Mavis Beacon: Modern Warfare
December 10, 2015 4:56 PM Subscribe
ZTYPE Dominic Szlablewski offers a game in which you learn to type (or just have fun) by annihilating words.
My controller automatically puts me in hard mode.
posted by eyeballkid at 5:06 PM on December 10, 2015
posted by eyeballkid at 5:06 PM on December 10, 2015
(totally not a euphemism)
posted by eyeballkid at 5:07 PM on December 10, 2015 [3 favorites]
posted by eyeballkid at 5:07 PM on December 10, 2015 [3 favorites]
I hate that the return key makes me use up one of my 3 "bombs" since I pretty much expend those out of habit. I like that the spacebar does nothing, because I hit that out of habit too.
These are the only things I hit out of habit, in case anyone wonders.
posted by Sunburnt at 5:12 PM on December 10, 2015
These are the only things I hit out of habit, in case anyone wonders.
posted by Sunburnt at 5:12 PM on December 10, 2015
Not bad, but it's no Typing of the Dead.
One of my favorite things to ever happen, is the arcade version of this existing.
Yes, seriously. There's a version that's just like... a desktop with two keyboards on the front of an arcade cabinet.
posted by emptythought at 5:12 PM on December 10, 2015 [3 favorites]
One of my favorite things to ever happen, is the arcade version of this existing.
Yes, seriously. There's a version that's just like... a desktop with two keyboards on the front of an arcade cabinet.
posted by emptythought at 5:12 PM on December 10, 2015 [3 favorites]
There's a version that's just like... a desktop with two keyboards on the front of an arcade cabinet
Yep, played it in Japanese arcades a few times. Kind of surreal the first time I saw it (having never heard of this game at all).
posted by thefoxgod at 5:46 PM on December 10, 2015 [2 favorites]
Yep, played it in Japanese arcades a few times. Kind of surreal the first time I saw it (having never heard of this game at all).
posted by thefoxgod at 5:46 PM on December 10, 2015 [2 favorites]
There's a version that's just like... a desktop with two keyboards on the front of an arcade cabinet
I was at an arcade trade show when Typing of the Dead was introduced. Sega had introduced their NAOMI arcade hardware which was made from....well, it was a Dreamcast with a bit more memory and hard drive. Lots of manufacturers were looking to streamline the porting from arcade title to console title and this was the new way to do it. Make the console the same as the arcade (Bally actually also did this a generation earlier with their Astrocade hardware)
We had all played House of the Dead in years earlier (the zombie game that had shotguns), so seeing this made us all smile. Some in-house engineer must have been tinkering with the Dreamcast keyboard and mashed this up one random weekend...and the rest was history. This version was way more fun.
posted by JoeZydeco at 5:49 PM on December 10, 2015 [1 favorite]
I was at an arcade trade show when Typing of the Dead was introduced. Sega had introduced their NAOMI arcade hardware which was made from....well, it was a Dreamcast with a bit more memory and hard drive. Lots of manufacturers were looking to streamline the porting from arcade title to console title and this was the new way to do it. Make the console the same as the arcade (Bally actually also did this a generation earlier with their Astrocade hardware)
We had all played House of the Dead in years earlier (the zombie game that had shotguns), so seeing this made us all smile. Some in-house engineer must have been tinkering with the Dreamcast keyboard and mashed this up one random weekend...and the rest was history. This version was way more fun.
posted by JoeZydeco at 5:49 PM on December 10, 2015 [1 favorite]
My cat wandered onto my lap while I was doing this, so I like to think I had a natural handicap.
I think the only reason I can type pretty quickly is that I got really used to using old, slow computers. It would take so long to update websites like facebook that I'd just type everything out by feel, then see it slowly appear, letter by letter, on the screen, including any mistakes I made. It was like watching someone else slowly type what I had just written.
posted by teponaztli at 7:23 PM on December 10, 2015 [1 favorite]
I think the only reason I can type pretty quickly is that I got really used to using old, slow computers. It would take so long to update websites like facebook that I'd just type everything out by feel, then see it slowly appear, letter by letter, on the screen, including any mistakes I made. It was like watching someone else slowly type what I had just written.
posted by teponaztli at 7:23 PM on December 10, 2015 [1 favorite]
Final score 003670. I knew learning the Dvorak keyboard layout would come in handy someday.
posted by mnop at 7:39 PM on December 10, 2015
posted by mnop at 7:39 PM on December 10, 2015
That gets hard, quickly. Whoa, wait. bombs?
