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Legends of Rock ♠ 06 Ge♊ini 2k8, Frigg’s Day ♣ |  |
I am a devotee of the Accidental Exercise Regime. This involves, when something drops onto the floor, bending over, and then straightening up again, while regulating one’s breathing. Assuming, of course, that whatever dropped might not be, perhaps, better off on the floor. After all, if it didn’t want to be there, why did it drop in the first place? (The Regime also exercises the philosophic muscles.)
For some unfathomable reason (possibly La Nina), in spite of these regular exertions, I am not as fit as I should be. I’ve been getting all kinds of strange aches in all sorts of places that shouldn’t have muscles to begin with, such as those bits of my arms that aren’t necessary to use input devices. This is due to Guitar Hero III: Legends of Rock.
I know Guitar Hero III is old news, since the console versions were released so long ago (23rd November 2007, to be precise), but I don’t have a console, and the PC/Mac version just came out a few days ago, and I’ve been playing ever since.
Having set myself the modest target of perfecting all songs on Easy (anything harder than Easy is currently making me feel more like a Guitar Zero), I have since experienced another strange phenomenon – I’m hallucinating, ala the Tetris Effect. When I close my eyes and try to sleep, I see falling buttons that need to be pressed. I press them. With fervour.
I think I last felt this during Diablo 2, when I would hear cows and feel the urge, nay, the need to feed them some lightning (I played a ’Zon, because, you know, I fight like a girl).
The guitar controller has five buttons, but I only have four fingers, not being blessed with hexadactyly (my parents have a lot to answer for). Thusly, I considered ways to get an extra finger, or possibly two, since my pinky doesn’t seem to function as intended. Since I don’t have an identical twin to borrow a finger from (A LOT to answer for), I’d have to find another finger.
Scientists have grown ears on the backs of mice, but I’m not sure if they can grow fingers. Alternatively, I could get a brain-controlled robotic finger. In either case, the technology hasn’t been perfected, which leaves me with having to take a finger off my right hand. Thanks to the Internet, I’m sure there are BIID (Body Integrity Identity Disorder – look it up on wiki if you must; I didn’t try googling it for fear the search throws up images) sites out there to teach me how to do it.
This fancy died out pretty quickly because, firstly, symmetry is important, and, much more importantly, there may be a game somewhen in the future that requires a full complement of digits on the right hand. Some form of digital game, I suppose.
Moving on to less disturbing topics, wouldn’t it be cool if Guitar Hero had Asian versions? Pipa Hero, perhaps, or Sitar Hero.
Or a game where you study hard and try to get into a Top University. The game will be really difficult, and will take four years of gameplay to complete (much like Guitar Hero is looking to me now – Damn you, Slayer!), but when, at last, you win, you can hold the Wiimote as if it were a diploma, and pose for your graduation picture.
Guitar Hero would be much cooler if they had more instruments and allowed more people to play together. Someone should make a game like that. They could call it… Rock Band.
No, no, that sounds too much like geology.
Legendary Rocks
On Gamasutra, an excerpt from the book Inside Game Design: Harmonix Music Systems.
RedOctane had been talking to Harmonix for a while. It was a rental company and then they made dance mats for DDR [Dance Dance Revolution]. It ended up selling a bundle of these dance mats and wanted to progress that side of its business. The company was interested in making a guitar game as they’d seen Guitar Freaks, which Konami had done. So they came to Harmonix with the request, “will you make us a great guitar game for our new piece of guitar hardware?”At that time, Konami hadn’t released Guitar Freaks in the US, and I don’t think RedOctane had any particularly grand ambitions other than needing a game. Relatively speaking, it was a pretty low-budget game -- about a million dollars, which is pretty tiny as a game budget.
We had a team that had just been freed up, as we’d just finished AntiGrav. This seemed like an awesome project. Everyone here was really psyched to work on a rock guitar game; it really fitted in with people’s interests here. No one had any notions about it being a massive success; we all just thought it would be fun to do.
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