TV Games: Growing Up With Consoles

By Bradley Burt

Before gaming was an industry, before it became an identity, before it demanded constant attention, it was something simpler.

It was called TV games.

Growing up in South Africa in the early 1990s, Bradley Burt's introduction to video games came through bootleg Famicom consoles, shared cartridges, borrowed controllers, and a small CRT television that never quite warmed up properly. Games were scarce, time was rationed, and attention had to be earned.

TV GAMES is a quiet, observational memoir about growing up alongside video games without ever being consumed by them. Moving from knock-off consoles and endless cartridge swaps through the Mega Drive era, arcades, the arrival of the PlayStation, and eventually emulation, the book traces a relationship shaped by patience, repetition, and restraint.

This is not a history of gaming.
It is not a nostalgia piece.
And it is not a celebration of progress.

Instead, TV GAMES explores what it meant to live with games when they were finite, imperfect, and honest - and how those early habits quietly survived every technological shift that followed.

Written in a dry, witty, and unsentimental voice, the book reflects on scarcity, attention, and why some systems endure long after the hardware disappears.

For readers interested in memory, technology, and the way ordinary experiences shape us without ever announcing themselves.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: B0GMWKSX1V
• ISBN13: 9798247759065
• Release Date: February 2026
• Publisher: Independently Published
• Length: 146 Pages
• Weight: 0.45 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.3" x 6.0" x 9.0"