Ep.131 – Keyboard Warriors

90 99 sega released one of their more unique arcade cabinets, typing of the Dead. It was a remake of their wildly popular zombie shooter, House of the Dead, but with a twist. You see, it replaced a light gun with a standard keyboard. So instead of pointing a gun and shooting the zombies, you now had to type them out of existence. Typing tutor software had existed for 20 years, the kind that tries to teach you how to type by making a game out of learning process. But Typing of the Dead, well, it was just trying to kill zombies using words. It was an actual typing video game and the beginning of something very different. Today we're going to learn all about the history of the typing game genre as well as touch typing, typewriters and keyboards as we look at the complete history of Typing of the Dead and many other games throughout the genre's history. So stick around and join us as we increase our words per minute on today's trip down Memory Card Lane. Good morning, good afternoon and good evening. I hope these words find you happy and well. Hello and welcome to the 131st episode of our video game history podcast, a Trip Down Memory Card Lane. Each week we'll tell you a story about one topic relevant to the current week in gaming history. Give me about a game, a console, a person, a technology, just something relevant to the current week. While doing so, while telling you its story, we hope to teach you something new about the topic. What it took from the world as its inspiration or what it gave back to the world as its legacy. Today we're going to learn all about the history of typing games, starting with its educational roots in the lending itself into some of the more interesting titles today. I'm David Cassen and as always I'm joined by my co host who I think still types out using the hunt and peck method. He's my brother Rob Caston. Rob, you know there's keys other than was d, right?

Yeah, but I have to look and see what they are.

I don't know if I've ever actually seen complete sentences from you before.

No, because I don't type, I just talk.

True statement. Very true. Don't we all. This wouldn't be very much fun as a typecast, I don't think. That would be Wikipedia be boring. People wouldn't listen because there'd be nothing to listen to.

Sure there would. Just the the clacking of the keys ASMR there you go.

No pass. That stuff creeps me out most of the time.

Agreed.

So what you been playing this past week?

Well, Dave, this week has seen a Rocket League, Runescape and a little bit of Factorio.

Nice.

How about yourself?

A little bit of rocket league. I know I played Runescape because I finished a single quest, the observatory quest. That's all I did.

Progress is progress.

And our usual melvore idol that's like a daily thing for me to check it. And I played a bunch of Atomic Heart, actually, so I did have time to play. Oh, I dusted off the old VR headset and dabbled around with a few random games there, but nothing of significance. But, yeah, mostly in Atomic Heart Week. It was a great game. It is a great game. Very BioShock. That's what people compare it to. That's best I could do. I get why people are having a hard time with it. It's really unfortunate because it takes place in an alternative future where the Soviet Union kind of won World War II, I think, or something along those lines. So it takes place in, like, a Soviet facility.

How do you not know you've been playing the game?

Well, the history isn't that clear, but you're definitely like a soldier in a Soviet facility, and it's really unfortunate for the developer that the world is what it is right now because Russia, the war in Ukraine, right. It leaves a bad taste over all things Russian for a lot of people who don't believe in that war. And that makes the game kind of hard to like sometimes, because you're like, you want to be all for your country, but in the game, your country is Russia, and you know what they are, but it's an alternative future. So it's weird. You really have to suspend your disbelief, basically, to enjoy it, but for what it is, it's great. I'm really enjoying the game. So I haven't played a single player story based first person shooter like it in a while, so it's kind of a nice change of pace. Yeah, that's what I have to say about that. Fun time is interesting. Well, I mean, it's a game pass game. If any of you are listening and you want to try it. Game pass, no risk. It's worth for me, it's worth it. I'm enjoying myself.

It's worth nothing. If you have game pass.

Yeah, if you have game pass, it's no risk. Typing games, do you ever play them in school?

Yes, I have, actually. There was one in particular I remember, though I do know that we will cover it in this, so I will wait till then to talk about it.

Right.

But I had one in school and then one much more recently than that.

Yeah, in the early 1850s. Yes, I said 1850s, john Jonathan Pratt worked as a Printer's Devil, which, in case you're curious what a Printer's Devil is, it's basically what an apprentice is called in printing shops. They kind of did everything. They did all the work you think of as an apprentice. But their official title back then, it was known as the Printer's Devil. So John Jonathan Pratt was a printer's devil and a reporter for the National Democrat newspaper in Center, Alabama. By the late 1850s, he was also serving as an editor for the Gadston Times newspaper. On top of also serving as a historian for Cherokee County, Alabama. So this was a whole decade of a lot of writing, right? Newspaper. Newspaper, historian. All this guy ever did was write, and that left him with basically just a lot of writers cramp. I don't know. I couldn't tell you the last time I had writer's cramp. How about you?

I don't write.

Yeah, we don't do a lot of writing anymore. So all this writing left it with writer's crap. Crap.

