Tellscope
An early BBC Micro educational program combining pictures, words, memory exercises and music, using the computer's Mode 7 graphics.
Image credits and source
Original cover / promotional artwork
Credit: Acorn User — artwork belongs to its respective rights holders
Source: The Oliver Twins archive
Game at a glance
- Status
- Classic
- Released
- 1984
- Platforms
- BBC Micro
- Genres
- Educational
- Developer
- The Oliver Twins (original development)
- Publisher
- Acorn User
Development and publication
Development: The Oliver Twins (original development). Publication: Acorn User.
The named development credit refers to the original or specifically identified version. Other ports and later re-releases may have different development teams.
Making the game
To encourage students to embrace programming and make some applications outside of course work our local college announced a competition with many categories. Students had a month, or so, to produce their entries. We thought that being an education establishment they’d appreciate an educational game. Our idea revolved around identifying pictures, but this would take too much memory unless we used the very efficient Mode 7 (Teletext) on the BBC micro. We developed 30+ pictures and came up with several games based around these written in BASIC.
On the prize-giving evening it was very embarrassing as we won almost every category!