Sega was always a pretty great arcade developer, but when they started to make the move to 3D, magic happened. The early 3D era was an awkward one for the medium, since the rule weren’t yet written for how games were supposed to work with the added depth. It was a new realm of possibilities. Some struggled, some strived, some failed, some succeeded. Sega did all of those things with infectious enthusiasm. Sometimes all in the same game.

At the turn of the millennium, they put out some of the most tantalizingly weird shit. Even the stuff with relatively normal concepts, such as OutRun 2 or Fighting Vipers, have bizarre edges to them. But Crazy Taxi? Space Channel 5? I can’t imagine how those games were even pitched.

And The Typing of the Dead? To my knowledge, there were no other typing test games outside the edutainment sphere. But someone looked at The House of the Dead 2 and thought, “You know what would make this better? A keyboard.”

And they were right.

WE’RE MEETING G OVER THERE

Yeah, so, Typing of the Dead is a bizarre alternate universe House of the Dead 2. The lightgun is ripped from your hands and replaced with a keyboard. Not, like, a piano keyboard – not a clavier – but a typing keyboard. Hence the name. It was originally released in arcades. I played it at a Sega game centre in Japan. It’s a cabinet with a keyboard. Nothing surprising. It was all in Japanese, though, but thankfully I know all my kana.

Otherwise, it’s House of the Dead 2. You fight zombies and mutants, but instead of shooting them with bullets, you type words. The plot is the entirely unchanged. It involves the “dogs of the AMS” fighting against an insane financier. Incredible.

The two main modes are “Arcade” and “Original,” which is vague nomenclature, but Sega did this format all the time with their console ports. Arcade is a close facsimile of the experience you’d get standing at a keyboard in a smoke-filled Japanese game centre. Original is similar, but tweaked slightly for home audiences. There are items you pick up to help things along. You can also win coins for certain feats, which unlock modifiers that can be applied to later runs.

On top of that, in both modes, there are alternate routes that open up when you save people. As far as I can tell, the other routes don’t change much aside from scenery, but that’s nice enough when playing repeatedly.

SUFFER LIKE G DID?

Now, I’m a solid typist. I like typing. It’s somewhat meditative for me, just letting loose on the keys. What’s important to know about Typing of the Dead is that it isn’t a typing tutor. It’s an arcade game, and sucking quarters is in its blood. So it doesn’t matter your WPM, things will get tough.

It has a habit of hitting you with words that you probably don’t type very often, such as “ukulele.” Sentences will sometimes include insidious puns just to throw you off. Unusual punctuations, such as “…” gets sprinkled throughout. Not only do you have to type fast, you also need to read fast and be able to quickly translate that into finger movements. One boss asks you trivia questions, and you have to find the answer among multiple choices and then type it out. It means that even someone who lives at their computer and types thousands of words a day like myself can feel challenged.

Sometimes, it’s a bit unfair. The difficulty seems to scale based on how well you’re doing, and if you’re doing really well, it can get to the point where it simply doesn’t feel like you’re given enough time to react. Wait. Now that I write that out, “It gets more challenging until it’s too difficult” sounds obvious.

DON’T COME! DON’T COME!

Okay, well, how ‘bout this: Typing of the Dead doesn’t do a very good job at communicating attack order. Strategically, you’d want to take out the zombie that is more primed to attack, but the only way to tell if an attack is impending is the borders of the text boxes turning from green to red. Not only is it not communicated well, it’s not consistent. It’s not a smooth gradient from one state to the next. A box can stay fresh for multiple seconds before abruptly turning ripe.

And if you begin typing one phrase before realizing that another is more imminent, there’s no way to switch boxes until you’re done typing the whole phrase. You have to finish what you started on, even if some other zombie is bashing you in the face. Wait a minute, I’m not totally sure about that. Let me look it up…

No, you can’t change text boxes.

That can be interpreted as just one more thing you need to keep track of – a legitimate way to add to the challenge. But on rare occasions, more than one box will start with the same letter, and there’s no way to choose which one you’re starting. It seems very arbitrary. However, I haven’t seen it happen very often. When it does, it feels unfair and will almost certainly result in losing your streak. That bites.

IN TIME, YOU’LL FIND OUT WHO’S RIGHT

Just a warning: Typing of the Dead doesn’t require capital letters or spaces. By “doesn’t require,” I mean you actually get penalized if you hit the space bar. That kind of sucks. I wish there was an option for that.

But that’s all boring anyway. The typing isn’t what makes Typing of the Dead so incredible, it’s the bizarre sense of humour. The agents of the AMS don’t carry guns in this version of House of the Dead 2. Instead, they wear Sega Dreamcasts with giant AA batteries on their backs with keyboards slung in front of them. Their arms are perpetually locked pantomiming a T-rex. Sometimes you’ll pick costumes up in the environment that replaces your character with a zombie or a balding man. Since it’s first-person, you might not even realize it until a cutscene kicks in.

House of the Dead 2 was pretty strange already. It takes place in what seems like a cross between Japan and Venice… Wait, I just looked it up. It’s actually supposed to be Venice. Then why are the cars right-hand drive? I didn’t even mean to bring that up as a point of weirdness.

It does sort of highlight the awkwardness of the production. The voice acting is legendarily bad. It’s so hilariously godawful that it leaves me wondering if it was intentional. I figured they might be striving for a B-movie feel and shot past it. Surely, even if they grabbed some American executives that were visiting the office that day and shoved them in a recording booth, they’d be able to do a better job. Then I remember the voice acting in Shenmue, and that game definitely wasn’t trying to be funny.

But I don’t know how a voice actor gets asked to yell, “Don’t come! Don’t come!” and doesn’t mention to the director that it isn’t something people would exclaim when a zombie is bearing down on them. It doesn’t even sound like a Japanese speaker pronouncing it phonetically. It’s absurd, but it’s some of the funniest shit I’ve ever heard.

DON’T UNDERESTIMATE THE ENEMY

It’s so amazing. Typing of the Dead is so amazing. Something this amazing shouldn’t be possible. It takes a game that is already uncomfortably weird and merges it with a typing test. It should be acceptable – even preferred – for me to put my high score on my resume.

Typing games are a bit more common now, but I’m not sure any have topped this. Even House of the Dead: Overkill was inspired to spin itself into Typing of the Dead: Overkill on PC. That’s a different kind of weird. A more intentional sort of weird. It’s not quite the same. I’m also not sure how the House of the Dead remake hasn’t received a typing spin-off. There oughta be a law.

For that matter, Sega would do well to re-release the PC version of Typing of the Dead. I don’t know why that’s such a big ask. It’s important. A weird little game that made a big impact on everyone who played it. It’s a wonderful reminder of when the company was bursting with creativity while hemorrhaging money. 

9/10

This review was conducted on PC using an archival dump of the game. Seriously, Sega, I’ll pay. Just put it out there.