LGR Edutainment Month continues with an entry that’s debatably educational
but unquestionably entertaining: The Typing of the Dead.
Originally released to Japanese arcades in 1999, with North American Sega Dreamcast and
PC ports arriving in 2001.
And today we’re taking a look at the latter: a Windows version built for PCs equipped with
at least a 233 megahertz Pentium II and an eight megabyte Direct3D graphics card.
“Type or die!”
Now that’s how you incentivize learning how to touch type!
Increase those words per minute or face the wrath of flesh-eating zombies.
And I just love the fact that this is a thing.
Typing trainer programs were all over the place back in the ‘90s, but only one was
based on House of the Dead, thus boasting a Mature rating from the ESRB.
The sheer absurdity of combining “educational typing tutor” and “blood-soaked gorefest”
is one of the things that makes this game such a treasure, even if it did more to confuse
than amuse after it was announced.
House of the Dead fans and members of the press alike didn’t quite know what to make
of it at first, immediately dismissing it as an idea that was too silly to be a success.
But by the time it officially reached North America in 2001, most of the critics had made
a complete 180, with the game receiving high marks pretty much across the board.
While still being fairly criticized for offering largely the same game as the two year old
House of the Dead 2, meaning that it was just about as short and simplistic as that game was.
But the impish joy provided by replacing a light gun with a QWERTY keyboard was enough
to win most skeptics over.
Including some who apparently didn’t get the memo that it was rated for ages 18 and
up, like this story in the Kids Corner section of an Alabama newspaper, The Anniston Star,
right alongside the daily comic strips.
Despite the blood and guts, or perhaps because of them, word quickly spread that Typing of
the Dead was an unexpectedly awesome, if not entirely serious,
alternative to programs like Mavis Beacon Teaches Typing.
And partially due to its affordable $20 price tag, the Empire Interactive PC version ended
up selling an impressive 120,000 copies by March of 2003.
Though you wouldn’t know it when looking for a second-hand copy today, with complete
examples selling between fifty and ninety dollars at the time of recording.
But sharing the collectible goods is a big reason I make these videos, so let’s unbox
this sealed example and see what ya get!
And first up is this inner cardboard container that reveals, uhh.
Not what I expected.
Apparently it comes with a small collection of Topps scratch-off cards from 1982?
Featuring Nintendo’s Donkey Kong? Huh!
Yeah I mean, this was definitely the first time it’s been opened, the factory seals
were very much intact.
But being that it was never sold shrink-wrapped, I guess someone jammed these cards into the
box between the slits in the cardboard.
For... some reason.
Anyway, there’s also the CD-ROM of the game itself, sealed inside a clear jewel case.
Alongside an insert that’s only the front artwork, not a manual or anything.
For that, Empire Interactive provided a surprisingly lengthy black and white Survival Guide, featuring
24 pages of instructional documentation that was undoubtedly typed out by someone with
plenty of zombie-killing experience.
The Typing of the Dead begins in typical Sega arcade port fashion, immediately commencing
with the arcade attract mode introducing both the gameplay and the story so far.
Which is identical to House of the Dead 2, aside from one key difference: the protagonists
James, Gary, Amy, and Harry are all equipped with keyboards hanging around their necks
and Sega Dreamcast consoles strapped to their backs.
So yeah, this is a port of the Dreamcast version with very few changes.
So few changes, in fact, that there isn’t even a way to change the resolution, graphics
API, or pretty much anything in terms of visuals.
Meaning that you’re stuck with the default 640x480 resolution and wildly varying frame
rate of the DirectDraw renderer.
Yeah, even though I’m running this on the Lazy Green Giant PC with a 1GHz CPU
and a Voodoo 3 card, this is as good as it gets.
Which thankfully is still pretty darn good due to the game itself being an absolute blast!
-“The Typing of the Dead!”
-You’ve got six game modes to choose from, with the most “educational” one being
the tutorial mode.
