Hands on Typing of the Dead, arcade edition

At Joypolis, Sega has something that I’ve never seen before, the Typing of the Dead as an arcade machine. I had to try it out so I popped in a coin and sat down banging away on the Dreamcast keyboard. This was the Dreamcast game with all the humorous references intact. Zombies attack with multicolored hammers and G runs around with a Dreamcast strapped to his back.

Of course this was the Japanese version of the Typing of the Dead, which meant you had to quickly type in romanji to kill zombies. In the two player mode things get a trickier. Words are longer and you have to race against the other player to get kills.

The Typing of the Dead sticks to its source material, the House of the Dead 2, but the boss fights are altered. At the end of the third stage a three headed hydra pops up and asks question that scrolls on the bottom of the screen. Three answers quickly pop up underneath the three heads and you need to type the correct response to damage the boss.

Surprisingly, Typing of the Dead was not the only arcade typing game in town. Right next to it was Lupin: The Typing, a remix of a Lupin the Third light gun game with Dreamcast keyboards. Lupin: The Typing follows the same “type or die” formula, except you recover a little health every time you type something without any mistakes. It follows the anime too with similar scenarios as the first few episodes broadcasted by adult swim.