10 Crazy Video Game Spin-Offs You Won't Believe Exist
9. The Typing Of The Dead
For a second, just imagine that original meeting where The Typing Of The Dead was pitched. "Okay, so instead of shooting the zombies, let's make players type out words to kill them instead!" It's a bonkers idea on paper, but the result is actually a really fun alternate version of the base game.
A spin-off of Sega's The House Of The Dead series, the smartest thing that The Typing Of The Dead did was that it didn't reduce that inherent feeling of pace and urgency. It's not like you're stopping for five minutes at a time while you figure out a tough word puzzle: you're still on-rails, you're still moving through the level quickly, and you're spelling pretty basic words that don't require much thought or patience.
The result is a wonderfully peculiar cross between horror and humour (in what other game is the phrase "testosterone production" even remotely useful?), one that proved so popular that it made the jump from arcade cabinet to home console in the early 2000s, and was even ported to iOS in 2012.
Sidenote: that iOS version was called "Flick Of The Dead", but shouldn't it really have been called "Tapping Of The Dead"? Are we gong crazy here?!