The Day the Music Died

Two days ago, gaming mega-company Activision announced that they are discontinuing the Guitar Hero franchise. It's not really a surprise, given the insane way they milked the series with game after overlapping game, none ever capturing the magic of the first installments designed by the original developers, Harmonix. (Now makers of Rock Band.)

I personally haven't bought a Guitar Hero game since World Tour, more than two years (and half a dozen versions) ago. Still, it's the brand that started it all, and the one more people seem to recognize by name, despite the superior design of Rock Band. And given that games are my industry, it's never good news to hear about massive layoffs at a company.

I know how much fun I had playing those early games. I still remember my first Guitar Hero experience, followed by an insane scavenger hunt to find a store in town that actually had a copy in stock.

Here's hoping that the reduced competition, as well as the recent release of Harmonix back to being an independent company, means things will pick up for Rock Band, my game of choice.

Keep rockin'!

Downfall of a Hero

This week, Harmonix's new game The Beatles: Rock Band arrives at last. I'll be snatching that up with all due haste. Meanwhile, last week, the latest entry in the Guitar Hero franchise, Guitar Hero 5 (not actually the fifth game, if you count all the spin-offs), was release by Activision/Neversoft. I don't plan to ever pick that up.

See, back before MTV bought game designers Harmonix and Activision bought peripheral manufacturers Red Octane, the Guitar Hero franchise was "full of win," as I think the online crowd might say. When the split happened and Harmonix went on to make Rock Band, they kept up the good work. They just "get it." Dozens of little decisions in the Rock Band franchise make it clear that they want the game to be about accessing and interacting with music first, and a game second.

Meanwhile, Activision handed the keys to the Guitar Hero franchise over to the developers at Neversoft, who repeatedly demonstrate that they're making a franchise first (as many releases each year as possible), a game second, and some musicy-thingy a distant third. They just don't "get it," not even a little.

I could go on about this at length, but some very clever fellow put together this totally awesome video that says it all quite perfectly:

What Alcohol Can Make You Do

Those of you who keep tabs on the weekly downloadable songs for Rock Band may already be aware that next week, the long-ago announced Stevie Ray Vaughan album, Texas Flood, is being released in its entirety.

From a gameplay perspective, the album is notable for having three instrumental tracks. Several months back, the Rush album Moving Pictures brought the first instrumental song to the game, YYZ. There's no part for the vocalist, not even microphone-tapping tamborine. You can't play with a singer in your band.

That did not stop this guy from trying to find a way around that, playing the Guitar Hero II version:

Bike Hero

I have absolutely no words to describe how frakkin' crazy the following video is:


First of all, I don't think even I love Rock Band half as much as this guy clearly loves Guitar Hero, and that's saying something. I'm not sure I'll ever love anything as much as this guy loves Guitar Hero.

Secondly, I can't even imagine where you'd come up with the idea for something like this. The amount of planning involved makes the whole "I'm gonna write the words to that Daft Punk song on my body in Magic Marker" thing seem playschool by comparison.

Thirdly, the sheer number of takes it must have required to get the lights on the bike to stay in synch with the symbols on the ground makes my head hurt.

Finally, note that he roped his friends into participating puts it over the top. (Shooting off streamers when he hits "star power," holding up the "You Rock" banner at the end, and so forth.)

Nuts! And awesome.

Screwy Decimal System

Here's a short, weird article about how libraries are becoming "happening places." Two things about this struck me as funny.

1) The mention that people at the library can play Guitar Hero. This just seems so wrong to me. I mean, I know music education is ever on the decline in our school system, and I do think that sucks. But I don't think Guitar Hero offers that much in the way of music education, and call me old fashioned, but I do think of the library as a place primarily for learning.

2) This totally reminds me of Eddie Izzard's comedy routine (so many things do), in this case about how the banning of smoking from bars would soon lead to no drinking and no talking in bars. Next thing you know, the libraries would become the hot spots. (Puff on joint.) "I don't know where that book could be, man." Scary that that's so close to becoming true.

Error-smith

On Sunday this week, the newest installment of the Guitar Hero series was released, Guitar Hero Aerosmith. This is really more like "Guitar Hero III, Part 2" in that it uses the same graphics engine and presentation... it's just new songs (and mostly Aerosmith songs, as you might have guessed).

I picked up the game for three reasons. First, I do mostly like Aerosmith, so I figured a game made about 70% of their music would be okay.

