Pasokon Retro is our regular look back at the early years of Japanese PC gaming, encompassing everything from specialist '80s computers to the happy days of Windows XP.
Sometimes I buy obscure old games for what I like to imagine are grand, noble reasons. A niche developer makes an unusual puzzley twist on the RPG, and I must learn more. A great idea turns up 20 years too early on hardware that could barely run it, and I just have to know if it works anyway. An ancient dungeon crawler dares to combine horror with extensive map-making, and I need to see it for myself.
And then there are times like this, where I see the words "Initial D typing game" and just know it's going to be so daft I have to experience its particular brand of absurdity with my own eyes.
No setting could be more unsuited to the typing game treatment—not even Sega's The Typing of the Dead felt as forced as this. The '90s street racing manga and anime adaptation of Initial D are full of achingly cool people driving hyper-tuned cars I will never see outside of old arcade games and Tokyo Xtreme Racer. It's about as effortlessly stylish as anything could ever hope to be. Which means it's also on the exact opposite end of the cool spectrum as "accurate touch typing" and "being the sort of person interested enough in typing games to have them shipped from the other side of the planet." (Hi).
I expected to have nothing more than a bit of a laugh with 2000's Initial D: Ryosuke Takahashi's Fastest Typing Theory, to confirm it was a silly idea and a fun curio for my shelf I'd soon put away forever. A brief run through practice mode quickly corrected my casual attitude. This game is as deadly serious about the typing tutor part of the package as it is showing off nighttime drifting around hairpin corners.
There are separate sessions for each hand, colour coding to show correct finger placement and their corresponding keys, and a full dual-handed test too. When I'm done I'm shown my clear time, tracked to the hundredth of a second, as well as how many slip-ups I made and my five most commonly fumbled keys. I've been judged in three specific areas, none of them drifting a tuner Toyota Trueno, and found deeply wanting.
Seeing my weaknesses laid out in this way wounded my writer's pride. I type all day and night. I've worn keyboards out, haphazardly stuck them back together, and then typed some more. So when some decades-old game has the gall to tell me I'm anything less than amazing at the one thing I do all the damned time, you bet I'm going to take it personally.
I think Ryosuke Takahashi's Fastest Typing Theory did this on purpose. I took my white-hot umbrage and poured it into the main "Battle" mode, ready to unleash my lightning-fast reflexes against the game's five opponents, unaware that I was so wounded by its mild accusations I was about to dedicate an entire afternoon to showing an ancient piece of typing software who's boss.
Rather than try to meaningfully integrate the races with my frenzied keyboard mashing, these sprints instead follow a video > typing > video > typing pattern, the compressed action pausing in certain places to allow for some burning hot key pressing action.
The short and low resolution clips used to sell each "race" aren't exactly up to modern technical standards, but as they're all directly lifted from the '98 TV series Initial D: First Stage (as is the fabulous Eurobeat soundtrack and numerous snatches of dialogue), they're still enough to drum up some genuine excitement. Watching another one is my reward for typing well, and I'm soon caught up in clearing the latest word off the screen, always afraid I'll take a second too long or fumble too many keystrokes, every error chipping away at my health bar until I crash out.
At first I assumed the text I'm asked to type out would lean towards racing/car terminology in a vague attempt to justify the licence, so I was surprised to see the Japanese names of countries, rivers, and short words that would translate into "periodic table", "shampoo", and "hamster" turn up instead.
Weird, but nothing I couldn't handle. I was doing pretty well in no time at all, actually. My typos were down, my speed up, and my initials were plastered all over the game's arcade-like high score table. I soon had a string of breezy victories to my name and confidently clicked on the next race without giving it much thought.
It felt as though the game had suddenly slammed the accelerator to the floor. By the end of the fifth stage I'm desperately typing out full sentences, sometimes with punctuation, and swearing like I'm facing the final boss of a soulslike. No more single words to quickly clear away for me. Oh no, now the challenges demand perfect inputs like "AREHAHASIRIKONNDEKO-SUWOYOKUSITTERURAINNDAYO" and "ITUMADENETEYAGARU.OKIRO,DENNWADA."—and that's if I'm lucky.
I've had less stressful hospital appointments.
Just as it's on the verge of becoming truly unbearable the game throws out something that could be translated as "Count Dracula can't handle the sun" just for fun. I end up swearing again, only this time it's because I'm trying to focus on typing accurately without laughing my head off.
Against all odds, this is a genuinely useful typing tutor. The practice sessions are of real practical use, and the Initial D framework makes it all feel more like play than real homework even when things get tough. The lack of any true link between these two seemingly incompatible halves turns out to be for the best, the unpredictable text forcing my eyes to focus on the screen and trusting my fingers to do the rest. I am a better touch-typist for playing this, and I got to see some great '90s drifting, too. I'm not sure if my freshly honed skills will transfer to Tokyo Xtreme Racer, but I'm still counting them as a win.
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