Mario Teaches Typing 2
Reviewed by Cynthia A. Sorrels
Published by Brainstorm

Age Group: Age 4 to 8, Age 8 and Up Type: Thinking Games Price: $ 29.95 US

PC version requires:
486-66 8 MB RAM, 2x CD-ROM, Windows 95, also on Windows 3.1, 640x480x256

Mac version requires:
Version is available.

Description:

Who would think that matching the arcade-style action of Mario and his friends with a typing program would work?! Brainstorm did! Mario Teaches Typing 2 will work for beginning typists as well as experienced users who want to increase accuracy and speed. Work through each of four levels with Mario, the Princess and Luigi...and learn to type along the way! Except for the glitches discussed below, this typing program is the best we've seen.

Features:

• Colorful animations to guide through lessons.
• Customized lesson editor.
• Status bar.
• Expert level included.

Reactions:

Children younger than six will enjoy playing with the "Magic Keyboard" section - pressing a key causes the letter to appear on the screen along with "A is for..." and all the subjects have to do with Mario's world and other games. Older kids will enjoy the arcade action as they type through the four levels, earning Mario Graduate certificates. We did question the accuracy of the status bar, though - some of the time it seemed that Mario counted errors that weren't actually made!

On our Pentium system: the typing sections/lessons ran so fast we could hardly see the letters. We looked but did not find any instructions for slowing it down. Also, the Evaluation Test froze up about half way through each time we attempted to complete it. We couldn't type anything else in but the timer kept counting, it was weird.

On the 486/66, the typing sections ran beautifully, no problems at all. However, the Evaluation section froze up on this machine as well. Maybe I'm just such a super fast typist that it couldn't keep up?? Guess we'll never know.

This is truly the best typing program our family's seen. If it weren't for the technical problems listed above, it would have received a Gold award. Be aware of its' minor limitations and watch your kids learn to type with Mario!

You can download a Mac demo.
You can download a PC demo.

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