A little bit of both.

So the writer's crap inspired him to make a mechanical device so that he wouldn't have to write anymore. That that's that's where he got it from. So, in 160, he built a crude device that consisted of a set of knitting needles that had wooden blocks attached to them, and each of the wooden blocks had a metal type letter attached to it. So you would ink the letters and then manipulate the needles to imprint the letters onto a piece of paper. So, by the spring of 1863, he had developed this machine into a more refined version that would automatically print these letters onto a piece of paper. Now, he called this machine a tarot type, which means wing type, like tarot, dactyl, P-T-E-R-O terotype. And for all purposes, this was the first practical typewriting machine. But it wasn't called a typewriter. It was called many things when you go back and you look at it in writing and patents. It was called a patent printer. It was called a mechanical chirographer. Chiragrapher. Sorry. It took me a moment to get that word. It was noted as being an improvement in printing instruments for the blind, an improved handwriting device, or a mechanical typographer, among others. But again, it wasn't called a typewriter. We'll get back to that in a moment. So, Pratt was from Alabama, which here in the mid 1860s, was no longer part of the United States. It was a Confederate state. This was during the Civil War when the the Southern states succeeded from the United States. They were their own country technically at that point. So here Pratt, Alabama, unable to patent his invention for various reasons. One, illegally, there was no country to patent it with. The Confederacy wasn't organized that way. And two, he couldn't financially figure it out. So in order to support his invention, pratt sold all of his slaves. Yes, he had slaves 1860s, in the south and all of his property, land and otherwise. And he sailed to England in 1864. Here he moved to Glasgow, and he was able to apply for an English patent. It was granted patent number 3163 on December 1, 1866, under many of the various names I just brought up. So, in 1867, the London Engineering Journal published an article about the Tarot type. And this journal article was picked up by a bunch of other publications, but one among them that's important for our story is called the Scientific American. And one of the many people who read the Scientific American article on the Tarot type was an American inventor named Carlos S. Glidden. Now, a year prior to this, roughly about 1866, glidden had formed a partnership with Christopher Latham Scholes, who was a Wisconsin printer, and another local printer called Samuel Soul. Try freaking sorting that out. Christopher Schulz, Samuel Soul it fucking drove me bonkers when I was putting this all together. Christopher Latham Scholes had invented a device to assist with printing page numbers and books, serial numbers on tickets and so on and so forth. And Glidden, Carlos Glidden, the inventor, had stumbled across his device in his shop, in this printing shop, and he suggested that they redesign it to be able to print alphabetical letters, too. Now, a year later, they stumbled across, as they're trying to make this machine, they see this article in Scientific American describing the stereotype. And Glenn was like, hey, I think that this machine is cool, but it's overly complicated, prone to failures, and thought that he could do better. So they took Soul's page printing machine. They took a key from a telegraph machine, they modified it to print the letter W, and they put the two together as their first demonstration of their letter printing machine. But inspired by what they saw in the Scientific American article, by the end of 1867, they now had a model with a full alphabet numbers and some punctuation. And what they did was they used it to write letters to prospective buyers in the hope of selling the invention and getting word out about it. And someone actually took them up on it. It was a man named James Densmore. Now, they more commonly refer to this device as a typewriter. In the end, John Jonathan Pratt would have invented the first practical typewriter. But what we're talking about here now we're getting into is the first commercially successful typewriter, which was made here in the States by Shoals, Sole, and Glenn. It's called the shoals and glidden typewriter. So James Dennis Moore invests like, $600 into their business towards this. On June 23, 1868, they were granted a United States patent for what they named a typewriter, which was, again, what they used to describe their machines. So Densmore puts the money in, and they take the money in the patent, and they go up to Chicago. They're from Wisconsin. They go over to Madison, roughly Wisconsin. They go over to Chicago, they rent out a warehouse and set up a machine shop to go and manufacture these typewriters. And they manage to turn out a whopping 15 of them before the operation goes broke. They have to shut down and go back to Madison, Wisconsin. Damn right, 15. But they weren't done here. And largely the next decade is a lot of improvements on the typewriter. It was different people. One guy invented the print wheel, and one guy refined the keys and so all these inventors started taking this device and everyone started making their own version of typewriter. But Scholes, Sole and Glidden, they weren't done yet. They continued to refine theirs as well. So when Schulz invented the first typewriter, it was a piano like keyboard with letters arranged alphabetically between two rows. So the top row consisted of N through Z and the bottom row consisted of A through M. Now, the next version of this device consisted of four banked rows of buttons that you would press instead of the piano keys. But because of the way the machine was designed, an alphabetic arrangement of letters wasn't going to work whatsoever. So basically, they were on type wheels and if you press two adjoining letters in quick succession, these type wheels would collide with one another and jam the machine. Nice. So the keys in the device needed to be reordered. And what they did is they went to someone they knew who was actually a superintendent of a public school somewhere and they asked him to help them. And what they did was they performed an analysis of letter frequency in the English language and they reordered the letters based on their letter frequency. And they used some trial and error letters that were commonly appearing in alphabetical pairs, such as S and T were placed on opposite sides, so they were on different type wheels and wouldn't collide with one another. And in the end, what they came up with is pretty much the quirky key layout as we know it today. There is one exception, though, the layout that they came up with, the period where we know the period to be robbed and the letter R were switched. So period was in the middle of the keyboard and R was in the bottom right of the keyboard. So as the story goes, kind of famous story about it, the period and the R were switched so that salespeople who were demonstrating the typewriter could type out the word typewriter using the entire row of top keys. Oh, my God. Whether or not that's true, I don't know, but it's kind of stuck with history. So there you have it. That's how we got the Cordy keyboard. The Shoals Sole and Glidden typewriter was eventually refined and resold and became very popular. Actually, it was padded out to Remington. Like Remington gun. Remington. And I think the first mass produced typewriter was a Remington brand, but it was the Glitter soles and Shoal keyboard for all purposes. But yeah, they kept working at this and refining it and took their inspiration from the guy that actually invented the typewriter. And eventually they made the typewriter as we know it with the Cordy keyboard. Wow. And of course, this gave way to what's called touch typing, which is the style of typing that pretty much everyone, I'm assuming that's listening to this is going to be used to it's also known as blind typing, in which you? Well, I mean, there's no other way to put it. You type without using site, right? And touch typing was supposedly invented by a court stenographer from salt lake city named frank Edward McGurran. So, as this story goes, on July 25, 1888, an american man, frank Edward McGurran, who was reportedly in papers, noted as being the only person using touch typing at the time he won a decisive victory over Lewis trubb. Lewis trub was operating a calligraph which is similar to a typewriter using the eight finger method, like hunt and peck type. Eight finger method. Frank Edward McGurran beat him, wiped the pants off of him in a typing contest that was held in cincinnati. And the results of this contest were put on the front page of newspapers across the country. McGurran won $500 for one of the contest, which it listed 20. $19 was $13,000 in 2019. I'm sure it's like 20 grand now. But the result of this contest being won and this being all of the paper, this is supposedly where the new typing method called touch typing came from, which is what we use today.

