7. The Typing of the Dead
2001 - Dreamcast, PC
1999's The House of the Dead 2 was one of the finest lightgun shooters ever conceived - fast, gory and filled with awesome-looking zombies and monsters to blow apart. We don't know who originally thought it would be a good idea to turn that into a semi-educational game where you type words and phrases to kill zombies, but whoever they are, they deserve a damn medal.
The Typing of the Dead is number seven on this list for a reason. While the rest of these games are hideous abominations that should never have been dreamt up in the first place, Typing of the Dead is a horrible, stupid, awful idea that somehow turned out to be one of the Dreamcast's best games. How? Why? Shut up and we'll tell you.
The key thing here is that, in transforming House of the Dead 2 from a shooter into a typing game,the original's intensity and speed aren't dialed down in the least. If anything, they're ramped way up, because it's a lot harder to type "Big seller" or "Throbbing" when a zombie jumps out at you than it is to point a gun and pull the trigger. While it's disguised as edutainment, Typing of the Dead isn't a way to teach typing so much as it is a test of typing speed and skill. And if you know how to touch-type even a little, then the challenge is irresistible.
It also helps that the game has a uniquely goofy sense of humor to offset its relentlessly grim premise. Sure, the zombies rushing at you might be hungry, rotting corpses, but look - they're holding squeaky hammers! The phrases also get progressively sillier as you progress through the game; seriously, try typing "The other day I saw this anteater. He was really overweight." while a giant chainsaw zombie chases you, and see if you don't at least crack a smile. And then there are the endings, which give you the chance to watch the game's formerly dead-serious villain comically explode, fly away or simply burp in your face.
Sure, playing it right meant buying two Dreamcast keyboards, which were big, relatively expensive and wouldn't work with anything except Sega's doomed console, but Typing was still a hell of a lot of fun. And it still holds up - leaving us with proof positive that a terrible mash-up can still make an awesome game. However, in the case of the rest of this list, they don't.
