We can all agree that video games are rad, right? I mean, even TC down there in all his frustrated Mario glory WANTS to feel the love. So yeah, vids are awesome.

I only hit one or two arcades while in Tokyo, but!, the first one I hit—Namcoverse or Namcoworld or Namcoland in Shinjuku—had the best game ever. It’s of course old-hat and you’ve all probably seen/beaten/yawned by now, but, well, finding this game for me was like finding the long-lost other half of some kind of magic necklace or something.

The Typing of the Dead is a simple House of the Dead mod. Easy as that. Given the proclivity for zombies around here, I’m guessing that you’re familiar with some form of the House of the Dead lightgun-terribly acted-yes more zombies-crazy big bozz-insert more tokens-rinse-repeat franchise. It’s OK. Pretty cool when the only other alternative is Tekken (not hating) and Driving games.

So yeah. You can guess where it goes from there. Instead of shooting zombies with your gun, you shoot them with your full keyboard. Scoring flawless type-words scores you PERFECT scores on each zombie, and if you screw up, you’ve got to get on track before the zombie comes and (de-)brainz thee.

I love to type. It’s one of the things in life that I’m *actually* good at. BUT! When I was in Jr. High, we had Mavis Beacon Teaches Typing. This is pre-Windows 3. It was awful. And boring. They had some totally lame ‘game’ that had some very weak pole-position style graphics wrapped around a typing test. None of us were buying that shit. THIS, though, would have me typing up a storm in school. They should use this to teach kids to type.

You know, on the computers they don’t have in the classroom, in the classrooms they don’t have, staffed by teachers who aren’t paid.

I guess that’s one for another day.

Meantime: Type or Die. You know you want to.