Mario Teaches Typing
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| Mario Teaches Typing | |
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| Developer(s) | Interplay |
| Publisher(s) | Nintendo |
| Release date(s) | 1991 (DOS); 1995 (Windows), Macintosh |
| Genre(s) | Educational |
| Mode(s) | Single player |
| Rating(s) | ESRB: Kids to Adults (K-A) ELSPA: 11+ |
| Platform(s) | PC, Mac OS |
| Media | 3½ in. Floppy disk, CD-ROM |
| Input | Keyboard |
Mario Teaches Typing is an educational video game that is designed for teaching typing skills of children. It was published and developed by Interplay, with an official license from Nintendo. It was released for MS-DOS in 1991, Microsoft Windows and Macintosh in 1995, and a follow-up entitled Mario Teaches Typing 2 was released in 1996. It features the Mario characters of Nintendo fame.
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[edit] Profiles
Mario Teaches Typing had selectable profiles. Players could input their name, their WPM (it was automatically set, but could be changed), their character, and what mode they were on.
[edit] Game mechanics
[edit] Playable characters
There were three selectable characters: Mario, Luigi, and Princess Toadstool. They all played the same and were, for the most part, eye candy for the player. There was one major difference, however. In the Outdoor world, the character would break blocks as the player typed it in. While Mario and Luigi leaped up to break blocks, Princess Peach's blocks were down to her waist, and she broke them by holding her dress and smashing them.
[edit] Lessons
There were nine selectable lessons - including Home Row, Top Row, Numbers, Lower Row, among others.
[edit] WPM and minutes
The Words Per Minutes setting was automatically set after the first lesson, although this could be changed in the profile menu. After beating a mode, that WPM was raised by 10. If a player was at 55 WPM and beat Outdoors, it would be raised to 65 WPM for Underwater. Additionally, the player could set the minutes he or she played, ranging from 0:30 seconds to 10:00 minutes.
[edit] Modes
There were five modes:
- Outdoors - The simplest and easiest mode, it was designed to master individual letters, repetitive keystrokes to remember where each letter was. The character (Mario, Luigi, or Princess Peach) would break block and upturn Koopas as the player pressed each key.
- Underwater - Players practiced short words in this mode. The "home row" lesson, for instance, would have words like "rad fad dad lad" to type and practice on.
- Castle - Players had to type out full sentences in stacks of three. The character would do something after the player completed a sentence. There were two areas, the first area and the sand pit. In the first area, after the player finished a sentence, the character would move out of the way as a thwomp dropped behind him or her. In the sand pit area, the character would slowly cross the other side, and leap out as the third sentence was completed.
- Paragraphs - This was the most difficult and least visual mode. Players had to type out full paragraphs of text without any visual eye candy to view.
- Chalkboard - Players could see what lesson they were on, what WPM (Words Per Minute) they were getting, the set time they were playing, and more.
Each mode had two pairs of hands that signified which finger to use; if the letter needed to type was "A," the left pinky finger would be highlighted.
If a typist made a mistake, the cursor would not advance until the typist entered the correct key. This is in contrast to Mavis Beacon where the program will input the mistake and move on to the next letter (which is a more realistic simulation of actual typing in a word processor since a word processor cannot generally distinguish a mistake and will input whatever is typed into it, with some modern functions such as autocorrect excluded).
After the allotted time had elapsed, the exercise would end and be replaced with a chalkboard screen. Players could see their WPM, how many mistakes they made, their accuracy, and the time they set. This was useful for future lessons.
[edit] Awards
After passing all nine lessons, players were given an award that they could print out. The award had an ASCII picture of Mario, with "Congratulations" and the mode that they passed.
[edit] Trivia
- This game features music originally used in Super Mario World.
- The outdoors level features semi-secret floating blocks on top of the screen that have a symbol on them, such as an ampersand or a dollar sign. If the players entered the correct input, they would see a brief video of their character collecting coins. The underwater level contains a similar "hidden treasure" where if the player types in the symbol occasionally appearing inside bubbles, he/she would see a similar brief bonus video, though underwater.
- The Macintosh version of the game is known to contain a track called the "Mario Rap", which can be accessed from the File menu of the game. It is unknown if the Windows version also contains the rap.
- This game features the first use of Charles Martinet's voice as Mario.
