Mario Teaches Typing

released on Mar 08, 1992

Mario Teaches Typing is one of the few licensed Mario computer titles. As the title suggests, Mario Teaches Typing was designed for improving a computer user's typing skills. Kids with no typing experience will get the most from the program, while enjoying cute antics of Nintendo's popular Mario brothers. All of the game's music was sampled from Super Mario World.


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Ah, the best thing to play in Elementary school computer labs. Legitimately did probably teach me a lot of typing skills, because I just loved that it was making Mario play through a level

I just remember that I actually played this in school. I played Mario in school AND it tought me how to type better. What more could a kid want?

I use it to teach children how to spell and they always like it

Has this ever happened to you before?

You wake up one day, get ready to take on said day, brush your plants, water your teeth, look at yourself in the mirror, wonder where the hell you are going in life, and then after all that, sit down at your work desk to finally get some work done. You pull out this new, fancy device known as a “laptop” out of a case you have next to you, you open it up, but then you see… those... a bunch of buttons on the device that have letters, numbers, words, and other weird symbols on them. You figure they have some sort of meaning, but you just don’t know what that could possibly be. You press many of them, but to no avail. Some of them do something, but others don’t, and it is all just too confusing! WHAT DO YOU DO?! Well, not to worry, my friend, because for these situations, we only have the finest tools available to assist you in your endeavors… and by that, we mean we have a copy of Mario Teaches Typing.

So yeah, for a good while in the 90’s, there was a time when Nintendo had licensed out Mario to several developers for the sole purpose of making educational games using the character and its world. Not exactly sure why they decided to take this route, or even why they decided to take this route for so long, but out of this decision, we got plenty of different educational games out of it, such as Mario is Missing!, Mario’s Time Machine, the Mario’s Early Years! series, and Mario’s Game Gallery, to an extent. Out of all of these games, there was also Mario Teaches Typing, a game that is primarily meant to teach young players how to type, with the assistance of Mario and pals. I myself haven’t played the game before, because I have much better things to do with my time, but I will admit, I do type like a fucking goblin, so who knows? Maybe Mario Teaches Typing is just what I need to help me get better at typing. So, after playing it, I can certainly say… this is definitely a typing assistant featuring Mario, alright.

The graphics are admittedly pretty good for 1992, and is undeniably the best that the series had looked at that time, but looking back at it in 2024… dear god, it is nightmare fuel, the music is pretty good as well, consisting of a bunch of remixes of classic Mario tunes, along with some new ones, and it all sounds appropriately cheery and fun for this kind of game, the controls are… well, what do you expect, and the gameplay is mostly also what you would expect from a game like this, but it does manage to try to add some spice into it… or at least, as much spice as you can get from a game like this.

The game is an educational game, where you can select from several noteworthy Mario characters who will help you out as an assistant, go through several different levels, each covering a specific aspect of typing, help your assistant defeat plenty of enemies and get through plenty of obstacles by using your sick typing skills, improve your craft with tons and tons of practice so that you can be the best typer there is, and then turn off the game to go eat a sandwich, because you are an adult playing a Mario Typing game, and you need help. If you have played any kind of typing game before this, or even tried out any kind of typing tool that you could find online, then a lot of this should feel very familiar to you, and you should be able to get used to it pretty quickly, with the only real difference between this and those other typing tools being that, again, it is all themed around Mario.

I have had plenty of typing exercises in the past when I was in school, so I was able to pick up on what kind of lessons this game would try to give me right away, such as typing out a bunch of words in a sequence using only one specific row of the keyboard, pressing one key at a time to defeat specific enemies or hit blocks using one specific row of the keyboard, typing out entire sentences about the bloody battles of the Civil War to get your assistant through Bowser’s castle (you know, the typical shit you would read in a Mario game), and finally, just typing out a bunch of letters in a sequence to get more used to it. All of this, of course, is accompanied with plenty of Mario elements and that Mario… “charm”, where you can watch your assistant break blocks, stomp on Koopas, swim through water to dodge Bloopers, very slowly get through a hall of Thwomps, and almost drown in a vat of quicksand along the way. It is all somewhat funny to watch in action, and it must’ve been pretty cool for 1992, but again, nowadays, it looks incredibly disturbing, and I don’t really wanna look at it for more than 10 seconds before it manages to find a way to eat me.

With all that being said though, that is really all that this game offers. Just a bunch of minigames that are all themed around different aspects of typing, and if that doesn’t really get you excited for the wonderful world of typing, then there really is nothing for you here. All of this can be found in any kind of typing-teaching tool that you can find online, and the only real thing that makes this one stand out from the crowd is that, again, it is all themed around Mario and pals. But, I will give it credit, because at the end of the day, it isn’t a bad game or tool at all. It manages to do the job it sets out to do, and it does provide a helpful way of teaching you how to type, just in case you had trouble with being able to properly do so beforehand. Not to mention, for those who are wanting to help their kids learn how to type efficiently, this is a pretty good means of having them learn, because not only is it, again, pretty useful, but it also has Mario there, which will draw them in and make them want to check it out. It’s not much, but hey, it is at least something.

Overall, despite how useful the tool can be for younger players, as well as the… “unique charm” that it has, the original Mario Teaches Typing doesn’t really offer more than what it tells you in the title, and as such, doesn’t really come off as better or worse then other kind of typing tool out there. I would recommend it for those who like Mario, so that they can at least experience this once, or even for those who want to teach their kids how to type effectively, but aside from those reasons, there isn’t any real reason to give this game a shot, and it just comes off as pretty forgettable at the end of the day. Hell, I’m surprised they even managed to make a sequel out of this concept at all. What are they gonna change about that one to make it more special? Adding a terrifying, 3D Mario head that constantly talks to you? Yeah right, like that would ever happen.

Game #487

They did not need to give us the banger that is Practice Makes Perfect but I'm glad they did

'Martinet has been with us since Mario 64' he was with you since Mario Teaches Typing you revisionist fucks