Man can you imagine right now going back to this time and participating in that? With the amount of experience that we've had, I just trying to imagine how much quicker it would be, like I know.

No, I agree with you. We'll come to that, too. Yeah. So mcgurray won the contest, and blind typing or touch typing, became popular, and that's kind of what stuck and became the thing. I mean, obviously, to this day, which is good for us, it has been proven to be the most efficient it has been proven to be, like, one of the most efficient typing methods, because there still are other, like the devorac layout, for instance, and alphabetical layouts. There are other layouts, and the cordy has always proven to be the most efficient one, which makes sense when they base it on letter frequency in the most commonly used language in the world. As early as the 1870s, people were using teleprinter like devices to type and transmit stock market text data across telegraph lines. So they would use these telegraph devices, and they would tell what the stock market is doing, and that would relay the messages to a ticker machine that would print it out on ticker tape. That's where we get ticker tape from. And that's how, like, financial firms and banks and stuff would keep up with the stock market way back in and get that information from one place to the other. And as time progressed, the data that they were reporting was just becoming more and more complex. So the typewriter was evolving. These teleprinter devices were evolving. By the 1930s, we had evolved to key punch devices, which had keys for letters and numbers, not just the telegraph method. And the best way to look at teleprinter devices are key to punch devices. Rather, they were basically typewriters that transmitted data over telegraph lines, which is kind of crazy to think of. We had that as early as the 1930s. It's not the Internet, but for all purposes, it's data transmitting over data lines in the 1930s.

Pretty crazy, honestly.

I know. And of course, the earliest computers incorporated electric typewriter keyboards that no doubt use the cordy layout. So as computers became a thing through the then personal fifty s. Sixty S, and they started shrinking in the then the personal computer would have been about 1980 or so 81, I actually think was IBM PCs. Keyboards during that time just became the main input method for computers. And let's be honest, they've remained the main input method for computers even to this day. So that begs the question, how do you train generations of new users on how to become touch typists? Well, the first of all was classes. Frank Edward McGurin, the person who invented touch typing, supposedly was a court stenographer who also, coincidentally, taught typing classes. But as computers became more and more popular, computers began creating educational software that would actually teach people how to type on the computers themselves. It was basically training software for typists. Now, I tried to go back and find what the earliest educational typing piece of software that I could find. There's no straightforward, easy Wikipedia entry on this, and I'm sure out there someone can tell me it goes sooner. But in 1979 for the TRS 80 rob, do you remember what the TRS is?

