Telisplat

About

The concept of video games and the college experience going together like peanut butter and jelly is as old as video gaming itself. While some are content to rest on their laurels just enjoying rivalry with their dorm-mates, others feel the need to make a production of such competition, usually with equal amounts of money going to RadioShack and liquor stores. This combination of elements is the foundation of Telisplat.

Origin

The term Telisplat (originally capitalized as TEliSPlaT) is a loose acronym of “Triple Elimination Six (or Seven) Player Tournament”. Originally, Telisplat was simply a tournament format that could be used for a handful of friend to compete in a given video game. While any video game could technically be used, it was more geared toward sports games.

In a typical Telisplat evening, a group of friends would settle into a dorm room with copious amounts of alcohol, hook up a video game system through a VCR or other device to record the video while patching in microphones via a mixing board, and proceed to play through a tournament while taking turns acting as sports announcers for the action. Telisplat eventually lost its meaning as a tournament system and took on the new definition of drunken gaming and amateur announcing, naturally recorded for posterity and additionally so the participants could gain a third-person perspective of their inebriated behavior.

Example

This clip features the use of “John Madden Football” for the 3DO gaming system circa 1994.