The Typing of the Dead

Moby ID: 3268
Arcade Specs
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Description official descriptions

This is essentially the same game as the arcade light-gun rail-shooter House of the Dead 2, except they've turned it into a edu-tainment typing trainer. Instead of guns, your characters have keyboards strapped to them, and instead of shooting the zombies that constantly jump out at you you'll need to type out the words attached to the zombies in order to kill them before they crack open your head and feast upon the goo inside. The game ranks you on your typing speed and provides various tutorials and other edu-tainment sundries.

Otherwise it's pretty much the same game as House of the Dead 2. Much like the Resident Evil series, the zombie hordes have gone from infesting a vaguely gothic creepy old mansion to infesting a vaguely gothic decaying city, and its your job to stop them and save the human race (as usual).

Spellings

  • ザ・タイピング・オブ・ザ・デッド - Japanese spelling
  • 死亡打字员 - Chinese spelling (simplified)
  • 死亡打字機 - Chinese spelling (traditional)

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Screenshots

Credits (Arcade version)

28 People (22 developers, 6 thanks) · View all

Reviews

Critics

Average score: 69% (based on 35 ratings)

Players

Average score: 3.8 out of 5 (based on 55 ratings with 5 reviews)

type or die... but for experienced typists only

The Good
When I tried this game out I was surprised. It took me a couple of minutes to find out you had to use the keyboard to shoot the zombies. I really liked that on my first go. It is a fresh idea and it is kind of addictive. If you are familiar with the house of the dead 2 arcade game, it is just the same but with a twist. It is one of the most original games I have played over a decade and there also seem to be life span expanding options such as network play and boss battles so this will hold your attention for a while.

The Bad
I asked my brother if he would like to have this game too, and he answered no. Why did he say that? Well, because there is no way to input the words of your own choice. You see, we are computer users since the early nineties and we are true typing prodigies. But when we look at the screen we see the most annoying sentences and in particular Latin and English ones that make us freeze for seconds and screw most of the shots. That sucks away a lot of fun as English is not our native language.

Maybe it is me, but TOTD doesn't run too smoothly on a modern PC. Why? Because the program is sensitive and needs a clean system memory to run on. So be prepared to kill all your windows activities such as internet browsers, your current downloads and virus scanners etc. Believe me, nothing is more frustrating when quick reaction is required, but you simply can't focus because the frame animation is disturbed by other windows activities.

What irritates me most is that there is no beginner mode for inexperienced typists. Sure you can switch the game's difficulty to very easy, but that doesn't give you more time to complete the sentences or more chances to recover from typing errors. No, this only makes the words a little shorter but it is still required to react quickly. I kind of hate it. How would you like this if I said to you it is not necessarily to play the guitar, but still you have to play a tune without making a fault and you had to play the melody in time? It is that stupid.

Another point is the annoying boss battles. Thankfully you can skip a lot of the worthless cutscenes, but not when you encounter a boss. When this gargoyle appears you cannot press away his monologue and this monster you will be fighting next takes so many moments of grunting animation that it is destroying it's replay value. It doesn't help either that you have to defeat them.. err...TWICE!

Another problem is that once you progress through the stages you can get exhausted. There are so many tough words on the normal setting and due to quick required typing I usually need to take a break after the third or fourth stage. You can play the game stages in a different order, but the last ones are locked so you need to play this game if a rush if you would to like to complete it. And why do you have to enter a name for a high score every time you complete a stage? It is so annoying, wouldn't it be good idea if they waited a little while and let you do this when the game is over? Here again I must conclude that the lack of a real easy mode damages some of it's replay value.

Things to keep in mind is that you need a good keyboard for this and second you need to configure your keyboard setting to US or UK because this game doesn't support EURO keyboards. There will be a lot of words that require the special keys in this game, and you are simply screwed if some special characters don't correspond to the your keys.

The Bottom Line
Despite all my complaining (hey somebody had to say it), this is a great game for all typing masters out there. Think you are good at typing? Then this game is definitely a challenge. In these days it is quite an original game so please be sure not to miss this. Also be aware that this is not meant to learn typing but only for those who already have typing skills.

Windows · by tante totti (14) · 2007

This quirky and clever "Port" is a fun time waster

The Good

  • Ingenious and clever idea
  • Some of the stuff you type is inane and hilarious
  • Boss fights are still challenging and get more creative down the road
  • The quirky charm found in the awful acting and story is still intact
  • Multiple difficulty modes and drills help shape less skilled typists


The Bad

  • Just as short as the original arcade game
  • The alternate paths are harder to find
  • No ability to change graphics settings means you are stuck in software mode
  • You have to modify a file to get the blood working right
  • Network mode is a hassle to set up and there is no other way to have two players
  • You have to Ctrl+alt+Del to quit the game


The Bottom Line
If you've ever been to an arcade in the 90s, you've no doubt run into a House of the Dead cabinet. House of the Dead was arguably one of the best Arcade gun games, thanks to exciting gameplay and bad but hilarious acting and translation. The series has always had a strange and quirky charm about it. Being popular it was ported to home consoles and these ports were fine enough, assuming you owned the gun for your Saturn. The games simply aren't as fun without a gun.

Sadly, this truth is what ruined the DreamCast port of House of the Dead 2. Unfortunate timing meant that the port was released shortly after the Columbine Massacre, and I don't think anyone will argue that it probably wasn't the best time to release a gun - no matter how fake - into the market. This meant there was no gun and they removed compatibility with the Japanese gun, meaning you had to import both the Japanese gun and the Japanese version of the game to play it that way. Luckily though when porting the game to the PC Sega had an idea.