I remember us talking about it. It was a personal computer that was developed by someone radio Shack. Yeah, the Radio Shack 80.

Tandy radio Shack 80.

So Radio Shack, not tandy.

Get out of here. Tandy Radio Shack. In 1979, a company called Imagine Producers developed a piece of software called the Typing Tutor, which was published by Microsoft. So it's Microsoft's typing tutor. Copyrighted in 1979 for the TRS 80. Image producers really didn't do much after that. They made a bunch of other TRS 80 games. That's about it. 1979 Microsoft typing tutor. In 1980 or 81, when the IBM personal computer came out, it was licensed and sold alongside IBM PCs as IBM Typing Tutor. I really went down the rabbit hole with this one. I watched a guy give a full demonstration on one of the first IBM computers of IBM Typing Tutor. Like 30 some minutes of just some guy doing IBM typing tutor. I can't get that time back. I'm sorry. Yeah, but over in Australia, there was a man named Noel McIntosh who bought an Osborne computer. Now, for those of you that don't know, OSBORNES were the world's first mass produced portable computer. They were really a flash in a pan. The Osbourne One released in 1081 alongside about when the IBMS came. IBMS weren't popular for a little bit longer, and at the height of its fame, osborne One was selling about 10,000 units a month, which is crazy, for 1981. And personal computers. I mean, these things were expensive. Throughout 1982, the Osbourne company was working on an improved version of their computer. In 1983, they started showing this version called the Osborne executive, to journalists. Now, what this caused was dealers basically wanted the executive wanted the second Osborne computer. So they started canceling their orders for the Osborne one in mass in anticipation for the new model. And Osborne couldn't produce the new computers without the money they got from selling the old ones. So losses started the mount, and the company went under. At least that version of the company went under in late 1983. So if you if anyone ever brings up the Osborne effect, that's it. It states that prematurely discussing future unavailable products damages sales of existing products. Fun little side note for you guys there.

It's crazy.

Yeah, I honestly frick they were built one, maybe two models, you know what I mean? I forgot osborne even existed. Osborne came out, and then IBM became a thing, and they were trying to tool themselves to make an IBM compatible PC. That's what everyone ended up having to do. They all want to do their own thing. And then IBM became like the popular one. And so instead of trying to beat them out, everyone ended up making different brands of IBM compatible computers. And that just kind of became it. So Macintosh couldn't find any software for the Osbourne that taught typing etiquette in Australia, so he decided to make one. This software was called Typequick. It came out in 1982 in Australia. In 1986, IBM Australia agreed to drop their own typing tutor program, which was, of course, Microsoft's typing tutor in favor of repackaging typequic under their own branding. So Typequic in Australia actually was the first title in Australia to actually have IBM branding on. It kind of little fun. Some of these little fun, like random pieces of trivia you get to learn when you do stuff like this, you know?

Right? Absolutely.

That same year, that company, which ended up being called Typequick, bundled Typequick with the Apple III. So it basically was everywhere, but mostly catered to business training businesses. And for all purposes, it was super, super popular. By 1997, Typequick had made about $25 million selling typing programs, which is not too Chevy. So naturally, in time, the software had to evolve. Right? They had to develop another piece of software. It was a more gaming oriented typing software. It was called Koala's typing adventure. Koala being Kewala. And that follows a make believe Koala bear through a magical kingdom where players learn to type through tutorials or other typing practice methods. It didn't sell as well, so they did some market testing on it. They found that parents didn't want to buy it because it was like, too gamey. So they repackaged it, and you can actually find it under a few other titles now with boring packaging called Typequick for students or successful typing for students, and they still sell a version of it to this day.

Damn, that's pretty good. Long lasting one there.

So you have IBM's Typing tutor or Microsoft's Typing Tutor. You have typequic. But during the early 80s, these weren't the other only companies to have typing software. Atari actually had a teaching game for software during the 80s. Now this was developed by David Bueller in 1982. Typo Attack, it was called, was basically a game designed to improve typing skills. Now. Typo attack was sold through Atari's program exchange. That was their mail order catalog, where people could order software through it. And people that didn't want to sell software themselves could work with the it's called the Apx Program. Tari Program Exchange, they could work with the Apx Program to get their software sold through mail order Atari. Each year, the Apx program had awards. One was for the Best Program, which awarded the game's creator a trophy at $25,000, and a 1982 Typo Attack, one game of the year in the Apx Program. Now, Puler was only 17 at the time. So $25,000 when you're 17, and 1982 is a freaking big deal.

Yeah, I know.

Even now, that'd be great for us, right? Yeah, you're right. Yeah, you're right, you're right. So you have all these typing software, and Tari's got the Typing game. And then here in the mid to late eighty s, you have a company that we've talked about before called the Software Tool Works. Now software tool works came into play. They are an educational software company. I think at one point we talked about them in the Oregon Trail episode, but in 1987, they released their own piece of software called Mavis Beacon Teaches Typing. Now, Rob, I'm going to assume, based on my experience, that this is the game that you know of, correct?

