We’ve all heard the argument that Guitar Hero is causing thousands of young gamers with musical potential to waste their talents on a video game, but what about the counter argument? There are hundreds, if not thousands, of gamers who have never touched a real six-string, who find themselves honestly wondering if they could be a rock star because they can five-star “Freebird” on expert. If you fit this demographic, you and I have something in common, and I’d like to share a few things I discovered while trying to learn the guitar.

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The Guitar Hero franchise’s dominance over the rhythm-action genre came under attack last November with the release of the critically-acclaimed commercial hit, Rock Band.  This fall, Rock Band 2 and Guitar Hero World Tour will clash in a veritable battle of the bands, seeking to win the love and adoration of fake musicians everywhere.  As a result, Guitar Hero:  Aerosmith, released on June 29^th for PlayStation 2, PlayStation 3,Wii, and Xbox 360, seems like an afterthought - an expansion pack aimed only at Aerosmith devotees and hardcore GH fanboys.  Does this virtual homage to one of the greatest rock and roll bands in history make you want to just push play, or is it the same old song and dance?

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A few weeks ago, I drove past one of the biggest hole-in-the-wall bowling alleys you could ever imagine. Normally, I’d pass it without a second thought, but something caught my eye:  “Rock Band Competition.” I did a double-take. Curiosity got the best of me, and I researched the event. It was a bona-fide Rock Band rock-out. I couldn’t believe it. If it had caught on in a dive like that, then I could only imagine the extent of this phenomenon. Therefore, it came as no surprise to learn that Rock Band was “touring.”

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The past 11 years have witnessed a dramatic evolution in the music gaming genre. Titles like PaRappa the Rapper and Frequency brought rhythm games out of the dark, and 2005’s release of Guitar Hero elevated music gaming to a whole new level. Since then, the genre has exploded, and Rock Band has become perhaps the most innovative music game to date–but there may be competition fast approaching: developers Neversoft and Harmonix look to keep the evolutionary ball rolling with their announced sequels to last year’s killer games, Guitar Hero III and Rock Band.

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Wii owners (but not Wii60 owners mind you) have been looking forward to Rock Band since it was officially announced in January. Now that the June 22^nd release date is rapidly approaching, Harmonix has finally revealed its newest addition to the Rock Band peripheral family.
If you’re among the hundreds of thousands already playing Rock Band, then there’s little to get excited over with this “new and improved” drum kit. The first run of Rock Band drum kits for Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3 had epic failures world-wide thanks to their flimsy peddles and loud, stiff pads. Harmonix has addressed these issues and are producing drums with a sturdier peddle spring (see picture below) and softer drum heads… for all systems.
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It’s interesting to see how many games evolve from a common mechanic, yet have drastic differences. Let’s consider what’s currently known as the “Rhythm” genre. Guitar Hero and Rock Band are the reigning champs. I describe this game mechanic as “Linear Digital Timing,” or LDT for short. It has these rules:
-The player’s actions are tied to a fixed linear medium (like a video clip or a music sample).
-The player uses digital input ( e.g. tapping a button on or off, or pushing a joystick from center to right).
-When prompted, the player must do the specified input in a specific window of time.
Example: in Guitar Hero, you react to a linear song (like “Roxanne”), where you need to strum a note (where the digital fret button and strum switch must be “on”) at the exact time the note passes the strum window. Do it correctly, and a note plays. Miss, and you are penalized.
But Guitar Hero and Rock Band were far from the first to do this. Remember Dragon’s Lair?
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Rumor has it that much of the long lusted-for Who’s Next album will never make it to Rock Band. Someone unearthed a February 2008 interview in which Pete Townshend casually mentions that half of the master tracks for Who’s Next have been stolen, which has led to speculation that classic songs like “Baba O’Reily” and “Bargain” will never grace Rock Band’s proverbial teenage wasteland.

Long ago, in a galaxy far, far away (July, 2007), Harmonix made the undershorts of gamers and rockers everywhere just a little tighter when they announced that not only were they going to provide a steady stream of downloadable new tracks, but they were also going to open the festivities with one of the greatest albums of all time: Who’s Next.

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It’s ten o’clock at night. A young man stands on a street corner as a beat-up truck pulls up in front of him, and he climbs in. His forty-five year-old professor is in the driver’s seat. They stop at the professor’s house and step down a dark set of stairs into the basement….and rock out. On a regular basis, they go to his place to jam out to the greatest hits of The Ramones, Jet and Blue Oyster Cult, to name a few. And this is happening in basements all over America.

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