Arthur's Teacher Trouble

Arthur's Teacher Trouble is the second Living Books PC CD-Rom Game from 1992 based on the 1986 Marc Brown book, and the CD Rom was released in 1992.

Arthur's Teacher Trouble
Released	September 21, 1992
Characters	Arthur Read, Mr. Ratburn, D.W. Read, The Brain, Prunella, Buster, Francine, Muffy
Language	English Spanish
Pages	24
Next	Just Grandma and Me
Previous	The Tortoise and the Hare

Story

Living Books Arthur's Teacher Trouble (Read to Me Version)-0

Poor Arthur Read feels very upset when he learns that his new teacher, Mr. Ratburn, gives out a lot of homework on the first day of school. The principal announces a September spellathon at Arthur's school, and whoever spells the last word correctly will win a golden trophy. At home during the evening, Arthur makes a map of Africa for his homework. His sister, D.W., constantly teases him because she does not have homework—she hasn’t yet started kindergarten. Mr. Ratburn has a very important 100-word spelling test for his class the following morning, so the whole class must study hard. Before long, he announces that the Brain and Arthur received top scores. As a special treat, he gives them a few extra words to study. Two weeks later, the spellathon begins, and Arthur still complains about Mr. Ratburn, wishing not going to be in school. Most of the students misspell words and are eliminated from the competition. Arthur stalls when he is about to spell his last word, but he gets it right, wins the golden trophy, and feels very happy. Finally, Mr. Ratburn announces it is the last third grade he has for the spellathon and the last year he teaches third grade. And then he says he looks forward to a new challenge; which is teaching kindergarten. It then frightens D.W. because she might get too much homework to do for her young age if she gets sorted into his class.

Characters

• Narrator
• Arthur Reed
• Mr. Ratburn
• D.W. Reed
• Alan "The Brain" Powers
• Jane (Mom) Reed
• David (Dad) Reed
• Grandma 
• The Principal
• Buster Baxter
• Prunella
• Francine
• Muffy
• Binky Barnes
• Chris
• Grandpa
• Pal Dog

Pages

• 24

Quotes

Mr. Ratburn: We had fun today, didn't we?

All: Yes, Mr. Ratburn.

Arthur: Good afternoon, Mr. Ratburn.

Francine: Yes, Mr. Ratburn.

Brain: This is going to be a long year.

Trivia

• Some of the non-cartoon sound effects have also been recycled, such as Arthur's gulp.
• The paper air-plane that appeared here also re-appeared in "Harry and the Haunted House" and "Little Monster at School" (2 pages).
• Sometimes when clicking on the window on the page where D.W. says that she will be taking Arthur's place, it will play a rendition of the Blue Danube.
• The color of stripes with white on Arthur's clothes are red instead of black while he's in jail.
• The game was released before the cartoon came out. That is why some characters looked different from their cartoon counterparts.
• Mark Schlichting wanted to make a Noddy book instead of this, but he loved the book so much that he'd decided to make this.
• The credits of this game is the first to feature the two artists who fight with paints and the guy who damaged his computer in the credits.
  • These two credits animations, along with the men playing instruments, were the only three credits animations that appeared in many Living Books games so far.
• You leave the book when Arthur says, "OK, goodbye.".
• There was a preview of this game in the very first edition/demo of Just Grandma and Me.
• The very first edition/demo of this Living Book (the one that has Broderbund's at the top right corner of the logo) has a preview for The Tortoise and the Hare.  Strangely enough, it said on the top left corner of the preview:  Aesop's Fables: Book One meaning that it was planned that there would be more of Aesop's fables as Living Books. Apparently, "The Tortoise and the Hare" was the only one that was made of the fables.
• This story has the largest number of pages (24).
• The demo version of V1.0 bizarrely included the preview and credits. The V1.1 demo removed this.
• Originally, v1.0 for the full game and demo had slower fading screens, and sounds would get cutoff if they ran longer than the animation.
  • ScummVM allows the sounds to play through without being cut off, therefore getting them overlapped with other sound effects barging in.
  • Even though the V1.1 PC demo got an engine upgrade to enable faster fading between screens, the running man cursor, and waiting for sounds to finish before continuing animation, the full game didn't. The Macintosh platform has faster fading and the running man cursor like all the other games, but still has sounds being cutoff if they ran longer than the animation.
  • For the PC version of the full game, it's possible you could take the game data files + outline file from the V1.0 version of the full game and inject them into the V1.1 demo (though in the files, you would have to switch filenames with the Options and Quit IBM files) to try to give the full game an engine upgrade, but still you cannot make it to where the game will wait for sounds to finish before continuing animation.
• V1.0 predates the hybrid format, so the Macintosh and Windows versions were shipped on separate discs. V1.1 put them on the same disc.

Goofs

TBA

Differences from the US and UK versions

TBA

Re-releases

• 1992: Original release. A challenge to find.
• 1994: Random House release. This one's exceptionally easy to find.
• 1997: UK dub. Not very hard to find at all.
• 1998: Broderbund Software re-release. The easiest one to find.
  • Basically identical to the 1994 Random House version, except that the 1994 Living Books intro with the Random House tagline has been replaced with the original 1992 intro with the Broderbund tagline.
• 1999: PC Guide release. It appeared in the magazine of the same name, but because of the fact that this release is so scarce, it has not been available in any auction sites like eBay nor Amazon.
  • Uses the 1994 Random House version. Includes demos for Math Workshop and Carmen Sandiego Word Detective, as well as the UK version of The Tortoise and the Hare; also includes the three demos of Just Grandma and Me, The Tortoise and the Hare, and The New Kid on the Block from the 1994 CD-ROM.

Quit

• "Are you sure you want to quit?"
• [clicking yes] "Okay. Goodbye."