Yes, although the name is quite messed up.

Why? What is the name? What should it be?

It's Mavis bacon.

Yeah. I want it to be Mavis bacon. And of course, we've talked about this prior to this episode, and I call it Mavis Bacon, but it's actually Mavis Beacon. The name comes from Mavis Staples, who is the leader, singer of the Staples Sisters, and a beacon, a guiding light to teach people how to type. That's where they got the name from.

I didn't know there was a story behind it. That's very interesting.

And Mavis Beacon, the lady pictured, is not a real person. She's actually a I want to get the country wrong, I think South African model, French model. Don't hold me to the way she's a model who someone met coincidentally at a restaurant somewhere and tied her up with these people who liked her look. And they gave her the job to be Mavis Beacon.

Yeah, that is the one that I had prior experience with. Back in middle school, I did have a typing class. I believe it was Ms. Hornberger's class. And we had maybe speaking as our thing. And if I remember correctly, it was either that or there was another thing that we would do every day that would get you points in class. And with those points, you could either get, like those little stupid, slappy, sticky hand toys, other random things. I think maybe tech decks were in there, but the main thing was candy. So if you did well in typing class and you typed fast and correct, you could earn candy. And that's probably why I got sodium good at typing.

Well, coincidentally, I had the same class, like, ten years earlier. I don't remember if we have the same teacher. Admittedly, I don't remember any of my teachers, really.

If I remember correctly, ms. Hornberger was actually a dance teacher. Christie would have to correct me on that one. It might have been the other typing teacher.

My computer class was Ms. Samuel, I think, because I used to go in the lab before we went in there, and we had to put the floppy disks in the computers to load the software and type the commands in Dos. And I used to go in there earlier to help her load all the software on the computers. That's how old I am. Yes. So Mavis Beacon teaches typing. Do you remember what the draw to that was like? It was a game. But when you typed to what was it? Do you remember?

Wasn't it like a car that was driving?

It was absolutely a car that was driving, yeah, that's what I remember about it, too. Do you happen to remember how fast you typed back then at all?

80, 90, maybe?

Yeah, we were all in that same I think mine was like 78 to 80 somewhere. So that wasn't the only title to come out during this period. We learned recently, actually, in an episode about educational Mario games, about the game that was inspired by mavis Beacon Teaches Typing. And that would be Mario Teaches Typing. Now, Mario Teaches Typing was developed by Interplay Entertainment early in the company's history en route to their creation of the wasteland series. So I think we talked about it, too, in the Interplay wasteland episode because they went from wasteland to fall out. I don't know. But we've touched on Interplay a lot, and I know we touched on Mario Teaches Typing, which is basically just the guy had a thought, and the thought was like, what if I make Mavis Beacon with Mario? And that was it. They did. They made it. And these are all really great educational games, right? These are all games that teach you how to type. I mean, that's a fair statement for all of them, right?

Yeah, absolutely.

Around the year 2000, Rob, something kind of changed with this genre.

What's that, Dave?

We started to see actual video games in which typing is the main mechanic. Now, in the year 2000, roughly 1999, arcade 2000 was. I think Dreamcast released about this time in those years. Sugar released typing of the dead. The Typing of the Dead was a modification of their 1998 light gun arcade cabinet, the House of the Dead Two. And really what it did is it replaced the light gun with a computer keyboard. Had a very similar story, pretty much the same story, to be honest with you. But as the enemies advanced on you, you didn't shoot them with a light gun. Words would pop up on the screen above each enemy and you would have to type the letter, the word or the sentence in order to defeat the enemy. Have you ever seen Typing of the Dead?

I have not, no.

Oh, man. I remember actually stumbling across it as an arcade cabinet. Yeah, I remember stumbling across the arcade cabinet. It was weird to see something like that, I guess. And from there, Typing on the Dead kind of snowballed into something. In March of 2000, right here, 23 years ago, roughly, it was ported over to Dreamcast. In 2001, it was brought over to computers. They did a PC release and in 2004 even they ported it over to PS Two. It was packaged with a USB keyboard and they called it Typing of the Dead zombie Panic. So it was popular enough that they kept remaking it for other platforms.

Wow.

