By Alec Meer on September 16th, 2009 at 10:37 pm.
Sometimes when my cat is licking herself clean, something I can’t see or hear will distract her. A rustle. An insect. Someone belching 18 miles away. The ghost of Michael Jackson. Y’know, whatever it is that their tiny animal brains mysteriously fixate on without warning. So she’ll stop cleaning herself, close her mouth and stare unblinkingly at whatever it is. Once a while, though, she’ll close the mouth but forget to put her tongue away first. So she sits there with her little pink tongue sticking out, sometimes for ten or fifteen straight minutes, looking charmingly, ludicrously foolish. She doesn’t seem even slightly aware that she’s doing it, or of how ridiculous, how hilarious she looks. And that only makes this absurd image all the more delightful.
And that, right there, is The Typing Of The Dead.
I wasn’t in any of the design meetings, of course. And I’m 100% sure someone, somewhere in the process knowingly introduced its absolute absurdity, that it’s mean to be so apocalyptically silly. That doesn’t matter. What matters is that the game itself just doesn’t seem to know it’s standing there with its tongue stuck out. It doesn’t seem to realise it’s about defeating zombies and hydra and 40-foot fish-demons with man-size spears by trying to type “I’m fine, thank you” or “ankle fetish” as quickly as possible. It’s a port of The House of the Dead II, the arcade lightgun shooter, but almost nothing is changed. Your character and the monsters he fights seem convinced he’s shooting them with guns.
“Made-for-TV-movie“
In actual fact, he’s running around in a business suit with a Dreamcast strapped to his back and a keyboard hanging around his waist. With these words, he kills the enemy. The pen is indeed mightier than the sword. It’s just a straight graphical swap – nothing else in the game makes even the slightest reference to it. No explanation is offered as to how or why this would possibly stop an undead invasion. And that only makes this absurd game all the more delightful.
“Do the locomotion“
Where did the words, the sentences and phrases come from? Did someone write them manually? Was it some automated translation from the original Japanese text gone tremendously wrong? Were they obtained by randomly grabbing webpage or document extracts? Were they inserted into the game by a cable attached directly to the hindbrain of a dangerous, baby-eating psychotic? I don’t know. I don’t want to know. I just love that they’re there, gloriously random, never predictable, but yet so often somehow related to or evocative of what’s attacking you.
“The phantom of Samoa“
These monsters want to communicate something to you – some primal urge, some sadness weighing on their minds, a song lyric they can’t quite place, a string of nonsense generated from the decaying pathways in their brain… They’ve got their tongues stuck out and they don’t know it. They think they look like ultimate predators, but all you can do is laugh at them. And type. Type faster! Faster! FASTER!
“She sent me a card!“
And oh, the voice-acting. The inhuman intonations, the ritually misplaced emphasis, the gibberish-sentences… Even at the time, when production standards were regularly much lower than today, it was stunningly, jaw-droppingly awful. Replaying it now, I’m genuinely amazed it hasn’t passed into online legend in the way All Your Base Are Belong To Us did. It’s miraculously bad. It’s so, so perfect for this ridiculous, insane, impossible game.
“Perfect sushi topping“
Why does it exist? Nominally, it’s a typing tuition program. I’m not convinced it succeeds at that. Perfect touch-typing yields high scores, but to a great extent you can just bludgeon your way through, just enjoying the insanity but teaching your muscle memory very little. I don’t think it teaches, really, but I do think it turns typing into tension. There’s a wonderful desperation to it, especially in the boss fights – long, complicated, lunatic phrases you desperately try to hammer out before this massive thing smacks you right in the screen. Your fingers stumble, drift just one key to the left or the right, and it feels so much like a weapon jamming. You’re sure you’re doing it right, but something’s resisting. On-screen, a gigantic demon is demanding “Touch my wattle” as it hurls mystical fireballs at you, and you’re shaking with laughter – but you’re also terrified. It’s going to get you, unless you type faster, harder, faster, harder, faster, harder…
“Rub this on your skin to make it brown“
There isn’t anything like The Typing of the Dead. It is one of gaming’s most singular artifacts. It can never be equalled, it can never be beaten. It’s gaming’s equivalent of Van Gogh’s ear-removal (at least as legend tells it). A moment of absolute insanity, absolute, reckless, unfathomable stupidity – yet one that’s unforgettable, almost sublime. You type to kill zombies – zombies from a strange, terrible, wonderful universe in which everyone’s afraid of words and no-one ever learned how to act. How did this happen? I don’t ever want to know. I’m just infinitely glad it did.
