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Intelligent Tutoring Systems (ITSs) have begun to incorporate game-based components in an attempt to balance the learning benefits of ITSs with the motivational benefits of games. iSTART-ME (Motivationally Enhanced) is a new game-based learning environment that was developed on top of an existing ITS (iSTART). In a multi-session lab-based efficacy study with 125 high school students, those students with a low prior reading ability who were trained by a game-based tutoring system (iSTART-ME) or a traditional intelligent tutoring system (iSTART-Regular) performed significantly better on posttest measures than students assigned to a time-delayed control condition. Additionally, the low reading ability students who interacted with the game-based system had a tendency to gain more than students in the traditional ITS system.