Secondly, I wanted to actually pick up one of the Guitar Hero games for PS3 so I could have a controller that worked on that system. In a giant bastardly move, the folks at Activision made it so that the Rock Band controllers don't cross over into their game (nor their controllers into Rock Band). Also, since there's no PS2-style controller jack on the PS3, none of the previous Guitar Hero games can be played on it either -- not without buying a USB adapter that from what I've heard doesn't even make the old guitar controller fully compatible. (The whammy bar still won't work, I'm read.)

Well, here's the first strike against the game, because even though I now have an official guitar controller from Red Octane/Activision that's PS3 compatible, not even it will allow me to play the earlier Guitar Hero games on my system. This seems like an incredibly straightforward thing to do. I can only reason it was deliberately manufactured not to allow playing the earlier (pre-Activision) games in the series. Another schmuckly move on the company's part.

My third motive in buying the game was to see if Activision (or specifically, this game's developers, Neversoft) had learned anything from it's many, many mistakes with Guitar Hero III. Now, as I mentioned earlier, this wasn't really a full-fledged new game in the series, so one can't reasonably expect too many things to have been fixed here. But one of the biggest beefs I had with the game (along with virtually every reviewer on the planet) was its sickeningly hard level of difficulty.

Basically, I was (and am) using Guitar Hero Aerosmith as an audition to see if I'm going to actually want to buy Guitar Hero World Tour in a few months. See, the next GH game is adding drums and vocals, just like Rock Band. And in yet another dickish move, the game is going to use its own new controllers that aren't Rock Band compatible. So we're talking about the prospect of buying another $150-$200 worth of fake plastic instruments and finding somewhere in the house to store them. Is it likely the game will be worth that?

Based on GH Aerosmith, I have to say, "Signs Point to No." It didn't take much playing of the game to see that the people at Neversoft clearly don't "get it." Yes, the difficulty of this game is dialed down from GH3. But there's more to "getting it right" than that. The "note charts" (as fans of these games have dubbed the patterns you have to play) don't really make you feel like you're actually playing the song.

They often have crazy-long "Star Power" phrases required to earn your big crowd pleasing moments. The phrases are also often non-sensical. Rock Band (and Guitar Hero, in the old days under Harmonix) almost always puts them at logical "big moments" in the song, and they usually last an understandable number of beats or measures in the music. In GH Aerosmith, they tend to last an almost random number of notes... as long as the designers damn well please.

The note charts often don't match the music. For example, in the Expert rendering of Rag Doll, a musical phrase that steps straight up the scale from low to high ("...get it while it's easy...") plays alternating notes on the guitar (1-3-2-5-4-5). It's not musically logical' it can be that way only to make the song more difficult to play.

So, as I said, the folks at Neversoft just don't "get it." These games are supposed to be about giving the player the illusion that they're a rock star in their own band. But playing the songs feels more like playing Soul Calibur. (Dodge... jump... now do your three-button combo to launch your attack!) It's impossible to get lost in the fantasy for even a second. You're playing a game.

As for the other trappings of Guitar Hero Aerosmith? Well, the soundtrack's okay. It turns out either I don't like Aerosmith as much as I thought, or that playing that much of any one band wears thin after a while. (I think it's a measure of both.)

The motion capture of the Aerosmith members is incredibly authentic, at least. The game's Steven Tyler, in particular, moves just like the real thing. But unfortunately, he doesn't quite look like the real thing. There's something fake and plastic-looking about all the characters. (Though none is as butt ugly as the dog-faced lead singer from Guitar Hero III.)

And perhaps most humorous of all, the big "final song" in the game is "Train Kept a Rollin'," which is the one and only Aerosmith song already in Rock Band. That's pretty much cementing that anything Guitar Hero does these days, Rock Band does better. Much, much better.

I'd rate Guitar Hero Aerosmith a D+. And if you don't like the band, then lower than that. Basically, don't get this game. And, based on this game, right now I'm thinking don't buy Guitar Hero World Tour either, when it comes out.

A South Park Rerun

So yes, I did see this week's Guitar Hero-themed episode of South Park. Some episodes of South Park actually carry some kind of message or try to make some point. Other simply try to be funny. This was one of the latter, unless you take the "message" to be that "gamers are dumb." (But given that creators Trey Parker and Matt Stone have acknowledged their own video game addictions from time to time in their commentaries, I'll assume that's not the case.)

In any case, to delve too critically into this episode is probably silly. Still, I have to make one major observation. To me, there was nothing in this episode that wasn't already done in last season's "World of Warcraft" episode. Both depicted the same tale of emotionally investing overmuch in a video game, and the same transference of the game into the real world. Been there, done that.