In 2007 there was a sequel released in Japan. I don't think it ever made its way over here. It was called typing of the Dead Two. It was essentially the same concept. It was a remake of House of the Dead Three where they just replaced the gun with a keyboard. In 2008, Japan got a different version, but similar. It was a language learning version of the game for the Nintendo DS called English of the Dead, which I don't know why, that's kind of funny to me. And then in 2009, they started to redo these games in the Overkill series. So you had a House of the Dead Overkill in 2009 and that was eventually repurposed into Typing of the Dead Overkill in 2013. You can still find a lot of these games on Steam, for instance, and I'm sure wherever you buy games, I looked them up on Steam. Typing the Dead Overkill is definitely on there, along with most of the other games that we're going to talk about as this genre kind of changes. But realistically, Typing on the Dead was just the beginning. It really made typing games a thing as opposed to educational games that teach typing. There's a distinct difference between the two. Typing on the Dead doesn't try to teach you typing. It just uses typing as the mechanic by which you kill enemies. Does that distinction make sense?

Yeah, I think so.

I mean, it doesn't try to teach you. It doesn't have a tutorial on where to place your fingers or anything like that. It just is where you type to kill things.

You have to know where things are to type to kill things faster.

Yeah.

So it helps to have learned previously, right?

Well, for sure. I mean, you have to know previously.

No, I mean, you could pack and shoot.

Yeah, you could. You wouldn't last very long.

I got a coworker who he could probably type 50 to 60 words per minute doing a Pac Man. It is insane. The man is quick.

There are still games that skirt the genre between educational and actual gaming in this genre. In 2011, Nintendo got back into the typing game genre, you know, since Mario teaches typing back in the 80s with a game called Learn with Pokemon Typing Adventure. Ever heard of it before, Rob?

I actually have not. That's super surprising. It sounds kind of awesome.

There's a reason for that. So this is a Nintendo DS game bundled with its own Bluetooth wireless keyboard. It's an educational game which players assume the role of an amateur typist who have to travel through various learning courses where they encounter Pokemon and they capture them by correctly typing their names as they appear. You're a member of the Elite Typist Club under the guidance of Professor Quentinworthy get it? Quentinworthy and fellow member page down and you have to investigate and collect the game's 403 different Pokemon creatures throughout the entire game. The reason why you don't know it is because it was never released outside of Japan. It has the distinction of being one, if not the only Pokemon title that was released in English that has never appeared in North America.

Well, what the fuck, man? That's bold.

I know. It was released in Japan in 2011, Europe in 2012, and Australia in 2013. Wow. It never made its way over here.

Cool. Go up.

I know. Now, there have been some recent additions to the genre that are actually pretty cool, most of which have played. So one of the more unique titles that I remember came out for PC in 2016. March of 2016. Here we are, another March title. And that's called episode typing Chronicles. You ever heard of it?

No.

I believe I got it in a Humble Bundle, so you probably own it. Just decide. Don't.

Okay.

Like a monthly humble bundle. So Epistori is an action adventure typing game, just like typing of the dead. It's a game that the mechanic is typing to defeat the enemies. It doesn't really try to teach you anything. That's just you move around with the keys and the keyboard, and when you encounter an enemy, the word pops up over its head and you type the words to basically attack. The story of the game is that you follow, like, the way they designed it is. You're following a writer's writing process which unfolds like paper on the screen and is narrated from the perspective of the writer's internal thoughts. So it's really cool, actually, when the developer set out to make the game. They knew they wanted to make a game about typing and not just a typing educational game. So their idea fits squarely in the typing game genre. And that's exactly what they did. It is a game that has a very interesting story. The art style is like this 3D origami like Paper Mario, but 3D kind of art style. It's a really pretty game. It's hard. I'm not going to pretend it's easy. I consider myself to be pretty good at typing and it tripped me up at times. But it's great. I would highly recommend it's a really pretty game with a really pretty story. And it's also available on Steam or I'm sure you can find other places. Yeah, epistori rates very well. Epistory typing chronicles now it spawned a spiritual successor called Nanotail Typing Chronicles. This is same concept, different same art style but different story. This one follows an archivist who has a talent for magic and what she finds and the power of words from the magical sense. So you actually have two games than typing. Chronicle Typing Chronicles series. Yes, that's the word I was looking for. But yeah, they're just gorgeous games with good stories. Although the second one is a little not as good. If you're going to play any of them, play epicetory episode is worth the time. And then there's some more interesting genres or entries to the genre. Right. I showed you this one last week. We were kind of looking at it on Steam. I wish I would have bought it. I didn't buy it. I just watched a play through of it. But I think when we looked at it last week wasn't like 250 on sale.

I haven't no idea.

I don't remember. I think it was 250 or $3 on sale. And you were like, I don't know if I want to pay $3 for a typing game. And then this week I was going to buy it over the weekend to play it, but it went back up to $15. And I don't think I want to pay $15 for a typing game. But there's a game called the Texor Cyst the story of Ray Bibia. And it's a hybrid bullet hell and typing game developed by a studio called Morbidware. It was released on Valentine's Day in 2019 on steam. And basically the game revolves around an ex priest who still performs freelance exorcists. And he just gets involved in this big plot with demons and everything. And you have to dodge the bullets. And then when you're going to exercise a demon or come up against an enemy, you have to speak the invocations, the holy invocations out loud. And the invocations are displayed as text on the screen that the player has to type. And while you're typing, you also have to dodge projectiles. That's the bullet hell part. So it's this weird thing where you got to type dodge, type dodge, type dodge. It's a lot more fun than it sounds. At least I perceive it's a lot more fun than it sounds. But the texture system, which is really clever, you know?

