Spelling Bonus

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A type of Power-Up that rewards you for collecting a number of letters to spell a word. Typically the letters do not have to be obtained in order, but will automatically move to their correct places on the status bar.

This trope goes back to the "spot letter" targets found on many Pinball boards.

Compare Every Ten Thousand Points, Set Bonus.

E-X-A-M-P-L-E-S

• In Bubble Bobble, if a player pops enough bubbles to spell E-X-T-E-N-D (there are two E's in different colors), they win an extra life and the game automatically advances to the next stage.
• In Donkey Kong Country, K-O-N-G appears in every level. Collect all four letters to win an extra life. In Donkey Kong Land, collecting K-O-N-G instead saves the game.
  • In some bonus rooms, letters appear in a circle. You have to touch the letters as they blink in order to get the animal token, life balloon or other bonus.
• In Lady Bug, collecting E-X-T-R-A in yellow letters gets you an extra life and 500 points, and collecting S-P-E-C-I-A-L in red letters earns you a Vegetable Harvest Bonus.
• In the Call of Duty Black Ops First Strike map pack, one part of the Kassimir Mechanism sidequest requires using Lunar Landers to collect the letters L-U-N-A, in that specific order.
• Mr. Do and its sequels also had E-X-T-R-A to win an extra life. Usually, the player had to obtain each letter by picking up a special item and then defeating an "alpha-monster" bearing that letter.
• In Attack of the Mutant Penguins, collecting letters from treasure chests to spell B-A-T or P-A-N will get Bernard or Rodney his main weapon.
• In Rod Land, if you collect all the flowers on a stage, enemies will start turning into letters when killed. Collecting E-X-T-R-A will instantly end the stage, winning an extra life and 10,000 points.
• Collecting the letters M-E-G-A-M-A-N-V from each stage in Mega Man 5 unlocked Beat as a weapon power. He came back in Mega Man 6, where you only needed to collect B-E-A-T from four stages.
• Completing specific words awards a new vehicle in each RC Pro-Am game.
  • RC Pro-Am and Super RC Pro-Am requires spelling N-I-N-T-E-N-D-O.
  • Championship Pro-Am requires spelling C-H-A-M-P-I-O-N.
  • RC Pro-Am II rewards a new car to any player who spells out PRO AM II. Unlike the other games in the series, Pro-Am II awards a new car on a player-by-player basis.
• Wrecking Crew rewards you with an extra life if you find the letters M-A-R-I-O (or L-U-I-G-I as the second player) in that exact order.
• Captain Silver gave an extra life for collecting all the letters in CAPTAIN SILVER. This feature was removed from the Famicom version.
• Nasen Jack for the Atari 8 Bit Computers is another game in which collecting the letters E-X-T-R-A gives an extra life.