Hot Slut Of The Day!
THIS!
We never had one of these highly-technological artifacts in my house, because my mom was so technologically not advanced that her brain would shake in fear over having to change the channel to channel 3 when playing movies on our VHS player. But I had a friend who had one of these for his Atari (yes, I ran in ELITE circles) and watching him switch from TV to Game/Computer felt like being in THE FUTURE.
Like the pile of condoms I keep in my nightstand, the TV/Game Computer Switch is pretty much a dusty, useless relic that will never be used again. But back in the 1980s, they were used to switch your TV from regular TV broadcasting shit to video games. Vintage Computing explains it like this:
The object in question, of course, is the once-essential manual RF switch, commonly known as a “TV/GAME” switch. Such switches were used to alternate between RF video/audio input from a video game system or home computer and a broadcast (or cable) TV antenna signal.
Later, RF switches in general became endangered once nearly all consumer TV sets started shipping with separate A/V jacks for composite video and stereo audio. The choice was natural, as video quality through an RF antenna input is inferior to a composite video connection.
Sorry, Gen Z, these are the original Switch.
They’re not totally useless, though. Some people still use one to play old Ataris, so yeah, the TV/Game Computer Switch gets more use than the condoms I’ve had for 15 years. But another thing I remember about my friend’s Switch is that it was in the back of his TV and the TV was against the wall on a cabinet. So he had to stretch his arm out to reach it and blindly hit the switch. Shit, he may still be there after all these years, trying to hit the switch so he can play Rampage. I should check on him.
Pic: Etsy