There’s still a demo available. You should totally try it.
First i thought: “Wait, his cat does that too?”
Then i saw the picture. HE STOLE MY CAT! Give her back ffs!
report
I genuinely believed that after the release of Typing of the dead, we were going to see typing spin offs for many major game series.
report
Mh, no editing feature? Bah.
I’ll make sure i play this on a long weekend with a few bottles of beer. It seems those are mandatory for playing and enjoying this fully.
report
I recall playing the demo back when it was new. I had a good time – I also seem to remember it getting a favourable review in that month’s PC Format.
Much like LewieP, I thought we were going to see much more of that sort of thing.
report
I remember at school when this came out; the line “there was nothing we could do” intoned in a completely emotionless voice being something that was oft repeated at appropriately tragic moments in the day.
report
How bad I am at this game worries me. I thought I was good at typing.
Really nicely written piece.
In addition: KITTY :3
report
Ohhhh, memories.
I’ve always been a huge House of the Dead fan, ever since the arcades (which was always the purest form of zombie shooting, yanno). House of the Dead II has always been the greatest of them all, not as unrefined as the series’ freshman outing but not as self-aware as the cynical follow-ups.
The sheer ridiculity of the game was part of its charm. The absolutely atrocious voice acting, the nonsensical evil plot, the soundtrack that was equal parts thrash metal and mellotron, the inexplicably designed power-ups, the decaying Venetian setting… it all became so fascinatingly surreal. Again, I have to wonder–as Alec did–whether human beings were involved with its construction. Was it built by people who so perfectly understood the horror movie aesthetic? Was it warped by a transition between Japanese and Western aesthetics? Was it assembled by fragments of a team that never communicated? Was it made by a robot? An alien? A zombie?
Typing of the Dead, to me, was a curio. If it had merely existed like this–never having been a rail shooter–it would have been such a mind-bending Dali-esque masterpiece that the world wouldn’t know what to do with it. I like the effect that it has, though. Every letter is a gunshot. Every letter cuts your enemies open. Using keyboards as we now all do, the old-timey rattle and click that gave typing on a typewriter so much ‘oomph’ and novelty is gone. There’s something to be said for replacing that impact with exploding zombies.
Lastly, to this day I wish there were a mainstream shooter that would handle body deformation the way House of the Dead did. Big gapng holes, limbs just coming off, heads flipping through the air as they’re shot off… Sure, Left 4 Dead let you put big Source-style hole decals in your enemy and clip arms and legs and heads, but… it’s not the same. Viva House of the Dead.
Nerdy Kitty-centric Post Script: Alec, is that actually your cat? She looks exactly like mine.
report
That is indeed my own Ripley T. Cat.
report
This is one of the greatest games ever made. I picked it up for $5 years ago. Had countless hours of fun typing my way through this during class… :D
This and Crimson Land’s type-o-shooter thingy
report
I tried to find this game after hearing about it in a Yahtzee review but couldn’t seem to get a hold of it.
I’ll need to give that demo ago the game does look gloriously insane.
I sense an alternative career for Mavis Beacon as a teacher in the art of killing zombies.
report
I’m pretty sure that acquiring any more than the demo will be nearly impossible outside CERTAIN MEANS. I’m pretty sure it’s easy to find by said means, however.
report
Ahhhh. I remember playing the demo of this off the PCGUK discs wayyyyy back.
