Nintendo R.O.B.
Following the North American video game crash of 1983, Nintendo was desperate to rebuild faith in the industry. Someone, somewhere, believed releasing a robot-themed accessory for the Nintendo Entertainment System (NES) was the way forward. Unfortunately, however, Nintendo's attempts to market your very own in-house Johnny 5 was a largely unsuccessful one.
R.O.B. attached to your NES and received instructions from the TV in the form of light flashes, with up to six commands programmable, stored and then executed by the crazy peripheral.
In reality though that was when the problems began. Firstly, R.O.B only worked consistently with certain CRT televisions. Secondly, the robot could only actually be used with two NES games, Gyromite and Stack-Up. And three, apart from simply stacking up blocks and flailing his arms, the fun pretty much stopped there.
Buy Nintendo R.O.B.