Pros: A quirky new way to play HOUSE OF THE DEAD with tons of replay value!
Cons: It's just the same House of the Dead 2. No new creatures or levels.
The bottom line: Quite simply, this game makes typing the funnest thing to do ever!!
Dreamcast is so awesome and worth buying purely for games like this. Sega has taken a leap ahead of everyone and given us a SEGA-made arcade shooter that doesn't require a GUN! Possible??? YES! Because if you're armed with your dreamcast keyboard, you're armed with probably the most unusual and coolest firearm of all time!!!



Typing of the Dead is a very unique experience. Featuring the identical visual experience of dreamcast sleeper-hit House of the Dead 2, instead of using a light gun or moving a cross-hair across the screen with a game controller, both of which have been brought to us by SEGA at nauseum, the player actually plays the game entirely by use of the dreamcast keyboard controller, inserted in controller port A, while a controller and memory card are placed in port C. Then, as the game gets into gear, you'll notice that as each zombie begins walking towards you, there are letters and numbers across their bodies and as you type what you see across them, you realize that each character is a bullet that blasts each enemy apart! The player then immediately grasps a rush of adrenaline realizing how incredibly unusual and fun this kind of shooting is!

As the game progresses on, the letters immediately start to change to words that get longer and longer. From the middle of the 1st level on, you now understand how much of a typing wiz you have to be just to keep from dying!

Sega adds a lot of variety in this game to keep it interesting throughout. In the original game House of the Dead 2, you'd have to be very keenly aware of bonuses lying on the ground and be very quick to shoot them. In Typing of the Dead, bonuses will fly by you as being only a single letter or number to type. A health bonus on the ground will be a small "B" or "6" that will give a you a brief second to hurry and type it. Bonuses can be racked up and used later to save your life by using the F-keys (featured only in original mode).

Also, the bosses will add a little spice to the experience. The three headed dragon, for instance, offers some very clever multiple choice typing as a trivia question will pass along the bottom of the screen, and three answers will be on each of the three dragon heads above you! Warnings go out to all, this is dangerously fun!

As in House of the Dead 2 you get multiple pathways, the same applies here. And to get past any shortcut or to advance to certain parts of each level, how fast you can type will greatly decide your fate. And seriously, I once again mention that you will have to be one incredible typer to get far in this one! One of the final bosses you face, you take damage everytime you hit the wrong key!! So you not only have to be incredibly fast, but at least once, you'll have to be flawless!

Typing of the Dead also gives the player a hilarious journey into the senses of humour dwelling in SEGA's talented programmers. With words flying at you like "I like girls with nice jugs" and "Military Unintelligence" and "Saving it for marriage", you'll crack up often. Especially when facing later bosses, because since defeating them takes time, sentences typed will often be part of a long string of sentences that tell a story or give advice. To defeat the chainsaw swinging monster, I typed out 2 paragraphs talking to me about how to treat a girl on a date or how the programmer's girlfriend was unhappy to receive a pet rabbit in the mail because he forgot to poke holes in the box! But seriously, nothing can prepare you for what this game asks you at the final boss!!!


SEGA also has painstakingly made sure that this is a thoroughly enjoyable game. Afterall, some of us absolutely love to type and are nothing short of astonishing, but even typing can become a nightmare with all the punctuation and CAPS. To make things smooth, you don't have to worry about capital letters at the beginning of sentences, or spaces between words. And also, when I'm playing House of the Dead 2, using a gun can be more convenient because you can always point your gun really quick-like and fire off a swinging knife flying at you and get right back to blasting some zombies running towards you. Problem in Typing of the Dead though is that you can't type at the flying "W" heading towards you until you finish typing the sentence or word you started. Sometimes by the time you finish that long annoying sentence, that "W"'s already landed on your face! But what I recently realized is that you can press the "ESC" key at anytime to quit the sentence your typing so you can quickly get that little "W" and then get right back to typing that other sucker to death.

Plus, SEGA has also taken the honor of providing touch-type newbies with a fully complete typing teacher tutorial program (man, it's like middle school again!!). It gives you all the exercises and instruction on the home-key position, the other letters, the number keys, the shift keys, and all special keys. It gives you an effective lesson on how to locate them quickly, and then gives you many little drills and exercises with the option of working on your "5 worst keys" at the end. With absolute sincerity and seriousness here, this game could, without a doubt, be one of the best typing teaching programs for every middle school in the U.S.! Professionally helpful and educational, with arcade excitement! How brilliant would that be!?!


And this game keeps you coming back for everything. In Arcade mode, you go through the entire game of House of the Dead 2, typing your way to the end. Original mode offers the same experience but with the option of F-key powerups and "Gold Coin Challenges" to unlock special modes in the options menu. Boss Mode gives you the fun of going through each BOSS of the game and giving you your time ranking complete with statistics and overall power score. There's even a survival mode to see how long you can go against a swarm of zombies to beat records against other typers.

This game even sees fit to offer a 2-player mode to everything, including both Arcade and Original mode, where you'll fight side by side. Below each zombie is 2 copies of the word to type so whoever types it first kills him first. And imagine, if you will, a full out typing competition against someone else in TIME ATTACK!!!!


With it's fresh and original spin on the classic SEGA shooter and it's variety and brilliance in gameplay, Typing of the Dead is just something that you must own today. Easily one more die-hard reason to own a dreamcast, as it's the only place you'll find it!