So which time was it funnier? The Warcraft episode, or the Guitar Hero episode?

I personally think the Guitar Hero episode had the funnier setups and jokes, and that serves as the answer to "why do the same episode over again?" But I of course have to acknowledge that, as I'm a fan of GH and not WoW, perhaps I only find it funnier because of the familiarity.

Anyone else want to weigh in?

A Hero Tarnished

Guitar Hero III has now been available for a week. I've had enough to time to play with it to really figure out what I think about it.

In the plus column, the music in this one is really excellent. The "Legends of Rock" subtitle for this game isn't superfluous, it really does contain a large number of classic rock songs -- far more than the earlier Guitar Hero games. There's considerably less assault-on-the-ears metal here than there was in Guitar Hero II, and much of what is there is actually relegated to the "bonus tracks." This is all great to me.

There are a few truly inspired elements added into the game. In one of the venues, you'll occasionally see a spectator climb up on stage and dive into the crowd. The career mode "storyline" of cut scenes tells a cute and fun story of the rise and fall of your band. The idea of a final guitar battle with the Devil himself, to a rocked-up guitar version of The Devil Went Down to Georgia, is absolutely kickass.

Unfortunately, that's about it for what can firmly go in the plus column. The new developer, Neversoft, got a lot of little tiny things just slightly wrong, things that the previous developer, Harmonix, had working great in the earlier installments. For example, the load times are ridiculously long now, as though no efforts to optimize the resource usage were made.

Star Power animations, which used to make watching people play Guitar Hero almost as fun as playing yourself, are now non-existent. Characters used to propeller their guitars around their necks, ride them like bucking broncos, toss them 30 feet into the air, and more. Now, they simply don't do anything at all. Star Power turns the notes blue and makes the crowd start clapping just like before. But the characters keep on doing the same boring movements they do all the rest of the time.

Co-op Mode now no longer allows the play of single songs; you can only play in a Coop Career Mode. When playing Co-op, it used to be that if one player missed a note, only his side of the screen would shake. Now, both players get the "you messed up" treatment. And then, at the end of the song, stats on accuracy that used to be calculated individually are now only displayed for the pair combined.

But that's not the worst thing they did with Co-op Play. That mode now requires both players to play at a high level to be able to unlock maximum content in the game. In Guitar Hero II, you and a buddy could pair up, one on Expert and one on Medium, and still manage 5 star ratings that would unlock every extra the game had to offer. Now, in your career, you unlock only at the level of the player on the lowest setting, which means that to get at everything in the game, you need two players who can both hack it on Expert -- pretty rare.

Not that even players who used to be able to play on Expert can do so now. They've significantly increased the difficulty of the game even over Guitar Hero II, which was widely thought to be a rather big step up from the original. Mostly, this jump in difficulty is achieved through note patterns far more complicated than the earlier games, but once or twice it is a result of bad synch with the music. I was happy that the song Barracuda by Heart was finally added to a Guitar Hero game -- until I played it a few times and realized that no, it's not me that's off... their programming of when to expect the strum input is mis-synched.

There are a few new additions to the game that, while sounding good in principle, turn out not to be in practice. As I mentioned, the idea of an epic guitar battle with the Devil sounds awesome, as do battles against Tom Morello and Slash. But the actual implementation of them sucks. The console-controlled adversary plays perfectly unless you've deployed one of the "weapons" against him -- perfectly enough to always have a full Rock Meter. The only way to win a battle is to save up three "weapons" (the maximum allowed), then deploy them all at once during a stretch where your computer opponent has a lot of notes to play. Nothing else works.

The game has added a streak counter that flashes notices on the screen when you reach a streak of 50 notes, 100 notes, 200 notes, and so forth. DDR has been doing this for years, so it seems like a natural addition to Guitar Hero. But the little sound effect it plays when this happens is almost identical to the "you just screwed up and missed a note" sound effect. The result is that when you reach a long streak, your "reward" is to think you've screwed up, which disrupts your rhythm and then causes you to actually screw up.

The articulation of the lead singer is at an all-time high in this game. When you see close-ups of the singer, he really looks like he's singing the words to the songs now. Which would be incredible, except that in the character re-design done for this game, they made him look like some ghastly offspring of a Muppet and Mickey Roarke's character from Sin City. This guy is fugly.

