Look at the Nintendo Switch; a device of almost limitless gaming potential, which works as both an under-the-telly console and a handheld games system. Children of the 70s and 80s could never have conceived of such a thing, and were they capable of doing so their brains would've likely shut down, never to reactivate.
Here's a trawl through some of the electronic garbage my generation had to suffer through.
Though presumably named after the children's game Simon Says - the origins of which date back to the 13th Century, when Simon de Montfort captured King Henry III and his son, the future King Edward I, during the Battle of Lewes - there were no such historical connotations to the electronic version.
Simon featured four coloured panels, which would light up and make a sequence of foul rasps. Players would have to memorise these sequences and lurid honks, then play them back by tapping the panel with their hands or sternum. The sequences of lights and pallid caterwauling would become longer and more complex as the game progressed. It was basically the Cro-Magnon version of that Bop-It thing they have now.
Indeed, following the success of Bop-It, Hasbro - the current owners of Simon - launched two modern versions, Simon Swipe and Simon Air, both of whom sound like people who might work in your office.
Featuring six games, which utilised its eleven - count 'em - light-up buttons, these included a Simon-like memory game and Tic-Tac-Toe, as well as a simple music making function. Indeed, Merlin was one of the first affordable electronic synthesizers - pre-dating even the Stylophone, a sort of electronic keyboard thing crossed with a dental probe, that was particularly popular with huffing Antipodean nonces.
It was Milton Bradley that turned Battle into plastic in 1967, with its popular Electronic Battleship variant arriving a decade later. It was infinitely more desirable and exciting-looking than its predecessor, with jarring electronic squawking, and real buttons to press.
Despite that, Electronic Battleship was never quite as engaging as the adverts implied, though few 1970s schoolchildren would have never uttered its iconic slogan "Battleship is life... Battleship is love" ("You sunk my battleship!").
Once again, there were no sound effects beyond a distressing mechanical drone, as the timer - and the players' patience - wore down.
Where I had to use my imagination, owners of the Racing Turbo Dashboard had an actual screen to do the work of their imagination for them. A lurid, scrolling, 3D roadway would occasionally lob other cars in the path of the player's vehicle - accompanied by the sound of your car's engine, in the form of a rowdy motorised clicking.
Other things Trevor Francis did in his shed: shiver like a baby bird, sniff his wrench, and count to ten.
Up to four players could engage in this bewildering attempt at recreating the thrill of space combat, by rendering it as profoundly unappealing as possible, and testing their patience with its discrepant synthetic jangle.
Only 12 games were ever made available for the Microvision, including the usual arcade clones, as well as Star Trek: Phaser Strike - released to coincide with the first Star Trek movie. It wasn't as exciting as that sounds; the LCD graphics for most Microvision games were made up of simple blocks, whereas the sound was rarely more than a procession of computerised dissonance.
Rather than face an entire armada of alien invaders, Space Chaser players were required to punt a slow-moving missile at a solitary flying saucer, which bobbed around at the top of the screen, like a discarded syringe box in a canal.