The Typing of the Dead for Dreamcast Review

You’ve probably played House of the Dead, by Sega, and it’s number of sequels. You probably saw the movie based off the video game. But have you honed your typing skills by playing The Typing of the Dead?

What the Heck is This?—Gameplay

The Dreamcast came out with a keyboard so that it was easier to surf and type things into the Internet. Sega decided to expand the keyboard capabilities by making The Typing of the Dead, which is the same basic game of House of the Dead, but you use the keyboard to type in words and phrases to kill the zombies. No light gun, no controller. As zombies come at you, a word or phrase will appear and you have so many seconds to type it in. If you fail, you lose a life. The words range from a single letter (easy difficulty) to complicated ones like ‘xylophone’ (expert). The phrases are quotations or famous lines from books, etc.

And if you’re curious, the story is the same as House of the Dead 2 where you pick a chapter, play through the mission and defeat the boss. Your result's screen scores you on accuracy, speed, and difficulty.

Same Old Stuff--Graphics

The graphics are a direct port from the arcade version, so don’t be too impressed. They’re adequate for the Dreamcast, though the actual characters, bosses, and background are a little blurry at times. Besides, you’re more concerned about the letters anyhow and as long as you can see them, that’s what counts.

Control and Sound

I can’t really say to much about the control since the game moves you along predetermined paths and you don’t have to move anything else. Just type and then move on. Keeping your eyes peeled for the word and phrases is your main job.

The sounds are good. Zombies shuffle along with heavy feet, and the gunshot that sounds is like any other House of the Dead gunshot. The main issue with the voice-overs is that they are over-dramatic, but this is a problem with a lot of video games and The Dead series isn’t immune.

Thompson’s Two Cents

When the Dreamcast was King, I was their fan of interesting games. The Typing of the Dead was right up my alley for the simple fact I had a keyboard, I loved the House of the Dead games, and it just looked like a lot of fun. After a few minutes I was hooked on this game. My wife, who’s not a video game fan, started playing it and loved it.

Of course, she couldn’t keep up with my 110 words per minute (according to the game).