[goes back to game]
posted by alex_skazat at 7:42 PM on December 10, 2015 [1 favorite]
[goes back to game]
posted by alex_skazat at 7:42 PM on December 10, 2015 [1 favorite]
Wonderful improvement on the old Typing Tutor 4.
I used to get old DOS machines, set up TT4, and give them to adults who had mailroom and messenger jobs -- they were stuck in that kind or worse because they'd never learned how to type on a keyboard, which almost any other job required. That was obviously a few decades ago. It was a "please steal this computer" kind of thing back when DOS doorstops were plentiful. Nobody could get into online trouble with one of those.
posted by hank at 7:42 PM on December 10, 2015 [1 favorite]
I used to get old DOS machines, set up TT4, and give them to adults who had mailroom and messenger jobs -- they were stuck in that kind or worse because they'd never learned how to type on a keyboard, which almost any other job required. That was obviously a few decades ago. It was a "please steal this computer" kind of thing back when DOS doorstops were plentiful. Nobody could get into online trouble with one of those.
posted by hank at 7:42 PM on December 10, 2015 [1 favorite]
Fun and hard. Beats the heck out of the Selectric I first learned on.
posted by Hardcore Poser at 7:45 PM on December 10, 2015
posted by Hardcore Poser at 7:45 PM on December 10, 2015
I like how the words that come out read like abstract poetry: "beats hard high travel cumming has re take"
posted by teponaztli at 8:16 PM on December 10, 2015
posted by teponaztli at 8:16 PM on December 10, 2015
Beats the heck out of the Selectric I first learned on.
Blasphemer! There is no sound sexier than a Selectric except a room full of Selectrics right before the timer starts.
Romromromromromromrom.
posted by Ogre Lawless at 8:26 PM on December 10, 2015 [1 favorite]
Blasphemer! There is no sound sexier than a Selectric except a room full of Selectrics right before the timer starts.
Romromromromromromrom.
posted by Ogre Lawless at 8:26 PM on December 10, 2015 [1 favorite]
I feel so powerful with my Cherry MX Blues as I blast away.
posted by symbioid at 8:41 PM on December 10, 2015
posted by symbioid at 8:41 PM on December 10, 2015
I learned to type one a plain old typewriter, in high school, seventeen thousand years ago. No electric, thank you very much. (Plus we had to walk to school, uphill both ways, barefoot in the snow, etc.) I signed up for a year, they agreed to drop me with a D at the semester break, provided I didn't try to continue on in the year, pretty much that I never darken that door again. I got up to like 24 wpm with only about 74 typos.
I took typing again in junior college, electric -- Hurray! -- plus I had a nice little electric type-writer at home, a garage sale gem. I was amazed at the muscle memory, amazed that I still had asdf ;lkj in my fingers. Unfortunately, I still did *not* have pretty much anything else. Still, I had asdf and ;lkj, and I could write "add" or "dad" or "sad" or "fad" or "lad"-- I was rockin'! I used that typewriter for maybe a year, maybe more, not sure.
I first put my fingers on a puter keyboard in January of 89. Omigod was it great that I could fix typos -- a new and wonderful world! I was typing on a blazing fast IBM (IBM keyboards were then and are still the best keyboards I've ever felt, they had a perfectly solid click and if I could work one onto this puter I'm typing on now I'd throw this lighted bluetooth keyboard out the dang window with a song in my heart, a bright light in my eyes) a blazing fast IBM 386 puter, DOS of course, and it had to have been there that I first came across one of these typing games. I dug the shit out of it. Fun fun fun. Within three months we were using WordPerfect and Lotus 123 and (insert some data-base program here) and we ram-jammed through Pascal (I *think* it was Pascal, we flew through it, I did not have one tiny bit of a clue what I'd just done) and then HOLY DOGSHIT !!!! we're climbing through those color screens and onto/into the green on black land of CoBOL and JCL using the ISPF interface on the Houston Chronicle mainframe.
I bled.
It was gruesome.
It was Not Fun.
So much of CoBOL is based on simple algebraic logic -- cool. Except the same thing had happened to me in high school algebra as happened in high school typing -- we'll give you a D at the semester provided you beat it, a deal I was glad to cut. By my junior year I was making more money than my teachers, as a metal carpenter / drywall hanger, as a sheet metal worker, as a roofer, etc and etc. Who gives a rats ass about algebra? I was in all the Welcome Back Kotter classes, with the dummies and the stoners and the drunks and the kids with learning disabilities and Whoops! I pretty much fit into all of those. Dang. School was a social event, totally, meet with your friends and fuck around. I got one A, in history, I know who Amerigo Vespucci is -- do you?
