  Ads via The Deck  Consoles I Have Known  A Very Weird and
Blocky Future  How many video games does it take to make a man?
An epic new series traces a man’s life in gaming systems. Part
one: paddles to jump-start your heart, and the end-all, be-all
red fire button.  Illustrations by Jennifer Daniel  Radio Shack
TV Scoreboard (1979)   The Radio Shack TV Scoreboard was my
first video game system. It was a late entry into the Pong-
dedicated home console market , and it was a really crummy,
gimped system, too—basically featureless, with the exception of
a large dial used to select one of its nearly identical, built-
in games (Tennis, Squash, Football, and a fourth simply called
Practice). Our TV Scoreboard didn’t even ship with a requisite
light gun for TV skeet shooting, which meant it managed to
shimmy beneath the already perilously low bar set for home video
game standards in 1979. My brother, sister, and I made do, of
course, but the Radio Shack TV Scoreboard never commanded our
full attention, possibly becau