Here’s something to try if you’re bored — just try to not get addicted in the process. You have been warned.
If haven’t gone off and started playing already, it’s a Flash game I stumbled upon tonight called “Typing Mania 4”. Now the only reason why it gets mentioned here is because it features a very nice assortment of anime songs, which will be the ONLY thing keeping you playing after awhile. For those of you with 100+ words-per-minute typing speeds, I wouldn’t get overconfident too quickly because most of the lyrics are in romaji (ローマ字) and there are quite a few quirks (mentioned below). There are some English songs as well though, so give ELISA’s “Euphoric field” from ef – a tale of memories. a try if you like.
Each song is ranked with a “Typing Level” ranging from 0 to 99. If you want to experience some level 99 insanity right away, give Lucky Star‘s “Motteke! Sailor Fuku” 「もってけ！セーラーふく」 a go (pictured above). Even eufonius’ “Reflectia” 「リフレクティア」 from true tears is pretty tough, and that’s ONLY a level 9 song. With that said, you might want to start off with something reasonable like Nakajima Megumi’s Aimo 「アイモ」 from Macross Frontier, so you don’t end up hating the game right away. Most of the time, you’ll probably be staring at your monitor in awe wondering how anyone’s ever supposed to play this properly, but as with Rock Band, you just know there are people out there who will go to lengths to master this kind of stuff.
Note: You can access more songs with the left and right arrow keys.
*UPDATED* Now if you’re actually serious about doing well in this game, there are some things to keep in mind, especially if you’re familiar with some Japanese. However, if you’re only looking at the letters and not the Japanese lyrics, then these probably won’t help much.
– The particle は has to be typed out as “ha” and not “wa”, which is an accepted romanization of it.
– The hiragana し is “si” rather than “shi”. You can type “shi”, but you’ll get a miss for the “h”.
– The hiragana つ is “tu” rather than “tsu”. You can type “tsu”, but you’ll get a miss for the “s”.
– The hirangan じ can be typed as “ji” or “zi”.
– The hiragana ふ can be typed as “hu” or “fu”.
– The hiragana しゃ, しゅ, しょ are spelled as “sya”, “syu”, “syo”, but you can use “sha”, “shu”, “sho”.
– The hiragana ちゃ, ちゅ, ちょ are spelled as “tya”, “tyu”, “tyo”, but you can use “cha”, “chu”, “cho”.
– The katakana シェ and チェ are spelled “sye” and “tye”, but you can use “she” and “che”.
– If the hiragana ん appears in the middle of a word, you can simply type “n” instead of “nn”.
– If a small っ appears at the end of a word to shorten the last vowel, you have to type “ltu”. e.g. ぎゅっ
– None of the Japanese lyrics have spaces.
– When spaces do appear, they’re displayed as underscores, but you can use Space.
– You do not need to capitalize English words.
Let the madness (and frustration) begin!