That idea evolved into The Typing of the Dead. It's an absolutely absurd idea but believe it or not... it works. The Typing of the Dead is an ingenious way of making a rail shooter fun without the gun, and is a wholly unique idea on its own. The game is a direct port of House of the Dead 2, the difference being that instead of guns you have keyboards. Instead of killing zombies with bullets, you kill them with words.

That's right. This is a typing tutor. If it weren't for the violence and gore, I'd encourage schools to use this. It would certainly be more fun than Mavis Beacon. The game has drills, which help you build your typing skills as well as give you some extra challenges and the game also has a boss mode which allows you to practice on bosses. Then of course there is the game itself which can be played one of two ways, "Original" or "Arcade."

They are more or less the same, but in Original mode you have an inventory of up to 5 items such as tranquilizers, Molotov cocktails, and sulfuric acid to help you along the way. Original mode also has a challenge at the end of each level that will award you up to 5 coins, if you successfully get all 5 coins you will unlock new challenges as well as bonuses like the ability to start with a few extra lives or carry a couple Molotov's from the get go.

Arcade mode doesn't have the inventory and all items are activated immediately, you also don't get coins or anything like that. You just try and get the highest score on each level and then enter your initials.

Blasting zombies with your keyboard is just as fun as it is with the gun, and it helps that some of the phrases they have you type are just as inane and bizarre as the terribly translated dialogue the game was already notorious for. The boss fights also get clever, the level 3 boss asks you questions and you have to type the correct answer or get bitten. The level 4 boss is my favourite. Really all you have to do is type his sentences, but his sentences are absolutely hilarious. He often likes to talk about things, be they ribald anecdotes about his girlfriend, his favourite restaurant, or even philosophical questions about life. Sadly I can't memorize all his lines, but trust me once you get to him you will be laughing too.

The games biggest flaws are its length, visuals, and some truly lazy programming. There is no ability to change graphics settings, so you are always locked at 640x480 with software graphics. Computers at the time were perfectly capable of making the game look like it did in the Arcade or the Dreamcast and an option would have been nice, since the game is heavily pixellated and looks more like it belongs in the year '96 rather than the year 2000. You also cannot quit the game without using Ctrl+Alt+Del. I know this is a silly argument, but there's also the issue with the blood. The game retains an M rating, it should give us blood. Instead zombies fall over into bubbling pools of nothing and while their corpses blow apart there is no detail. The blood IS in the game, and it IS supposed to be visible and there is an option for it in the menu; but unless you modify some game files you won't get blood. At least they let you pick your poison while you modify said files and let you have green goo zombies or ketchup red ones.

It's also a shame that you can't just plug in a second keyboard and play with a friend. In arcade mode a "Player 2: Press Enter" button always flickers, but it is only for effect. To be fair this came out before USB keyboards were common and computers very rarely came with two Keyboard ports and the Mice ports rarely seemed to recognize a secondary keyboard. You can play multiplayer, but you have to do it through Network mode and a second computer.

The length of the game is also crippling. To be fair, it is because the game was designed for arcades and as such was designed in a manner that you could beat the game in one go once you had a good aim and so that it wouldn't take a player forever to beat. However, this means that the game can be beaten in a mere hour and a half and for a PC game that is much too short. The various modes, alternating paths, and drills/boss modes help balance it out and there is no denying the game is fairly replayable whenever you need a good time waster, but it would've been nice if they had added a few levels. Hell, what would've really been cool is if they had The House of the Dead part 1 in the game as well. You'll have to make do with what you have though.

Typing of the Dead is good fun, and whether you are an elite typist or a newbie trying to get up to scratch, Typing of the Dead is a smart port of a good arcade game that also serves as a very entertaining typing tutor and the novelty and quirkiness of the concept is handled very well. You can download the game off of GameTap and I'm sure there are still copies lying around on the net. There is also a sequel, that is also a ton of fun, but sadly if you don't have a Japanese keyboard and knowledge of the Japanese language as I do, you are out of luck with #2.

Windows · by Kaddy B. (777) · 2010

The greatest typing tutor ever programmed.

The Good
This game is hilarious. Basically, it's the same game as House Of The Dead II, except that instead of guns, our heroes are equipped with Dreamcast backpacks, giant Duracells, and chest-mounted keyboards. You are attacked by various undead horrors, and in order to kill them, you must rapidly type the words on the little signs on their chests! The horrible voice acting from HOTD2 actually becomes part of the comedy attraction here, while you furiously try to work your words-per-minute up, and typos can be deadly... Lots of little surprises; items that can be found include the Bighead mod and the Zombie Suit (which makes your character appear to be a zombie). NOT serious at all... but a great motivator for learning to type!

The Bad
HOTD2 is an arcade port; it's basically a shooter on rails. You make very few decisions (although if you save certain people along your path, they will provide you with special items, or allow you to take a different path). But, since this is a typing tutor, not an adventure game, this hardly makes a difference.

The Bottom Line
This is a crummy PC port of an Arcade game that was once a Dreamcast game... or it's the funniest, goriest, most-fun typing tutor ever made. Take your pick.

Windows · by Dr.Bedlam (55) · 2002

[ View all 5 player reviews ]

Trivia

1001 Video Games

The Typing of the Dead appears in the book 1001 Video Games You Must Play Before You Die by General Editor Tony Mott.

M-Rated

Quite possibly the only M-rated typing game (or edutainment for that matter).

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Contributors to this Entry

Game added by Alan Chan.

Arcade added by Kohler 86. Dreamcast added by Adam Baratz. Macintosh added by Ms. Tea.

Additional contributors: Indra was here, J. Michael Bottorff, lasttoblame, DURIAN, Gordon Chang, FatherJack, ZeTomes.

Game added February 5, 2001. Last modified January 2, 2024.