The thing is, though, Guitar Hero is ultimately about the music. So even with this long list of problems (and more I could go on about), the fact is that the first thing I mentioned probably balances them all out. I'll say it again: this has the best song selection of any Guitar Hero game. Still, I have to wonder if down the road, when some of the luster of the songs has faded through playing them again and again, if all that will be left are these abundant flaws. If so, than this game will be ultimately come to be a real disappointment -- the point where a good thing turned sour.

In all, while I am enjoying Guitar Hero III, more than anything it makes me look forward to Rock Band. That game, from Harmonix (the original developers of Guitar Hero) also looks to have a kick-ass soundtrack and lots of master recordings (as opposed to lots of cover versions). And they'll likely not screw up all the little things that Neversoft couldn't seem to get right.

I Wanna Rock

So, I haven't commented on it yet, but a good portion of the little time I've actually been at home these last couple weeks has been spent playing the new Guitar Hero game, Rock the 80s. I've heard a lot of the complaints that there's nothing really "new" about the game -- just new songs and a re-skin of some existing graphics. But that doesn't bother me one bit... new songs is all I was really looking for.

To that end, I'm mostly pleased with the game. There's only 30 songs total this time, which might not seem so low, but Guitar Hero II kind of spoiled me with so many. Like GH2, a few too many of the songs are "metal" for my tastes. The original GH1 was really the only game so far to nail the right mix of the thrashy metal you'd expect to have, while still having songs that you (well, I) would actually listen to and want to hear.

Gameplay-wise, most of the songs are a LOT easier to play through than anything in GH2. First-time through on Expert, I got five stars on everything the first time through, up until halfway through the game (well... there was one failed attempt at the diabolical solo in "Because, It's Midnite," but once I'd learned what was what, I used Star Power better to pull through). Still, there are actually some fun new patterns in there.

The Warrior might be my favorite Guitar Hero song now, period, in any of the games. I always had a soft spot for that song originally, and the designers gave it some really fun play patterns. And as a bonus, it's not a cover in the game -- it's the original master track. (Which explains why, strangely, it fades out at the end despite supposedly being played at a "live concert.")

I'm pretty amazed at how they've taken What I Like About You, a song that is stupidly easy to play on an actual guitar, and turned it into something that is crazy-harsh in the game. (In a way that does make sense, seeing the note patterns, though.)

They got a pretty damn good sound-alike for Danny Elfman in the Oingo Boingo song, Only a Lad. That's one of the more fun songs in the game, too.

I enjoy having We Got the Beat, I Ran, and Hold On Loosely in there -- even though none of them present any real challenge to play. They're fun anyway.

So far, I'm finding this game's final song, Play With Me by Extreme, even harder to beat than Free Bird. Haven't cracked it yet. Always bomb out in the same place, at 86%. Soon.... soon....

As I said, in all, I'm enjoying it. My enthusiasm for Guitar Hero really hasn't waned at all. We'll see if Activision can keep the fun coming with GH3, now that Harmonix (the actual software designers) have been cut out of the loop after this 80s edition.

E-Gipped

So, I'm back from my trip, which as some of you know, was to the E3 convention. Which might seem cool on the surface, but you have to consider that this year was the first "scaled down" E3, a mere shadow of the lavish and over-the-top showiness it had become known for in recent years. The splashy presentations and the swarms of people were way, way down.

Now some of you might say, "but so what, it's still E3!"

But consider that this is the room in which I spent all but about one hour of the convention:


This small little 10 x 20 foot ballroom was where my company presented its latest and forthcoming projects to members of the press and other guests who scheduled appointments. And who found us down two flights of stairs in one of several different hotels being used for the events. Most of the time, we were a little busier than what this photo would indicate. But not by much.

The "hangar" area, which was closer to what some of you might expect of E3, was more open, but even more dead I'm told. I did get to quickly tool through it one day and play a few Guitar Hero III songs, try out the recently announced Wii Balance Board... and that's about it.

So I'm basically saying this: don't anyone be jealous about missing out on this year's E3. You didn't miss much.

Actually, We DO Need Another "Hero"

After months of rumors and speculations, this recent press release has finally made it official: an all-80s music mini-edition of Guitar Hero is hitting this summer.

With the announcement, they revealed seven of the songs to be included in the game, and the set list is definitely off to a great start. There's quintessentially 80s songs like I Want Candy, I Ran, and Heat of the Moment, and iconic tracks from metal bands that haven't yet made it into Guitar Hero, like Twisted Sister (I Wanna Rock) and Quiet Riot (Metal Health).

