It's hard to find someone who has not played House of the Dead,

Sega's shooter franchise that debuted in 1996 in the Arcades and Sega Saturn,

and had its latest version for Wii,

with subtitle Overkill and launched in 2009.

The success of the games of the series allowed various appearances of the franchise in the company's other games,

and even a poor quality film directed by our friend Uwe Boll.

But many people are unaware of one of the most brilliant initiatives from Sega,

that mixed the concept of rail-shooter with typing game,

released for the Arcade, Dreamcast and PC in 2000.

This game is called Typing of the Dead, and you will know it better here!

Typing of the Dead was developed by Smilebit, old AM6,

and is the kind of madness that only Sega could finance.

The premise of the game is to unite the shooting mechanics of the original with those typing games,

which are usually very boring.

But the mix here is made perfect, because to kill every monster,

you must correctly type the word that appears on the screen,

before the zombie comes to attack.

Each letter typed is equivalent to a shot,

and the speed and the amount of errors in typing directly influences your progress in the game.

The coolest thing is that Typing of the Dead is a totally sarcastic game that laugh at itself at all times,

with words and phrases simply ridiculous,

totally meaningless and out of context,

which causes several involuntary laughter throughout the game.

Adding this to the dated 3D graphics of the 90s,

one of the worst dubbing of games and characters armed with a keyboard attached to a Dreamcast on their backs,

you have a game so crude that it ends up being very funny.

The boss fights are worth mentioning,

since each has a different strategy,

as this one that requires fast typing of totally stupid sentences,

or this creature with three heads that makes a lot of questions,

forcing the player to type the correct answer.

Further, some mini-games appear during stages,

which brings a little more variety to the gameplay and makes things a little easier,

as they reward players with items that come in handy against bosses soon after.

In addition to the Arcade mode, Typing of the Dead also features the Original Mode,

where the player can get items and medals to enable other things in the game,

the Boss Rush, which as the name implies, allows playing against each boss;

the Drill Mode, with different types of exercises to practice typing,

and a Tutorial, which not only serves to show how the whole game works,

but also teaches you how to type correctly,

showing how the fingers should be placed on the keyboard and which ones must press each key.

That certainly shows that the game has its didactic side,

teaching in a very unusual way, since even the tutorial jokes with the player.

The only problem is really in relation to the language barrier,

since the whole game is in English,

and not everyone is familiar to quickly type words that are not from our native language.

Other than that, the game is perfect,

but if you have Windows 7 or Vista, be careful.

On these operating systems the game can even be installed normally,

however, for some reason,

the keyboard apostrophe is not detected in the game, in other words,

if any word or phrase that use the accent appears on the screen…

There's no way: you'll be beaten until the screen of Game Over and Continue appears.

But even with that it is possible to finish the game just fine.

The graphics, as we can see from the images of the Windows version,

are too much simple, because the original is from '98,

which helps the game to be light enough to maintain a maximum and stable frame rate without disturbing the gameplay.

The rough animations and simple scenarios help make things more 'trash'.

But the main thing it is the sound,

or rather, the voice acting of the characters.

With ridiculous sentences and total absence of interpretation,

I just wonder if the people at the time perceived how such things were rough.

But, in the case of Typing of the Dead,

this even helps to make the game even more funny.

In short, Typing of the Dead is super recommended.

It can be exhausting because the game requires concentration and constant reflections,

but still worth it.

The success of the game even allowed a release, years later, of a sequel based on the House of the Dead 3.

Unfortunately, Typing of the Dead II was restricted only to Japan,

which makes it impractical for us to try to play this version.

Anyway, the first game is easily found out there,

bringing a great typing practice, a good form of entertainment,

and a plenty of laughs, and with zombies!

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Produced by Rafael Fernandes
@rafafernandes64