Two White Lines and a Square: My First Games Console

My first taste of gaming at home came courtesy of a Binatone TV Master my parents bought me. A basic little console with two controllers, each with a dial you turned to move your bat around the screen.

I say “bat”. It was a white line. So was the other player’s. Between them bounced a little square that we generously agreed was a tennis ball. Let it slip past your side of the screen and your opponent scored a point.

Wimbledon it wasn’t, but we had tennis on the telly and we were controlling it.

I mainly played with Dad and sometimes my Sister. Looking back, that’s as much a part of the memory as the machine itself: the two of us playing tennis with a couple of white lines and a square. It sounds ridiculously simple now, but at the time, being able to make something happen on the television was exciting in itself.

There was a squash mode too, so I could play on my own. The ball bounced off the top, bottom and left side of the screen, and I had to stop it escaping off the right side. No opponent to blame that time. Miss it, and it was entirely my own fault.

That was the beauty of it. Turn a dial, hit the ball, try not to miss. You could explain the whole thing in a sentence and get straight on with playing.

Of all the games I’ve played since, there’s still something lovely about remembering that little Binatone and playing tennis with Dad. Two white lines and a square might not sound like much, but they’ve stayed with me.

And that was only the beginning. Over at my uncle’s house, a wood-trimmed box called an Atari was waiting to introduce me to something else entirely…

What was the first video game you played at home, and who did you play it with?