Oh, yes, it is. That's actually hilarious of the name.

Now, if you're looking for a typing type game that you can go and play right now that really you don't have to spend money on, there is an option, and that is a multiplayer online browserbased typing game called Type Racer. In Type Racer, you complete typing tests of various text. Wow, man, that's a tongue twister. Now that I wrote. Basically, you have to type as fast as possible and you compete against other users online. This was created by a programmer named Alex Epstein. He was inspired to create a competitive multiplayer typing game because he learned touch typing with a Window Shareware program, and it didn't have a multiplayer mode, and he wanted to be able to play against other people. He honestly was kind of an experience, and he didn't know that games like Typing of the Dead had existed. So he kind of made this online multiplayer typing game completely separate of knowing the genre, only to make a decent only to make a decent addition to it. And basically what you do is you log into a lobby and there's a text in front of you and you race miniature cars so they're lined up on a row. You know how they have those, like, horse racing machines where the horse that gets the finish line first wins? Type deal? Yeah, it looks like that, but with miniature cars and whoever's typing fastest wins. I actually did go on there the other night, and I did one match. And I'm not bragging about my typing skills, but I wiped the floor with everyone.

Yeah, it definitely puts you in a slow lobby the first time. I think I've actually I know that I've done I don't know exactly if it's the same one, but something very similar to that myself.

Got you. Yeah, I typed at 78 words per minute, and everyone else was in the 40s, so I just wiped the floor with them. But this genre has also inspired some weird additions that aren't quite edition genre. In fact, because of the popularity of this genre in today's day and age, this genre has been parodied, hasn't it, Rob?

Yeah, no, I would say so.

I sent you a video game the other night, didn't I?

Yeah.

Do you want to call it a video game?

An interactive typing adventure, yes.

So it was a game called David Lynch Teaches Typing. For those of you who don't know who David Lynch is, he's a really eccentric filmmaker. And David Lynch Teaches Typing is a 2018 parody of the touch typing genre in which a likeness of David Lynch assists a player in completing a series of increasingly bizarre and unsettling typing tasks.

Yeah, for sure. That's a great way of putting it.

All right, so when did the game get really freaking weird for you? Do you remember the specific moment? Did you play it to the end? Yeah.

No, I did.

Okay.

I was trying to think of where it got, like, the worst, because the first thing was kind of just like, okay, that's interesting.

The bug. The bug, yeah. So at one point, go online, Google. David teaches typing. You can download it for free, and it's ten to 15 minutes of your time. It starts out as a normal typing game, and then at some point, it says, Press bug to continue. And there's a really weird animation of, like, a creepy, crippled bug on the screen. And you're just sitting there like, what do I press? What's the bug key? I don't know what you did, but I just started pressing keys.

I kind of just sat there for a second, waited, and then tried to shift or something. And then I was like, what do I do? I don't know.

After about a minute or two of that, the game just resets itself and it's like, we're sorry, there was a glitch. Please wait while we reboot. Or it was something along lines of that, right?

Yeah, there was a glitch in the game. And then it started. Told you to do the same task.

Over again, and then it told you to go take a coffee and cigarette.

Break, which I let that music play through until it repeated. Pretty good banger right there if you.

Didn'T listen to it.

Take a long coffee and smoke breaks. Real good low five vibes. I was jamming out to it.

All right, kiddo. And then the game takes a very distinct David Lynch twist and turns into, like, the creepiest, most unsettling animation. It was fucking weird. It was fucking weird. That's all I'm going to say. It was so fucking weird. I'm not wrong, am I? That animation that pretty much the game ends on is just fucking the weirdest thing ever.

Oh, yeah. No, I don't know how to describe it. It was so weird.

Yeah. Do you know David Lynch at all?

No, that was my first experience.

Okay. All right. See, I know David Lynch. I'm kind of a David Lynch fan. He's creepy in all the ways. I like crap. He's done music that I have. Yes. I was expecting something like that. Just wasn't expecting that. Really enjoyed it. Uses a David Lynch, like, robotic voice like this. I got a big kick out of the David Lynch voice, but the game advertises itself as a trial version. Did you catch what it said to do to unlock the full version?

Yeah. Go to your bathtub and start clapping until someone can assist you.

Yes. That's, like, the last thing on the screen to unlock the full version. Go stand next to your bathtub and clap your hands until we can assist you. Like, what the fuck? Yeah, I'm glad I found that. That was one of the more interesting things I got to send you.