[gunshots, laptop opening up]
“Hi, my name is James. I’m an AMS agent”
“Being able to touch-type or not is a matter of life or death” “This
is what happens if can’t touch-type” [zombie growling, man dying]
“I think you get the picture”
[chuckles] Again, talk about incentive for improving your typing skills.
Hunting and pecking is a death sentence, so pay attention and learn those home keys!
There’s also a drill mode, featuring a variety of skill tests to help typists of all experience
levels practice typing speed, accuracy, special keys, and reflexes.
And this is just well-made stuff for a typing tutor program of any kind, much less one with
such high levels of tongue in cheek humor.
While I don’t have any evidence that this was ever used in a classroom, it certainly could’ve been.
This is honestly and surprisingly a great choice for legitimately learning how to type
both quickly and efficiently, with plenty of options for specifically targeting problem
areas and improving them.
Once you’re equipped with all the tenacity of a top-notch typist
you’re ready to type some zombies.
The two main modes are original and arcade mode.
There are six chapters to choose from either way, in three difficulty levels with multiple
options for lives and continues, again mirroring House of the Dead 2.
But now, it’s time to type, or die!
[chuckles] I’m not sure what’s gonna kill you first,
the zombies or the voice acting.
It is, in a word, sublime.
Guys, I love this.
With an unironic, passionate, deep-fisted love.
Er deep-seated, whatever man, this is great!
And this Windows version is a goldmine of cheesy voice acting nuggets, doing nothing
to hide its collection of WAV files for each and every line in the game.
-“My god.”
-Anyway, whether or not you’re here for the terribad voice performances, Typing of the
Dead is all about typing at zombies until they’re dead. Again.
Yeah sending the dead back to the grave is not the easiest of tasks
even on the easier difficulties.
You’ll need at least a 60 word per minute typing speed to get very far without getting killed.
Though it’s worth noting that you do not have to worry about things like capitalization
or spaces, you can simply type in the letters you see in the order you see them.
Punctuation and special characters do have to be typed in whenever they show up, but
that’s about as unpredictable as it gets.
It is an on-rails shooter after all, with very little in the way of story-changing interactions
or alternate routes, even less than House of the Dead 2.
Obviously, I mean, you’re wielding a keyboard.
There’s no light gun, so you can’t just aim all over the screen and shoot everything
in sight to try and unlock bonus items or shortcuts.
Instead, shooting only occurs by typing the contents of each individual pop-up window.
So unless there’s text on-screen, ya can’t shoot dick.
You can, however, let dick die.
[car crashes]
[woman screams]
And that’s how you can achieve some variation in Typing
of the Dead: your performance during key moments will determine whether or not a character
lives or dies, depending on your typing accuracy and speed.
Each of these moments offers up a chance to earn some kind of result, usually in the form
of points or with an item.
Often that item is an extra life, other times it’s a single use power-up or power-down.
In arcade mode, you receive tranquilizers, excitement pills, and alien and genre dictionaries.
Each of which immediately activate upon receiving and do things like weaken or strengthen enemies
and cause certain words or spellings to appear during typing sections.
And in original mode, there are four additional items: painkillers, gold tranquilizers, sulphuric
acid, and the hand of god.
And in this mode, each item remains in your inventory until you decide to use it by pressing
the F1 through F4 keys.
Original mode also adds coins that reward you with even more items
if you complete additional level objectives.
And yeah, this inventory of coins and items is the only thing separating original and
arcade modes.
They’re the exact same story, but arcade mode plays like the original arcade game and
original mode is actually the original arcade mode with new features,
making for an original mode. That’s not confusing at all.
No matter whatcha play though, swarms of zombies await execution at your fingertips.
Type ‘em in the chest, type off their arms and legs, type ‘em in the head, type them
off the road until their car explodes.
[BOOM]
Very rarely does typing cause so much collateral damage.
Unless you’re talking about damage to hearing, which is something folks have complained about
with my choice in keyboards over the years.
