Reviews from

in the past


House of the Dead 2 is a titan, having turned 25 years old TODAY. So what changes when you add typing combat, keyboard devices to every character model, and a slew of nonsense phrases and challenge modes?

Well you get a slightly worse but infinitely funnier experience that pairs well with the title without outdoing it (which it wasn't seemingly aiming to do so mission accomplished). How fast can you type the phrase "Pierre, the ambiguous hipster of 1848"? It's dadaist word vomit and Dreamcast polygons...two of my favorite things in the world and a match made in hell.

Silly rail shooter with speed-typing controls that is quite fun to play through in spite of its age mostly due to the lack of similar games.
+ entertaining one-hour-long "story" mode with quick pacing
+ obviously dated yet fitting visuals featuring grotesque monster designs
+/- super cheesy writing and hilariously bad voice acting
- a little obnoxious music (which is fine for a short time)
- no space inputs or capitalization required
- unintuitive main menu
- words sometimes obfuscated by the HUD
- randomized sentences with frequently disproportional difficulty
- no persistent save data

25 years have passed since the release of Typing of the Dead and it's still the best typing game ever made

Single best edutainment game of all time. Probably played through the campaign at least a dozen times. Infinitely re-playable, arcade-style, score chasing typing game. Good humor and dumb-fun.

This is not Mario Teaches Typing.


Honestly, though, was there something wrong with the guy who played Goldman? Who talks like that?

I'm pretty sure this game is hitting on me.

Played during the Backloggd’s Game of the Week (12th Sep. – 18th Sep., 2023).

Often described as one of the best games for improving typing skills, The Typing of the Dead takes its cue from existing software, while adding a fresh twist with its rail shooter heritage and quirky humour. Although typing software has been available to the general public since the early 1980s, its form has always been fairly rigid, often using the figure of a real-life teacher – Mavis Beacon became a familiar figure in schools and among American children in the 1990s. Those aimed at a more childish audience certainly made use of well-known mascots, such as Typing is a Ball, Charlie Brown (1985), or claimed to be adventure games, such as Granny's Garden (1983). A decade later, The Typing of the Dead was a seriously addictive title that took full advantage of its arcade nature.

While the title starts off in an almost academic manner with its Training Mode, which teaches the home position to promote effective touch-typing, the game leans immediately towards the silly approach of The House of the Dead 2's (1998) script, with the voice acting as ridiculous as ever and a gothic horror that hardly takes itself seriously with the Dreamcast and keyboard equipment of the characters. The first words the player encounters are quite simple and short, but the difficulty increases until the zombies have to be felled with idioms that are about twenty characters long. The expressions chosen are reminiscent of the Phrases in Wheel of Fortune (1975) and add to the absurd atmosphere of the title. Their juxtaposition – for example, 'It's only a job', 'Surgical knife' and 'Hard luck woman' – also mimics the puns in the Japanese version, which constantly plays with homophonic kanji: for example, 愛だは for the 間は locution.

The Typing of the Dead proves to be a particularly well-honed title that is hard not to like. The difficulty curve is very accessible, but offers a real challenge on the highest difficulties, testing accuracy, reflexes and endurance – which the player can further pursue in the Drill Mode. It is a shame, however, that the selection of expressions, apart from those using special characters, is primarily a matter of translating the absurdity of Japanese puns rather than a genuine attempt to improve performance on certain parts of the keyboard: the game does identify the keys with which the player has the most difficulty, but there is no dedicated mode to improve specific areas such as using a single hand or words typed only on the upper row. Nevertheless, The Typing of the Dead is an effective, charming game that delivers exactly what its concept suggests.

The House of the Dead series is probably one of my most favorite series of all time. I also love typing games. I've only ever been able to emulate this game, which has occurred intermittently over the last five years or so, but every time I come back to it I have a blast. All of the original charm of House of the Dead 2, plus even more unrestrained wackiness and humor. Not only is it enjoyable for the silliness, but genuinely challenging and very difficult at times, keeping me pretty glued. I love how easy it is these days to use my normal keyboard to play it in an emulator, and I can see myself coming back to this as long as I live.

House of the Dead is an inherently campy series, so this game goes full on and embraces the camp to its utmost extent. Out with guns, in with keyboards, with the in game models adjusted accordingly. The projectiles that zombies throw at you are also now comical weapons like plastic hammers and frying pans rather than blades, there is no semblance of seriousness here. It knows that it's a version of house of the dead where you kill enemies by typing words on a keyboard, and it plays that to its strength.

You'd think that something like this would be really gimmicky, but it's actually kinda crazy how well the core feelings of HoTD translate over to ToTD. Speed and accuracy are still an absolute must for survival, just now instead of quickly aiming and firing gunshots, it's all about accurate and fast typing. There's still a solid sense of thrill to it, though I did notice from playing this back-to-back with the regular game that they adjusted a lot of zombie placements to have more things to type. The difficulty is also rather inconsistent, as it's really all up to the luck of whether or not the game will spit out an easy-to-type phrase on enemies that will give you enough time to type the whole thing out. Couple that with the lack of any real ability to switch targets once you commit to typing, and sometimes a stray projectile can cost you a life that you otherwise would have been able to save. It's goofier House of the Dead with some minor pacing differences.

