Anyone play Guitar Hero? Here is my son tearing it up To "You Really Got Me."

Never played the game. I do own those same pajamas, though.

You're MY guitar hero, Strange Bill Bergstrom.

My brother got me the second GH for Christmas. Awesome, awesome game even though it has far and away the WORST MISIRLOU EVER.

It's not a DD arrangement, it's got prominent, cheesy backing organ, and the melody occupies like maybe a tenth of the song. Instead it's mostly glissandos and blooze. Oh, and no reverb.

It's still not as bad as what they did to the Stooges' "Search & Destroy," though, which sounds like Sum friggin' 41 or something.

The first one has a better song list, IMO, but both are amazingly fun..

-Warren

That was excessively violent and completely unnecessary. I loved it.

Zing! Good one, wooz.

DannySnyder
Can someone explain what this is to us videogame deprived surf geeks?

Since I doubt I'm going to sleep anytime soon after nine-plus hours of surf music at Baja Marty's shindig earlier, here goes. I'll try and keep it short. (And I will inevitably fail.) Basically, it's a rhythm-oriented videogame, sort of like Dance Dance Revolution only 1,000,000 times less lame.

The game comes with a special controller shaped like a mini Gibson SG. This controller has five colored fret buttons, as well as a white bar you use to strum, and perhaps most importantly, a functional whammy bar. When you play, color-coordinated notes scroll from the top of the screen to the bottom, and when they reach a certain point, you press the appropriate fret button and strum the strum bar.

These notes actually match up with what's going on in the song--when the notes in the song ascend, so do the notes you play. Same with chords. On easier settings, you might end up only having to play a third of the notes in a given song, but on higher difficulty levels, you have to play more notes and a lot more chords. Hammer-ons and pull-offs work the same on the fret buttons as they do on a real guitar, and are pretty much necessary to get through a lot of the solos. On the 'expert' setting, some stuff actually becomes much harder to play in the game than it is on a real guitar. (On expert I can barely make it through Cheap Trick's "Surrender," a song I can play with only a few dozen or so mistakes in real life.)

While this is going on, your "band" performs onscreen. A lot of the character designs and animations are pretty damn funny. (The 70's-rock/Hawkwind-looking guy not only pulls out a violin bow just like Jimmy Page, but he also does the Hendrix-setting-the-guitar-on-fire-and-fanning-the-flames thing as well.)

The main songs in the game are all cover versions of famous songs, performed by what I assume are session musicians hired by the studio. About half of the covers are dead on musically--especially "War Pigs." Others, not so much. Some have added parts--"Surrender" has a bunch of crappy fills added, the Sword's "Freya" ends with a pointless coda riff that's nowhere to be found in the original, Wolfmother's "Woman" now features a shred solo that the actual Wolfmother guitarist probably couldn't play, etc. Two of the songs were taken from the original master tapes, though--Primus' "John the Fisherman" and Jane's Addiction's "Stop."

There's bonus songs you can purchase as you progress through the game--those are all original artist recordings, and the bands are primarily unknowns. Buckethead wrote one of the bonus songs specifically for the game. (And surprise surprise, it sucks and is no fun to play.)

Hope this clears it up a bit.

-Warren

That was excessively violent and completely unnecessary. I loved it.

XBox 360 is coming out with a version with a Gibson Explorer type guitar.

chongolio
Here is a clip on Youtube that shows a Kid playing Guitar Hero. Looks interesting but call me old fashioned, I would think playing a real guitar more fun and rewarding. Maybe if the game somehow taught you something about music theory and chord shapes I could get a little more excited about it. Just my two coconuts worth.
Chongolio

I was thinking that as well. All that time that could be spent playing a "real" guitar. I know I wasted my youth playing Nintendo games. Maybe that's why so many of those 1st wave guitarists were so good so young.

"as he stepped into the stealthy night air... little did he know the fire escape was not there"

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Hey if the game gets people interested in the guitar it can't be all that bad. A lot of people might think playing the guitar is really very hard, and might feel safer trying out a "game" first.

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IronMaiden
I cant wait for 'Violin Hero' to come out. Then I can express my inner Paganini.

I'm all about Vivaldi.