[Model M keyboard clicking loudly]
Doesn’t bother me though, I always want the biggest,
loudest, clickiest keyboard, especially for Typing of Dead!
Speed, accuracy, and tactile feedback are a must when it comes to effective keycap canoodling,
and choosing a better keyboard is as logical as choosing a better game controller.
And you’ll want every advantage you can get with the kinds of challenges the game
throws at you.
Things like the mid-level missions that consist of monstrous attack waves
usually lasting 30 seconds.
Or the areas where multiple creatures come at you all at once, deadly projectiles being
lobbed at your face.
And since you can only clear one individual text box at a time, there’s a lotta strategy
in picking which ones to type out first.
And of course, levels are capped off with at least one boss.
And the way each encounter is designed I find mechanically fascinating, as they take full
advantage of the need to efficiently type out text instead of only shooting a gun at a screen.
The first boss is simple enough, with text boxes that fly around mimicking the creatures’
movements, thus making it tougher to see what you need to type.
But then there’s this cheerful thing that can only be attacked while its chest cavity
is wide open.
This is conveyed by repeatedly cutting off your ability to type right in the middle of
a word, throwing off your entire rhythm until its chest re-opens for bloody business.
Then there’s the Tower boss, a three-headed monstrosity where only one head is vulnerable
at any given time.
It gets this across by presenting you with a question and three different options to
type out, with only one of them being valid.
Choose the right answer and this lets you deal damage to the correct head.
Then with the giant chainsaw guy, the high tension of this corridor chase scene is upheld
by making you type much longer sentences.
Sentences that end up creating a story that’s often so utterly absurd that it’s distracting,
making it that little bit more difficult to stay focused.
Yeah I love these bosses, and it seems Sega did too since they included a standalone boss
rush mode outside of the main story.
I mean think about it, they could’ve taken the lazy way out and made bosses toss a pile
of tricky words and letters at you and called it a day, but nope!
Instead they got creative and made typing interactions that actually fit each boss,
like type-attacking individual magic fireballs or answering pop quiz questions that grow
progressively more unusual towards the end.
Yeah, speaking of the ending, it doesn’t take too long to get there.
This was an arcade game after all.
So unless you have fingers made of overcooked noodles or something, the entire thing is
done in 40 minutes.
And that’s with all the cutscenes, side missions, and repeated boss battles.
Objectively there’s not a whole lot to Typing of the Dead in terms of content, but I kinda
don’t care since what it does offer is delectable stuff indeed.
If I do have one big qualm it’s that the multiplayer is kind of... not there.
I mean, it has it, as indicated by the ever-present ‘player two’ option
flashing on the bottom right.
But even though it says “press enter,” ya can’t,
even if you have a second keyboard plugged in.
You have to go to the main menu, enter network mode, and connect to another computer with
another copy of the game running over a local area network.
So yeah no multiplayer on the same screen.
I assume this was due to complications arising from having multiple non-USB keyboards on
a single Windows 9x PC, but still! It’s disappointing.
Eh, despite the extra effort required for multiplayer, the game is still well worth
experiencing again and again if you can find a copy.
I’d say grab the Dreamcast port over the PC version, but either way Typing of the Dead
is one stupidly fun game to return to, again and again.
Makes total sense that Sega returned to it themselves with Typing of the Dead: Overkill in 2013.
I’m still more fond of the original though, with all its quirks and cheese.
And even though its dedicated teaching modes can be thoroughly ignored, it’s still oddly
useful in boosting your typing skills just by playing the story mode.
You don’t even realize you’re improving, but the end results make it obvious that you have.
And in my book, that’s the mark of effective edutainment.
[tires screeching loudly]
And if this episode of LGR Edutainment Month hit the spot, then perhaps you’d care to
check out these others!
Or any more LGR videos for that matter, I’ve got new videos going up on a variety of retro
computing topics every single week.
And as always thank you very much for watching!