I use the dvorak keyboard layout to type now though, so I’d imagine there would be some frustration with the game not mapping the keys correctly; resulting in a flying axe being embedded in my (virtual) head.
report
I had this on the Dreamcast– the original purpose was to sell Dreamcast keyboards (which were just cheap PC keyboards with a Dreamcast controller plug) and thus get keyboards into peoples’ houses, setting the stage for future games requiring keyboards. You can see how well that worked in practice.
report
The story that most people tell about Van Gogh’s ear is apocryphal. For one thing, it wasn’t actually his ear–just his earlobe. And it is generally accepted today that he cut it off as a result of suffering a seizure while shaving, not because he was loony. Several doctors had diagnosed him as having epilepsy, and he was taking medication for it at the time.
report
Aye, but I’m specifically referring to the quasi-folklore version that everyone knows.
report
actually they found a letter recently from Van Gough to his cousin detailing how a man who he was competing with for the love of some woman cut it off, i think the other guy was semi famous too.
report
Typing
OF THE DEAD.
… I thank you.
report
My cat does that too. Its awesome. Also, his fangs are about 3mm too big for his mouth, so they stick out a bit just to add that to the effect.
I absolutely loved this game. It was just so awesome. My typing skills are pretty good (90WPM) so I was able to absolutely slaughter everything that it threw at me. I think I got hit a total of twice by the time I’d finished the end boss.
report
Oh lord I love this game. It’s actually the definitive version of HOT2, I reckons. It’s also, unthinkably, just a good game. It totally works. It was so clearly a labour of love for its designers. The mini-games are excellent too.
The voice-acting… I really wondered if it wasn’t actually some very clever synth program, because while it kind of sounded like people the intonation was so completely consistently wrong I could never imagine and English speaker saying that stuff. That, or they had really good voice actors who could do that deliberately.
report
Bizarrely enough I was actually playing this last week! Fantastic game and genuinely helped my typing back in the day.
report
I too am saddened there are no other games like this. What I wouldn’t give for the ability to play, eg. Team Fortress 2 by typing phrases such as “Eyelashed together”
Also, it seems you all own the same cat.
report
Science has discovered that there is, in fact, only one cat in the entire universe, forever travelling through time to be with all of it’s owners at once.
report
Amazingly actually, I still have my keyboard. And I used it for a multitude of games, like….. Phantasy Star Online, and….uh…. this. Yeah. That’s about it.
report
SUFFER LIKE G DID?
report
Yes! Exactly. Why was it intoned as a question? Wonderful.
report
The end sequence was particularly special…
*SPOILER*
It would play one of a few parodies of the HotD2 ending, such as the Goldman jumping off the building with a bungee cord, playing a comedy boing sound, then reversing the sequence. This was followed by a credits sequence where typing the staff names would trigger a series of dancing zombies to emerge from glass tanks.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1g5LFYlWpkE
report
This is a fantastic little educatainment title. There have been a couple other Mavis Beacon pretenders, but none as wonderfully engaging, and heart pounding, as this one. IIRC, there was a second one released in Japan, but it still had mostly English typing. I could be wrong, though. I often am.
Neither of my cats resemble Ripley. Alien is an ornery Tabby and Ella is a puppy in the guise of a long haired white cat. Perhaps I’ve strayed too far from the hive… ;)
report
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hRZLPl03uJM
report
Apparently there was a sequel.
That is only out in Japan.
Odd.
report
Not only that, but this first one was released as a cabinet arcade game over there as well. Just a reskinned HotD 2 cabinet with a couple of grey keyboards stuck to the front, no lie.
I had a go. To my suprise, the game was in Japanese. I died. Quickly.
report
I’m going to go home and demand that my wife “touch my waddle” Whilst making that pose. I’m almost certain she will :P
report
For some reason the phrase “Touch my Brad Wardell” popped into my mind when I saw this.
report
Nobody’s mentioned the coop in this game. It was networked (although I could have done it w/ two keyboards) and seeing the random phrases was a hoot.
report
Mavis Beacon Teaches Death!
