Binatone Arrives

The Binatone TV Master arrived this week and I finally had a chance to set it up this morning. Once I had nipped down to the shops to buy lots of batteries and then tuned the console into the TV I was ready to play. I quickly scanned through each game by flicking the switches on the console and proceeded to play Squash Practice as it is the only game that can be played by a single player. Becky joined me to play some multiplayer tennis which was surprisingly fun considering its simplicity. I wonder what would be made of such a console by children today.

I have included some pictures of the console and its packaging below:








I was quite excited about playing the console again as I thought that it would bring back memories of the first time that I had played the same console many years ago. On reflection I didn’t experience the recollection that I had expected – the games seemed only vaguely familiar. I wonder if this could be because of the amount of time that I spent playing the console – as it was something that needed to be ‘set-up’ by Dad it did not remain connected to the television and therefore was not played very often. There are obviously a lot of factors to take into consideration here the main ones being age and duration of play.

I remember, as a child, being amazed at the magical qualities of the Binatone – just the fact that I was controlling something ‘on tele’ made the experience a memorable one. Playing the console was something completely new, something that the whole family sat down to watch and participate in. It was like a big event or moment in all of our lives. Much of this could be put down to the novelty of the device at that period in time particularly in our household.

Below is a short clip of the Tennis game being played (includes the Binatone sound). I recorded the sound on a DV camera and the video directly onto VHS. Cueing up the video and sound didn’t take to long as this was the first clip that was recorded – cueing later clips proved to be problematic.



Here is a slightly longer clip that shows each of the Binatone games being played. Each game is introduced with a photograph which highlights the relevant game on the console switch. In the final game (Squash Practice) I switch the Bat Size to ‘S’ (small) and the Speed to ‘H’ (high) which made successful play pretty much impossible – I obviously need some more practice. This clip does not include any sound as cueing-up the beeps was taking too long – a reminder that I would be a lot better off recording video output (from the Wii or Binatone) using DV rather than digitising analogue material from a VCR. Unfortunately I don’t have access to another camera at present.