''Mario Teaches Typing'' is an

educational video game An educational video game is a video game that provides learning or training value to the player. Edutainment describes an intentional merger of video games and educational software into a single product (and could therefore also comprise more ...

developed and published by Interplay for

MS-DOS MS-DOS ( ; acronym for Microsoft Disk Operating System, also known as Microsoft DOS) is an operating system for x86-based personal computers mostly developed by Microsoft. Collectively, MS-DOS, its rebranding as IBM PC DOS, and a few ope ...

compatible operating systems,

Microsoft Windows Windows is a group of several proprietary graphical operating system families developed and marketed by Microsoft. Each family caters to a certain sector of the computing industry. For example, Windows NT for consumers, Windows Server for serv ...

, and

Macintosh The Mac (known as Macintosh until 1999) is a family of personal computers designed and marketed by Apple Inc., Apple Inc. Macs are known for their ease of use and minimalist designs, and are popular among students, creative professionals, and ...

. The game uses the

Mario is a character created by Japanese video game designer Shigeru Miyamoto. He is the title character of the ''Mario'' franchise and the mascot of Japanese video game company Nintendo. Mario has appeared in over 200 video games since his creat ...

character, licensed from

Nintendo is a Japanese Multinational corporation, multinational video game company headquartered in Kyoto, Japan. It develops video games and video game consoles. Nintendo was founded in 1889 as by craftsman Fusajiro Yamauchi and originally produce ...

, to teach keyboard skills.

Gameplay

''Mario Teaches Typing'' includes three selectable characters:

Luigi is a fictional character featured in video games and related media released by Nintendo. Created by Japanese video game designer Shigeru Miyamoto, Luigi is portrayed as the younger fraternal twin brother and sidekick of Mario, Nintendo's masc ...

and

Princess Peach is a fictional character in Nintendo's ''Mario'' franchise, created by Shigeru Miyamoto and introduced in the 1985 original ''Super Mario Bros.'' installment. She is the princess regnant and ruler of the Mushroom Kingdom, where she resides in ...

. The game displays two pairs of hands which show which finger to use; for example, if the player has to type "A", the leftmost finger is highlighted. If the player makes an error, the cursor does not advance until they enter the correct key. After time ends, the exercise ends and a chalkboard screen appears, displaying statistics on how well the player performed, including

words per minute Words per minute, commonly abbreviated wpm (sometimes uppercased WPM), is a measure of words processed in a minute, often used as a measurement of the speed of typing, reading or Morse code sending and receiving. Alphanumeric entry Since word ...

Development and release

The CD-ROM version of the game was produced by Thomas R. Decker, a producer for Interplay whose past titles included

Mario's Game Gallery ''Mario's Game Gallery'' (later re-released as ''Mario's FUNdamentals'') is a compilation of games published by Interplay Productions and developed by Presage Software, Inc. for DOS, Windows and Macintosh. It was released in 1995 in the United ...

and Kingdom: the Far Reaches. The game was released in the United States in 1992 and in the United Kingdom in 1993.

Reception

The game sold more than 800,000 copies. Steve Fountain of the ''

Evening Sentinel ''The Sentinel'' is a daily regional newspaper circulating in the North Staffordshire and South Cheshire areas of England. It is owned by Reach plc and based at Hanley, Stoke-on-Trent. It is the only newspaper delivering daily news and featur ...

'' reviewed the Windows version, stating "Mario Teaches Typing is less fun than a normal computer game, but a whole lot better than ploughing through a dull typing manual" A sequel to the game, ''Mario Teaches Typing 2'', was developed by Brainstorm and published by Interplay in 1997.

References

Mario educational games 1992 video games Interplay Entertainment games Typing software Classic Mac OS games DOS games Windows games Video games developed in the United States {{edu-videogame-stub