The pen is mightier than the sword and all that.
report
Aww, man, I loved this game. Still do. Kinda wishing I hadn’t sold it to a friend for a fiver now.
report
I played this a lot back when I had a Dreamcast, in fact for some strange reason when I gave my Dreamcast away I kept Typing of the Dead and the keyboard periphereal. Even though I’ll probably never own a Dreamcast again. Weird.
Anyway, I was always a little stressed when I played a light-gun game, I wasn’t that great at it and most of them are designed to pump all the quarters out of you (they’re difficult). But Typing of the Dead? One thing I could do was type like a motherfucker. Years of playing MUDs, MUXes, and other text-based worlds had refined that skill to a fine edge. (Although my 10-Key skills, which were rather more appropriate to every job I ended up having, were left in the dust)
These days you can still legitimately play Typing of the Dead on PC. Sorry to rain on that parade. Actually it’s on the premium pack over on Gametap, so it costs money, too. A good deal if you want access to the other games in said pack, though.
report
I never played the game at the time, my typing being atrocious, but I remember the reviews. I’m half surprised that PopCap haven’t tried to do something similar in their own little way. While I’m sure their approach would be entirely aware of the positioning of its tongue (namely, in its cheek) this could easily be something that would adapt to their style.
report
PopCap released Typer Shark a long while back.
Facebook has a Typing Maniac game.
report
Co-op featured TotD on the Dreamcast retrospective in their most recent episode, and had much fun with the dialogue and the words you had to type. I can just about remember playing the PC demo way back when. Good times.
report
Suffer Like G Did? is in All My Base territory.
Plenty of commenters referenced it when HOD Overkill was announced.
I believe there was a All work and no play makes jack a dull boy line in the game somewhere.
report
Who thought it would be a good idea to hardcode the keys in this game? I can’t play with Dvorak. :(
report
It took me ages to beat that stupid boss with the trident (I think he’s in the first few seconds of the video Marvin linked to). I didn’t realise that you didn’t have to do capital letters, and it took me a while longer to realise that shift+o actually generated 3 or 4 characters to the game, so you would miss twice as much as you would hit each time you did a capital letter :(
report
This game had me at “It’s Polka time”.
report
I’ve had this demo installed for years.
report
This is great by the way: http://www.giantbomb.com/quick-look-throwback-the-typing-of-the-dead/17-1333/
report
Typing of the Dead is one of the few games I will bother to bring up in conversation with people I doubt are interested in games. It’s just brilliant, sheer fun in every way, and the only typing tool I’ve ever used that actually improved my typing rather than making it considerably worse via boredom.
And don’t even get me started on the practice modes, one of which punishes you if you make a single mistake by having you punched to death by a zombie mime.
report
This isn’t the only Sega game to get the Typing treatment; Typing Space Harrier was released for PCs in Japan.
Incidentally, Margaret Robertson wrote about this game for Offworld a couple of months ago: http://offworld.com/2009/07/one-more-go-or-why-typing-of-t.html
report
@sinister agent – yup, this game taught me to type. No lie. I love, the gf loves it, her sister loves and so does her sister’s bf. Its all love for Typing of the Dead.
I first read about it in PC Gamer UK and though “Yes! Eat THAT Mavis Bacon!”. In my postbox 3 days later.
report
I’ve actually been playing a lot of Typgun recently. Doesn’t have the ludicrosity that Alec praises here, but it’s still a great typing shootery thing.
http://www.yoyogames.com/games/show/878
report
Hardcoded keys?
Azerty here, meh.
report
One of the best reviews ever written. Or maybe, I just had too much to drink. Either way, I feel happy to have read it. Yay.
Touch my wattle now, bitchez.
report
“How could anyone do this.”
“Don’t come! Don’t come!”
report
Oh by the way I think RPS have changed their “R” logo (the one that appears left of the web adress thingy from a black background to dark brown. I see what you did tharrr.
report
and it works on vista
report
Demo + Beer + Geek Friends = At least an hour of hilarity. Worth it for that alone.
My mate was unlucky enough to get Medical Terms as the dictionary theme for one of the hordes…
“F@#K THAT!”
