Presented in Retrovision: Typing of the Dead
Sega has become somewhat of a wilted flower over the recent years. Time has tarnished most of their classic franchises, leaving lackluster sequels almost shoveled out the door for the sake of a quick dollar. It is almost sad to see how quickly Sega descended from being one of the top producers of first party software to being a joke of the game developing industry. Many feel that, much like a celebrity, Sega shined brightest right before it went supernova. That time was with the Sega Dreamcast. This platform produced some of Sega's best modern titles, and also some of the most memorable. One such title is Sega's edutainment thriller: Typing of the Dead.
Typing of the Dead was not so much an original game, but an original concept. The game was built around the arcade title House of the Dead 2. House of the Dead 2 was profoundly successful in both arcade and home environments, and to perpetuate the success of the title, Sega modified the game to make it "educational". Replacing the guns, players were now equipped with two standard keyboards.
The game follows a relatively basic story. Players control AMS agents James and Gary, in an attempt to stop a recent outbreak of reanimated corpses and abberant mutations. Armed with two Dreamcasts with large barrel-cell batteries, James and Gary were set to type their way through legions of the undead. They quickly figured out that the villain of this story is a entrepreneur named "Goldman". Goldman is a banker and scientist bent on kicking humans off from the top of the food chain.
When I say typing, I mean it literally. On screen targets are presented with a respective on screen display. The displays have an associated letter, word or phrase that must be entered to destroy it. If you are too slow, you may take damage, fail to save a civilian or miss a power-up. Typically, the length of the phrase is directly affected by the amount of time a player should normally have to react. Monsters tend to be a word or short phrase, bosses entire sentences, and projectiles are often single letters.
Typing of the Dead follows House of the Dead 2 pretty much to a t'. The original dialog, cut-scenes, and even the layout of the game remains the same with only minor differences to account for the control scheme. Boss fights are less about firing accurately and more about typing humorous sentences in a limited amount of time. Like the original, it takes several "shots" before a boss is defeated, making it one of the single most strenuous typing exercises I've ever personally experienced. Additionally, after each stage, the accuracy and firing statistics, from House of the Dead 2, have been replaced with things such as "words per minute" and other touch typing metrics.
The game also offered a selection of mid-stage mini-games. These helped to break up the otherwise stressful action, and they also allowed players to earn rewards, something that becomes increasingly necessary in the harder stages. The games are all typing oriented, much like the rest of the game, and they are often just things like typing words from a category, like fruit or names of internal organs. House of the Dead 3 fans might recognize a similar format, where players are required to rescue their partner (Player 2) from an onslaught of monsters. Success is rewarded with additional health "torches", points and power-ups.
Amusingly, Typing of the Dead is one of the first games that I ever managed to convince my father to play with me. It is not so much that my father is apprehensive to video games, quite the contrary. I used to have to explain to friends that the incomprehensible stream of profanity coming from the server room was my father playing Doom. I am, however, neither a fan of first person shooters, nor flight simulators. This left us with little middle ground, but somehow Typing of the Dead appealed to both of us.
I'm not going to say this game is the greatest title ever made. It is campy and the humor factor is off the charts. The concept of fighting off hordes of the undead with touch typing is preposterous, even for the video game world. The game it was based off of alone is enough to make be break a smile. Further cementing its b-movie status are poorly delivered dialog and lines like "Don't come! Don't come!" Voice actors often speak haltingly, with zero inflection, and a straight-from-the-script cadence. It is hard to tell if it is authentically bad acting, or if it was an intentional move from the producers. Typing of the Dead is one of the few edutainment games that I would classify as being worth playing. Typing of the Dead would later go on to inspire a two Japanese only successors: Typing of the Dead 2 and English of the Dead. If you own a Windows PC, I would recommend at least downloading the PC demo. It's free, educational and, best of all, worth a laugh.
Asterick
Posted to Hot Stuff, Video Games on 17 July 2008
· Comments (8)
Other stuff like this: dreamcast, odd ball game, presented in retrovision, sega, typing of the dead
Name: Dave
Oh this game was so great. I used to play it all the time, and then when my friend entered college we'd play together when I visited her. We got ridiculously good.
Surprisingly though we never killed any keyboards over it.
Everything about this game is beautiful and right.
If they ever bring a keyboard add-on to any of the systems I'm sure they'd port this game over. It's one of those must play, in my book.
I envied my friend who can type like 80+ wpm.
I suck sooo much at House of the Dead. I seem to have no hand-eye coordination whatsoever. But I can blaze through Typing of the Dead. I'm praying for a Wii-port or a PC sequel.
Epic game. I loved the crap out of this game, like, X 100.
As a side note, supposedly the terrible acting in all the House of the Dead games are a jab at Capcom's Resident Evil, noted at the time of House of the Dead's release for its terrible script and worse acting.
Suuuuch a good game! I never owned it personally, but my brother and I played it with some of his high school friends a couple years ago; it was just so addictive and wonderful. How stressful were those crazy boss fights?!?!
This was the first game that made me change my keyboard more often than when my dad started to take his office work back home.
2 years ago at Sakura Con, somebody did a cosplay of James from Typing of the Dead. It was awesome, had the backpack and the keyboard. He was so happy I reconised him because very few people got it. lol