Turns out I was a pretty good mainframe programmer. I'm very stubborn. I became particularly good with tables/arrays, I could just sortof "see" how they laid out. I dug it, esp since other programmers eyes spun in their heads like the lemons and cherries etc in slot machines when approaching a 3 or 4 dimensional array, even your propeller-head types of programmers ....
Typing tutors. In color. Not only helpful but they really were fun. It was like Centipede except it was useful, plus I don't need to keep shoving quarters down the slot, so I don't really have any skin in the game, so no sweat if I get beat, just start again. Whereas Centipede I'm pretty much a psycho by the time I'm five bucks into it, big streamer of drool running down as I lean left or right, putting some body english into it, praying, etc.......
posted by dancestoblue at 4:14 AM on December 11, 2015 [4 favorites]
I took typing again in junior college, electric -- Hurray! -- plus I had a nice little electric type-writer at home, a garage sale gem. I was amazed at the muscle memory, amazed that I still had asdf ;lkj in my fingers. Unfortunately, I still did *not* have pretty much anything else. Still, I had asdf and ;lkj, and I could write "add" or "dad" or "sad" or "fad" or "lad"-- I was rockin'! I used that typewriter for maybe a year, maybe more, not sure.
I first put my fingers on a puter keyboard in January of 89. Omigod was it great that I could fix typos -- a new and wonderful world! I was typing on a blazing fast IBM (IBM keyboards were then and are still the best keyboards I've ever felt, they had a perfectly solid click and if I could work one onto this puter I'm typing on now I'd throw this lighted bluetooth keyboard out the dang window with a song in my heart, a bright light in my eyes) a blazing fast IBM 386 puter, DOS of course, and it had to have been there that I first came across one of these typing games. I dug the shit out of it. Fun fun fun. Within three months we were using WordPerfect and Lotus 123 and (insert some data-base program here) and we ram-jammed through Pascal (I *think* it was Pascal, we flew through it, I did not have one tiny bit of a clue what I'd just done) and then HOLY DOGSHIT !!!! we're climbing through those color screens and onto/into the green on black land of CoBOL and JCL using the ISPF interface on the Houston Chronicle mainframe.
I bled.
It was gruesome.
It was Not Fun.
So much of CoBOL is based on simple algebraic logic -- cool. Except the same thing had happened to me in high school algebra as happened in high school typing -- we'll give you a D at the semester provided you beat it, a deal I was glad to cut. By my junior year I was making more money than my teachers, as a metal carpenter / drywall hanger, as a sheet metal worker, as a roofer, etc and etc. Who gives a rats ass about algebra? I was in all the Welcome Back Kotter classes, with the dummies and the stoners and the drunks and the kids with learning disabilities and Whoops! I pretty much fit into all of those. Dang. School was a social event, totally, meet with your friends and fuck around. I got one A, in history, I know who Amerigo Vespucci is -- do you?
Turns out I was a pretty good mainframe programmer. I'm very stubborn. I became particularly good with tables/arrays, I could just sortof "see" how they laid out. I dug it, esp since other programmers eyes spun in their heads like the lemons and cherries etc in slot machines when approaching a 3 or 4 dimensional array, even your propeller-head types of programmers ....
Typing tutors. In color. Not only helpful but they really were fun. It was like Centipede except it was useful, plus I don't need to keep shoving quarters down the slot, so I don't really have any skin in the game, so no sweat if I get beat, just start again. Whereas Centipede I'm pretty much a psycho by the time I'm five bucks into it, big streamer of drool running down as I lean left or right, putting some body english into it, praying, etc.......
posted by dancestoblue at 4:14 AM on December 11, 2015 [4 favorites]
Wait, I had bombs??
I knew learning the Dvorak keyboard layout would come in handy someday.
I switched to it halfway through undergrad and whether or not it's better in any objective sense, it made me break all my bad habits and start touch-typing properly, because all of a sudden I couldn't get any information by looking at the keyboard. Writing that first paper was hell, though.
posted by egregious theorem at 8:29 AM on December 11, 2015
I knew learning the Dvorak keyboard layout would come in handy someday.
I switched to it halfway through undergrad and whether or not it's better in any objective sense, it made me break all my bad habits and start touch-typing properly, because all of a sudden I couldn't get any information by looking at the keyboard. Writing that first paper was hell, though.
posted by egregious theorem at 8:29 AM on December 11, 2015
It looks like so much fun but it keeps freezing on me after a couple of rounds.
posted by aniola at 2:45 PM on December 11, 2015
posted by aniola at 2:45 PM on December 11, 2015
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