As I said, a great start. But what could fill some of those 23 other slots in the set list to make things perfect? I'm hoping for:

867-5309 by Tommy Tutone
Beat It by Michael Jackson (gotta have the Van Halen solo, right?)
Money for Nothing by Dire Straits
I Wanna New Drug by Huey Lewis and the News
White Wedding by Billy Idol

And let's see... maybe Fire and Ice by Pat Benetar? Maybe Talk Dirty to Me by Poison for one of the "Opening Licks"? Gotta get some INXS in there -- Suicide Blonde? Devil Inside? And hey, I was basically kidding with that Tina Turner "Thunderdome" reference in the post title, but hey, there's guitar in that song...

It looks like this is going to be the smallest song selection of any Guitar Hero yet. But I expect I'll get more play out of it than either of the games that came before.

I Must Be Traveling On Now

To some of you, the significance of this image will not be readily apparent...


...but some of you will immediately know why I was bouncing off the walls this afternoon. I finally managed to beat Free Bird on Expert difficulty in Guitar Hero II. And well ahead of schedule, if you use the first Guitar Hero as a benchmark, anyway. I pounded my head against the wall of Bark at the Moon and Cowboys From Hell in the first one until literally the night before Guitar Hero II was released, and it seemed only knowing that the new game was imminent drove me to finally beat them. This time, just a happy moment of zen focus or whatever, and there it was.

I suppose you could say I still have challenges to beat in getting 5 stars on all the songs. But yeah, like that'll happen.

(Anyway, I should now in theory focus more attention on learning to play my real guitar.)

Rock On!

It's been a few days now since Guitar Hero II was released, and I figured it was about time for me to comment or review it or something. Except that I really don't know that I have much to say other than... it's awesome.

They could have done absolutely nothing different and just released a new song set, and I would have been enthused. That's sort of the DDR model, after all. But of course, they did not rest on their laurels.

There's the much awaited two-player cooperative mode, where one player takes lead guitar and the other takes rhythm or bass. Lots of fun. The first Guitar Hero was really only a single-player proposition. Sure, it had head-to-head for two players, but since you had to play at the same difficulty level, you had to find someone who was the same skill level for it to be any fun. No more... now you work together to rock out.

But really, some of the biggest improvements come in the graphics, and in the fun little additions to career mode. The stages all have wild, over-the-top effects that kick in for certain songs. Crowds demand that you play encores. Giant "fiberglass set pieces" roll in. Your drummer spontaneously combusts when you finish the Spinal Tap song. A UFO rolls into Stonehenge and transports you away when you complete a level of career mode.

It's cliche to say they took Guitar Hero and turned it up to 11. But hey... it's the perfect cliche. If you liked the first, you'll like the new one even more (unless your taste for the songs skews toward the original). If you didn't pick it up the first time around, you should check out what you've been missing.

Block the Vote

Colorado has a freakin' huge list of amendments and initiatives on the ballot this election, so I decided that the lines to vote on Tuesday will be unbearable. Besides, I don't want to be standing in line during what could be valuable Guitar Hero II time on its release date, right?

So I went to vote early a couple mornings ago. It was a snap. I arrived at the license plate branch as it opened on Thursday morning. There were only two other people waiting with me. All of us went right in, got our ballots and off we went.

I had a very strange sensation come over me as I was doing it, though. One of the people waiting with me for the place to open was a nice enough woman in her 40s. We only exchanged a couple of words -- it's not like we had a meaningful conversation, or that she gave me any indication of her personality or opinions. And yet, for a reason I can't explain, I had the overwhelming sensation that I was there "canceling out" her vote by voting exactly the opposite from her on each issue. I have nothing to back this up at all, but I felt a sense of certainty that I have rarely known.

Maybe it's just that I'm trying to shore up my psyche against the blow of watching the general population vote for things I believe to be patently stupid, if not morally reprehensible. That's the way I've felt pretty much every other time I've voted. Oh well, this Tuesday, I can bury myself in my new Guitar Hero II and try to ignore any potentially depressing results.

Crossing the Streams

There's nothing quite like the giddy rush of having two of your geeky passions cross paths. Shocho has been feeling that rush every Monday, when some new comic book reference is made on the latest episode of Heroes.

Well, I got it tonight big time, when Guitar Hero got a shout-out on Veronica Mars. And no mild shout-out either. The game was referenced by name at two different times in the show, and characters were shown actually playing the game on screen. (Totally hamming it up to Smoke on the Water.)

