Guitar Hero with real guitars — it is finally coming
I’ve been musing about and hoping for this one for a while. While Activision’s Guitar Hero has been gaining greater and greater popularity out there, making gamers of people who previously thought an XBox was only for 35-year-old bacherlor’s in their parents’ basements and 10-year-old kids, I’ve been lamenting that there isn’t a game that actually helps you learn how to play a real guitar. Given that my own current guitar rig can be plugged directly into my PC and I can even get a tuner to pop up on my monitor, I knew that the technology already existed to make a computer able to tell what note you were playing. Now all that needed to happen was that someone had to take the scrolling notes of Guitar Hero and merge them with the real neck of a bonafide electric guitar.
And hooray: someone is doing it. The name of the game is “Guitar Rising” (guitarrising.com). You’ll be able to plug any electric guitar into your PC with simple USB to 1/4 inch interface. You’ll get 30 rock songs to play along with, at five levels of difficulty, and even with variable tempos so you can learn at your own pace. The first release is due out in time for this Christmas, and I’m sure if it’s successful, you’ll see expansion packs with more and more songs.
So for all you guitar heroes who wish you could translate your gaming skills over to actually performing real songs for your friends, get excited. This game is for you.
This entry was posted on Saturday, March 1st, 2008 at 5:32 pm and is filed under Music, Technology. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.
