure centre and the fact that they had a proper sit-down Galaxians game that you could go on when your mum was having her badminton class.