Between that and Veronica working "frak" into her volcabulary in the last two episodes, it's like eating one of those lethal chocolate desserts from a Chili's/Applebee's/Bennigan's type restaurant... I'm on the edge of a very happy coma.

Rock On!

There's less than a month to go until the release of Guitar Hero II, and the makers of the game have just announced the game's complete song list. (Well, the songs you don't have to unlock, anyway.)

As was the case with the first Guitar Hero, I don't know very many of these songs (though I know most of the groups). And also as was the case with the first Guitar Hero, I expect I'm going to know these songs really well soon enough.

Are any of your personal favorites or requests represented?

1. Opening Licks
Mötley Crüe - "Shout at the Devil"
Danzig - "Mother"
Cheap Trick - "Surrender"
Wolfmother - "Woman"
Spinal Tap - "Tonight I'm Gonna Rock You Tonight"

2. Amp-Warmers
KISS - "Strutter"
Nirvana - "Heart-Shaped Box"
The Police - "Message in a Bottle"
Van Halen - "You Really Got Me"
Kansas - "Carry On Wayward Son"

3. String-Snappers
Foo Fighters - "Monkey Wrench"
Alice in Chains - "Them Bones"
Iggy Pop and The Stooges - "Search and Destroy"
The Pretenders - "Tattooed Love Boys"
Black Sabbath - "War Pigs"

4. Thrash and Burn
Warrant - "Cherry Pie"
Butthole Surfers - "Who Was in My Room Last Night?"
Matthew Sweet - "Girlfriend"
The Rolling Stones - "Can't You Hear Me Knocking"
Guns N' Roses - "Sweet Child O' Mine"

5. Return of the Shred
Rage Against the Machine - "Killing in the Name"
Primus - "John the Fisherman"
The Sword - "Freya"
Thin Lizzy - "Bad Reputation"
Aerosmith - "Last Child"

6. Relentless Riffs
Heart - "Crazy on You"
Stone Temple Pilots - "Trippin' On a Hole in a Paper Heart"
Stray Cats - "Rock This Town"
The Allman Brothers Band - "Jessica"
Jane's Addiction - "Stop!"

7. Furious Fretwork
Anthrax - "Madhouse"
The Living End - "Carry Me Home"
Lamb of God - "Laid to Rest"
The Reverend Horton Heat - "Psychobilly Freakout"
Rush - "YYZ"

8. Face-Melters
Avenged Sevenfold - "Beast and the Harlot"
Suicidal Tendencies - "Institutionalized"
Dick Dale - "Misirlou"
Megadeth - "Hangar 18"
Lynyrd Skynyrd - "Free Bird"

Local Hero

I know that local morning newscasters are paid to be professionally over-the-top and perky (and thus, rather creepy). Still, this bunch from Sacremento took it a bit too far in this video clip in which their game reporter covers Guitar Hero.

Game reporter. There's a job I should maybe look into.

The Revolution Will Indeed Be Televised

For those who weren't aware, the "rhythm game with prop" war has recently escalated. First we had Dance Dance Revolution. Then we had a Karaoke variant. Then we had the Donkey Konga bongos. Oh, and don't forget the maracas on the Dreamcast.

Well, now we have Guitar Hero, the game where you play guitar. I was pretty skeptical when I saw it, but after trying a copy that my friend picked up for Christmas, I became instantly addicted. I had to scour the city to find one of my own, but I think I managed to snatch up the last one for sale in all of Denver (until a restock happens, anyway).

So we've got guitar now. Seems like the prop is already there if "Guitar Hero 2" wants to add a bass line for a second player. We've got "percussion" with the bongos. We've got the singing. We're damn near the point of having a whole phony PS2 band you and your friends can play in. You can even have one of those dancers that just performs on stage and doesn't actually sing or play any instruments.

I've decided that the next "rhythm game with prop" needs to be CBCBR -- Cowbell Cowbell Revolution. It comes with an actual cowbell controller you have to whack on with a drumstick in time to the rhythm. You can play songs like "Rock Lobster" by The B-52s, "Get This Party Started" by Pink, and "I Want Your Sex" by George Michael. And if you play all the way through all the challenges in the game, you unlock "Don't Fear the Reaper" by Blue Oyster Cult.

The standard rhythm game voice-overs ("good job!" "you're amazing" etc.) are provided by Christopher Walken, of course.

This is my million dollar idea, by the way. I'm calling "dibs."