{"id":1691,"date":"2017-07-17T14:30:00","date_gmt":"2017-07-17T19:30:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.vintagecomputing.com\/?p=1691"},"modified":"2017-07-17T14:30:00","modified_gmt":"2017-07-17T19:30:00","slug":"retro-scan-bentley-bears-spelling-bee","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.vintagecomputing.com\/index.php\/archives\/1691\/retro-scan-bentley-bears-spelling-bee","title":{"rendered":"<span id=\"retro_color\">[ Retro Scan ]<\/span> Bentley Bear&#8217;s Spelling Bee"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a href=\"\/wp-content\/images\/retroscan\/bentley_bear_spelling_bee_large.jpg\" target=\"_blank\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"\/wp-content\/images\/retroscan\/bentley_bear_spelling_bee_small.jpg\" alt=\"Atari Scholastic Series Spelling Bee a Bentley Bear At-Home Tutor Crystal Castles Educational Software Atari ST Atari Mega and ST box packaging scan - 1988\" class=\"retroscan\"\/><\/a><span class=\"freecaption\"><em>&#8220;Follow me, KIDS! Wheeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee!&#8221;<\/em><\/span><\/p>\n<p>I recently visited fellow NC computer collector Tom Copper (hopefully the subject of a future post), and Tom gave me this neat and rare piece of educational software for the Atari ST series.  It&#8217;s called <em>Spelling Bee<\/em>, and it features <a href=\"https:\/\/www.vintagecomputing.com\/index.php\/archives\/273\/retro-scan-of-the-week-bentley-bear-touched-my-bum\">Bentley Bear of <em>Crystal Castles<\/em><\/a> fame.<\/p>\n<p>Apparently, Atari made a series of educational games starring Bentley Bear.  Sadly, this particular game is not that great.  It&#8217;s just a simple version of Hangman that, in my opinion, does not aid spelling skills at all.  I have two kids &#8212; ages 7 and 4, and my eldest gets to play all the older educational software I can find.  She gave this product a thumbs down.  So do I.  But it sure is a neat piece of computing history.<\/p>\n<p>(P.S. If you&#8217;re interested in an overview of great educational games of the past, check out <a href=\"http:\/\/www.pcworld.com\/article\/2972721\/software-games\/the-17-best-educational-games-of-the-70s-80s-and-90s.html\">this slideshow<\/a> I did for PCWorld back in 2015).<\/p>\n<p><center><em>[ From Scholastic Series Spelling Bee by Atari, 1988, cover\/back ]<\/em><\/center><\/p>\n<p><strong>Discussion Topic:<\/strong> What&#8217;s your favorite educational PC game of all time?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>&#8220;Follow me, KIDS! Wheeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee!&#8221; I recently visited fellow NC computer collector Tom Copper (hopefully the subject of a future post), and Tom gave me this neat and rare piece of educational software for the Atari ST series. It&#8217;s called Spelling Bee, and it features Bentley Bear of Crystal Castles fame. Apparently, Atari made a series [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[37,7,27,26,9,10],"tags":[170,314,1531,1532,737,644,1534,1530,408,1533],"class_list":["post-1691","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-computer-games","category-computer-info-and-history","category-regular_features","category-retro-scan-of-the-week","category-retrogaming","category-computers","tag-atari","tag-atari-st","tag-bentley-bear","tag-crystal-castles","tag-educational-games","tag-hangman","tag-kids","tag-mega-st","tag-school","tag-tom-copper"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.vintagecomputing.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1691","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.vintagecomputing.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.vintagecomputing.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.vintagecomputing.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.vintagecomputing.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1691"}],"version-history":[{"count":8,"href":"https:\/\/www.vintagecomputing.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1691\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1699,"href":"https:\/\/www.vintagecomputing.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1691\/revisions\/1699"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.vintagecomputing.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1691"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.vintagecomputing.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1691"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.vintagecomputing.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1691"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}