That single incident made me buy it years ago, never regretted it.
report
I saw this once and it was an instant–no-thinking-required-get-that-now. Greatest game ever.
report
I recently reinstalled this. Gonna try getting the netplay to work tonight. Hell yes. That third screenshot is the best part of the normal game for me, btw. That zombie’s like “Your brains? Fuck ‘em. I learned to drive a car, look at me. I’m a fucking zombie driving a fucking ca- *crashes*”
report
G’S BLOODSTAINS!
WE HAVE TO SAVE G!
report
WE’RE MEETING G OVER THERE!
report
Man, these are the type of games that made the Japanese game dev scene so wild at the time. During that era Sega was putting out some really crazy, but innovative stuff like Chu Chu Rocket, Samba de Amigo, Seaman, and of coarse Typing of the Dead. On a side note, I actually was lucky enough to pick this up a few years ago at a flea market. The best $5 I have ever spent.
report
Sega’s 99-02 output is unrivaled in gaming, both in creativity and in execution. Those days are missed.
report
what.
report
What is going on.
report
For a more low-rent typing/horror/action game, you can try the Clatter of the Keys. It’s space invaders, except instead of space you have a sheet of paper moving through a typewriter, and you fire off words, sending yourself deeper into Lovecraftian madness.
report
How do you buy the damn thing? I would genuinely like to own this. When i found it installed in a college computer a few years ago my typing speed dramatically improved.
report
Pssst. was on home of the underdogs……..you didnt see me right!
report
As my daily contribution to to the internet, I would like to add that I would have the same childish amusement over my cat’s tongue unawareness, but then always tried to have it pull it back in by gently tipping the piece of tongue sticking out. It would go ‘hey…oh I see *retreats tongue and goes back into cat closed eyes zen mode*”
And yes, uhm, games like.
report
My Shetland Sheepdog, on the other hand, prefers to sniff corners. Oh yes.
report
hey what’s my cat doing there
http://www.locustleaves.com/blackthingcomic.jpg
report
Best picture series ever
report
That photo at the end is great. :P
report
A few years ago, my mum wanted to learn out to touch type. I bought her this, and she thanked me.
No, really she did.
report
Sadly this game doesn’t even work well with AZERTY keyboards. >You can’t type the numbers and you get stuck very fast.
report
The lesson ‘zombies make learning fun’ seems to a singularly ignored by the DCSF – this could be the sort of bold new vision that could save Labour.
report
Fantastic, never actually paid any attention to what I was typing when I played it last – maybe it’s an attempt to subliminally control people with R.E.M. lyrics?
report
Ah, another game of the fine people who brought us Limbo of The Lost.
Or, at least, that’s what my first thought was.
report
This article is amazing. With this, Alec, you have bought several years of grace.
report
You can type numbers on an azerty keyboard just fine, you just need to press shift to do it.
Also, I’m certain TOTD is aware of its own cataclysmic silliness, even if HOTD2 was not. It always seemed like the game layered over the other game was mocking the latter. Regardless, it’s a work of art for the ages.
report
Played the demo and it is indeed genius. Some of the phrases are great.
I’m a pretty decent at typing but I swear if this had been in my school the battle to get the highest score would have had us all amazing at it.
The only slight problem with it is that it’s presumable got the special character settings of American keyboards (meaning I get awfully confused with apostrophes and the hash key and so on) and it doesn’t seem to like the right shift key for some reason. Still these foibles can be overlooked because of the sheer genius of the game – i’m going to track me down a full version.
report
Suffer like G did?
report
I’m dispirited to find RPS is managing to write just about every game I had planned to write in the near future :/ But this was such a good piece so all’s well with the world. I might still write about it, though :)
report
Dammit, my Dreamcast and this very game are on a shelf not 15 feet away, but the keyboard is in a box I know not where.
I’d also like to note that I used to have that exact same make and model of cat, and I still miss her sometimes. Sniff.
report
Beautiful. Beautiful, beautiful.