I will say that was interesting for sure. There's no other way to put it.

It doesn't really fit in the touch typing genre. It's more of interactive fiction. That parity is touch typing genre. But you know what, it's been a lot of fun. There's a few other games in the typing genre. There's typex and I say a lot of other games, but there's really only a handful. Point is, there's other games but none of them have ever really stuck around or having lasting power or anything like that. Everything that we talk about today are pretty much all the main ones. Starting with IBM's typing tutor and going through typequick and Mavis Bacon. Bacon, I'm still always going to say Mavis Bacon into the Mario Teaches Typing and then all the games. It's not a big genre, but there's some games. Typing of the Dead and the Epistori series and the Texas. And the funny part about it is they all bring something unique to the genre. Right?

Yeah, I definitely agree.

Like Typing of the Dead is like a rail shooter and the textor cyst is a bullet hell game and Epistori is more like an action adventure, almost RPG ish type. That's kind of the vibe of it. So you have all these games that have the same mechanic that typing is their input method, how you play the game, but they all do it in a different way and I think that's really fascinating. It's great, honestly. And if I could make any recommendations out of the whole bunch, go spend ten minutes on David. Let's teach typing. If you're into weird shit, you will not be disappointed. But also if you had to pick one, it's hard for me. I really liked EPA's story, thought it was a beautiful story and really great art style. So it's hard. But Typing of the Dead is a classic. I don't know, I still think epicetry. If you're going to pick one, I don't know why you'd want to pick one. To most people, typing does not sound like fun.

Yeah, no, I definitely would agree with that statement.

But yeah, that's typing. That's the typewriter, that's the cordy keyboard. That's how we got it to computers and training typing into typing video games. That my friends, is the typing genre. Congratulations. You learned some things today.

Yeah, a lot more history than video games than I thought, but it was still pretty damn educational.

Dave well, yeah, it was an excuse to talk about where the keyboard came from, so that was fun. We've talked about some of this before. Like I said, we talked about Mario Teaches Typing in our educational Mario episode, which is done by Interplay. We also talked about in our Wasteland episode, if you want to check out our old episodes, you can do so by going to our website at www.memorycarlane.com. Rob what else can people find on our website.

Can find a calendar of upcoming or previous episodes that we have done. Can find links to our social media, such as me on Twitch TV, Fatbo, Iripz, and Dave.

I can be found on various platforms as David is wrong. So each week, we tell you a story about one topic relevant to the current week in gaming history. While doing so, we hope to teach you something new about the topic. But it took from the world as its inspiration are what it gave back to the world as its legacy. One of the best parts about doing this podcast day in, day out, is that we get to learn things. When you teach, you learn. That's the best part about teaching. So we learn every week. As part of our commitment to that cycle, we like to talk about our biggest takeaways. So, Rob, what did you learn today?

I learned why the keyboard is the way that it is. I've always wondered. I've never actually bothered. I guess that's bad on me. I've never taken the time to learn why it's quirky the way it is. I've just kind of accepted there was probably some good reason for it and took it at face value. But now I actually know the reason is just because they had some collisions when they were creating the things to do it back in the olden days.

Awesome.

Yeah, it's kind of cool to me. It's always cool to see how they design old machines and things with the things back in the day and knowing that that's all it was is just because, hey, we had some collision instead of redesigning the way they typed, let's just change the keyboard.

Yeah, for sure.

But, hey, it worked, and now we recognize it.

Yes. Got to spell out typewriter using all the top keys.

Damn straight. Honestly, that was probably my second favorite takeaway, is that you could type to do the entire thing without the period.

I liked learning about the typewriter. Never really learned much about it. I mean, the anecdote about Cordy was really cool. It was cool to dive into the early IBM software to try to see how early I could go. So there's a lot of really cool things here, but I like the history of the typewriter. I like history, so anytime I get to focus a little bit on that, that's not exactly video game, but related to it, I mean, it was technology that gave us the keyboard. It's always a good time. So that's my takeaway. And on that note, we did it. So before I take it out of here, rob, would you like to add anything to the episode?

Well, Dave, as always, I do want to take one quick moment to say thank you so much to everyone for listening. It means the world to us, and we hope that you give a little bit of spark in your life.

All right, well, next week. Next week, ladies and gentlemen, we're going to return to the Tabletops as we learn all about Battle Tech and the video games that take place within its universe. Starting in 1988, Battletech has 30 years of video games inspired by its unique formula of giant mechanized warfare, and we're going to learn all about it. We'll learn about the Battle Tech universe. We'll learn about the games that it's inspired. We're going to learn about all things Battle Tech. So stick around and join us as we learn how to pilot Giant at Mex on yet another trip down memory card lane. Do the thing.