Mario teaches us all how to type!

User Rating: 6.7 | Mario Teaches Typing PC
The increasing prevalence of computers in the average home meant a whole generation now needed to learn how to type. Naturally, this was before the point everyone realized they could just type "hi qt c u l8r :)" and force the rest of the world to conform to their stupidity. Mavis Beacon had the market cornered for adults, so Interplay aimed at the younger bracket by bringing Mario onboard.

Mario Teaches Typing isn't much different from any other typing tutor software, except it has Mario in it. You've got three levels. For the single letter keys level, it features Mario doing a weird crouch jig while punching blocks and running into koopas to flip them over. The underwater level uses sleep-inducingly repetitive single words accompanied by Mario swimming around with what I can only assume is supposed to be a blooper. Finally, the third level uses full sentences to teach you about boring historical facts while Mario avoids thwomps and climbs through quicksand. A fourth area is simply called "practice", in which the challenge is to try to focus on typing while Mario stares into your soul and is very disappointed by the things he finds.

For no reason whatsoever, Mario Teaches Typing features exactly four voice samples. This was before Mario had an official voice, and they certainly weren't going to drag in Lou Albano or Walker Boone for five seconds of work, so hey, why not just get that intern to do his funny Italian voice. I realize that even the official voice is a stereotype, but at least it has some character. This just sounds like a rotund man in a spaghetti-stained wifebeater has leaned out of his second story window to encourage me to improve my keyboarding skills.

An updated version called Mario Teaches Typing 2 was released for Windows in 1996. Inexplicably, you can find a promo video for it at the Internet Archive.