Binatone Pong

Before cartridges, before microprocessors, before anything we'd recognise as a games console, there was Pong. Atari's coin-op hit set off a gold rush, and a wave of cheap home machines arrived that did one thing: bounce a square "ball" between two paddles. In Britain, Binatone was one of the best-known names selling these bat-and-ball boxes that plugged straight into the family telly.

The whole console was usually a single chip, offering a few variations on the same theme: tennis, football, squash, perhaps a crude light-gun game if you were lucky. The graphics were a handful of white blocks, the sound a thin electronic blip, and the controls a pair of paddle dials. Nobody minded. Gathered round the television taking turns, families were playing a video game at home for the very first time.

These machines dated almost overnight once programmable, cartridge-based consoles arrived, and most ended up in the attic within a couple of Christmases. But they did the important job: they proved people wanted to play games on their own televisions. Everything that followed stands on the shoulders of these humble little bouncing-dot boxes.