I remember back when I got this game I thought that this was all I could ever need in the series, that nothing else in the house of the dead series could ever be as good as this so I shouldn't even bother. Ironically, I think by now after playing both games a solid amount of time, I've grown to actually prefer killing zombies with a gun over a keyboard. So while this game is still a genius idea with solid execution, don't be like me and have this be all you play in the series for several years.

Sometimes the simplest of ideas can become one of the greatest and it shows with this game.

What originally started as an arcade game turned into an iconic console port and then somehow hit our personal computers at the very end of its life cycle. We all know it, we know that it's the Dreamcast backpack game with funny voice acting and gameplay, this game had a rent-free place in my head for years and I finally took the bait and thought "It's time for Kino".
And oh so right I was to finally check this game out since it's probably the most fun typing game you can find! This game doesn't really try to teach you how to type, it sure has some tutorial/lesson modes but outside of that the main campaign doesn't fuck around and they expect you to know how to type like a pro dammit, it's no Mario teaches typing or whatever that pokemon thing was about on DS.

So what's so great about this game in particular? Nothing much to be honest, other than the hilariously bad presentation and cutscenes it's just a typing game but it actually tries to be a game unlike the other typing game you can find, it follows the gameplay of The House of the Dead since it's a not very subtle spinoff as you can notice with the title where you just kill zombies on an on-rail shooter game but without light guns this time.
In terms of difficulty the game overall feels fair, it's not really tough most of the time when you know your way with a keyboard, when you fail it feels frustrating but you always know that it's your fault and not the game. Tl;dr type better.

Story wise this game has nothing to offer if you actually expect something, it's just some dumb Evangelion whacky story about human sin and we must erase humanity with zombies because Resident Evil 5 Wesker moment.

If I had to name a few complaints about the game it would just be the bosses, they kinda suck, especially the boss in stage 3 where you have to answer questions in a minuscule amount of time it's ridiculously bad. The game is also really short, it barely takes an hour to get through it but it's an arcade game so it is to be expected.

So should you play this game, if you are here you probably already did actually but if you haven't, go for it since you won't get a game like that anytime soon.

One of the best games made even better (and funnier)! A hilarious and actual functional training tool for typing with a good sense of humor. Very fast, very intense.

Top notch voice acting, ten out of ten.

This game is really fuckin' fun though, it's a lot more stricter on the errors unlike TToTD: Overkill, but it doesn't make it any less enjoyable. The dated graphics make up for a lot of its charm too. Common 90s-2000s Sega W game.

Try beating this game on the hardest difficulty using only one credit, that shit is hard as balls, and gets dependent on the RNG you get to type words. It took me like fuckin' ten tries to do that.

I beat this game without using the homerow keys to spite my typing teacher who gave me a C in middle school

The Typing of the Dead is a clever twist on The House of the Dead 2. It's incredibly fun to type away and kill zombies, and the experience is basically just The House of the Dead 2, but with funny keyboards on everybody. Worth experiencing at least once.

I'm the typing GOD dude get on my LEVEL dawg

i wish i had a way to play this on a real dreamcast with real dreamcast keyboards, how did they make typing so fun and only do it one other time

In general I consider myself a pretty fast typer. I was always the first or second to finish my typing assignments back in school so I thought this game would be dead easy... The game itself isn't hard by any means but it gets harder and harder to type consistently the more it made me laugh due to the goofiness. Also the dreamcast keyboard is trash.

Which one sucks blood?
-Mosquitoes
-Bears
-POLITICIANS


Look, I know I picked the wrong option, but deep down you know I'm right.

DAMN YOU GOLDMAN AND MY CLUMSY FINGERS!

BACKLOGGD GAME 'O THE WEEK SEPT. 12-18 2023!!!!!

First one of these I've joined in, but I've been keepin' an eye on the scene for a minute. This game's pretty damn weird, really loved playing it. Throwing in a session of some arcade-y bullshit between the work hours makes for some fun I find.

Game constantly threw me for loops, though, even though every single aspect of it is so straightforward. They really got creative with the gameplay limitation of the typing mechanic, it's damn admirable, honestly. Not sure if you've played House of the Dead in a hot minute, it's real goofy on it's own, damn fun play back in like 2009 for me when I'd spend like 3 hours walking to and from the local arcade. This takes that shit to another level, though, with an inscrutable gameplay system thrown over it with very little explanation. I guess shooting zombies with my typewriter isn't any less believable than an infinite ammo pistol like the OG, though, but it's just confusing since the game clearly anticipates you'll have a pistol in every cutscene (including one funny lil moment where you shoot something in a cutscene and a gunshot-like effect comes from your chest-mounted keyboard).

It's got some good balance to it, too, can't lie! I have a notoriously fast typing speed, but I'm still prone to mistakes, so on the harder difficulty mode this posed a challenge a game technically hasn't for me before: "Are you a bad enough dude to type 70 words per minute, lady?"

Anyway, go check this shit out if you're ever interested. And also like original House of the Dead. Lightgun games rock.

fun way to practice fast typing though shows its age and can be a bit tedious

killer7 meets sonic adventure meets 6th grade computer class

sometimes it just takes 1 change to turn a pretty fun game into an all out masterpiece


How do I tell people that I learned to get better at typing by killing zombies?

an all time best concept. makes me laugh every time. mario teaches typing clutching her pearls.
they would go to give overkill the Typing Of treatment, and i’m truly thankful for 2 of these bizarre games, but never forget where u came from

no reason for this to be so adrenaline-pumping

Type to Learn Zombies edition, but no seriously this game is a lot of fun.