I love my Dreamcasts. And so does G.
report
I don’t wannaaa die/i>
I got this from the underdogs a long time ago, and although it does work on Vista, it doesn’t seem to accept any special characters. Which means you can’t get past chapter two or three. Changing the keyboard country settings and such doesn’t seem to change anything…
report
I looove Typing of the Dead! Isn’t there like a third one coming soon or something?
report
i’ve got this on my netbook it’s super.
report
Yeah, I have this on my comp back home. Makes me very happy. Got it from the Underdogs or somewhere like that I think, never ever seen a commercially available copy. It’s an amazing gaming piece.
report
I bought it back then but it was fucking hard / too hard with a German keyboard since the only supported keyboard layout in the game is the US one.
Once they introduced special characters it was going downhill fast.
Will beat it one day when I get hold of a US keyboard…
report
Yep, sums up whats so great about this game.
It perfectly set you up into this frenzy of typing, and then does its best to poke you and distract you from getting those words right.
Loads of times I had to stop, or stumbled and laughed because of the words that have popped up on screen.
There must be a hell of a lot of words in it because I have seen very few repeated.
report
I’d appreciate this game more, if it would actually run on my machine, instead of simply dropping me back to the desktop.
report
This is one of my all-time favourite games. I actually own a legit copy – I don’t remember where I even got it – but the installer is broken or doesn’t like anything newer than Win2k, so I had to download a copy to get it to work. Well worth it though.
report
Dang, dosn’t seem to work for me either. “Fel: (Error:) Unsuported launguage.” Do I have to have a english-languaged windows for it to work? I tried switching to EN down in the taskbar, but it didn’t help. But it seems utterly redicilously fun :D
And my cat does that sometimes too. Friggin hillarious in the same way :)
report
There’s a knight looking guy brandishing his crotch and requesting that I “touch his wattle”
Will there be a sequel called Euphemism of the Dead?
report
Laughed so hard at one hydra – “Things that women have” and one of the answers was “abortions”. So very, very wrong.
Good reference in House of the Dead Overkill on the wii – “Do you want to suffer like G?”
report
G’s Blood!
Please be safe, G!
report
So, your cat looks exactly like mine. E X A C T L Y. And my cat does the tongue thing.
To the point where I am going to have you arrested for breaking in to my house
report
YES.
That’s all there is to say.
report
this is genious! i played it all day!!!!
report
I have put this on dozens of machines for people new to computers. Though it doesn’t really teach good typing technique (there’s a proper training section, but nobody uses it) it does help people get familiar with the keyboard. Also joy of joy, it works on all the 8 year old laptops I’m sent.
One nice aspect is the difficulty scales with how fast you type early on. Still I rarely see my students get much beyond chapter 2 since the bosses start asking them obscure questions.
Would love a sequel which focused a bit more on actually teaching typing and which penalised mistakes.
report
ToTD is a gem. And the sillyness is all intentional. I mean, they even went to the effort of replacing the zombies throwing axes with squeaky toy hammers.
I mean, seriously, one of the bosses makes you rattle off rhymes and lymericks, and one of them was:
“There once was an Echidna from Vegas,
Whose hairstyle was loud and outrageous.
When asked by the cops, “why the dreadlocks?”
He said the idea was SEGA’s”
I recall that for you US’ians, it’s on Gametap, but otherwise it’s almost impossible to get legally, because it went out of print almost immediately after it came out, which REALLY SUCKS. Thankfully, I have an original copy on disc, which I will never, ever part company with.
Best typing tutor ever. Sure, it doesn’t teach you technique, but it teaches you to type quickly and accurately while a shambling undead horror attempts to chew your face off while asking you to ‘Shave His Gerbil’.
report
This is one of my favourite games ever. I’m still hoping Typing of the Dead II gets an English translation, but it may be a bit late for that..
And it does teach good typing, imo, if you want to get anywhere on higher difficulties. The practice levels let you practice with letters you’ve been missing etc. But purely the fact that this game got kids in japanese arcades dropping money into machines to blow up zombies while… learning how to type, makes it an educational success.
Although Mavis Beacon is still scarier.
http://preview.tinyurl.com/2cdz32g
report