Guitar Noize - guitar news, crazy guitar designs and cool guitar videos

Seven45 Studios no doubt think they have a winner on their hands, they have not only developed an alternative to Guitar Hero and Rock Band that uses a “real” guitar but they have also developed the actual hardware controller guitar to go with the game.

Power Gig: Rise of the Sixstring is set to position itself in a very dangerous position, gamers are going to find the actual strings and fretboard difficult to use and lets face it painful, meanwhile guitarists are going to probably find the game either unrealistic or annoying. People like me who have spent years playing guitar and finally have a selection of high end guitars are not going to enjoy playing a cheap piece of plastic masquerading as guitar. Let’s face it, is a gamer seriously going to be bothered changing a string if they break it? I doubt it, instead the controller will be put in the back of a cupboard somewhere and never touched again. On the other side of the coin strings in Australia are pretty expensive, in most high street music shops around $20 for a set of Ernie Ball or D’Addario’s, call me skeptical but I’m really not convinced I would want to restring a game controller.

Joystiq wrote “Power Gig won’t teach you how to read music, nor will it be able to teach you the nuances of playing a real instrument. According to Seven45, Power Gig isn’t meant to do that, nor will it ever.” which begs the question what is the point then? Yes it may be an introduction to the guitar, but lets be honest Guitar Hero has already turned more kids onto Guitar than probably anything else in the past few years so what is going to make someone buy this over an existing successful brand.

If one of these games was released that was aimed more at guitarists and allowed you somehow to use your own guitar (I’ve seen evidence of this in development) then to me you have a game with a point of difference from Guitar Hero and therefore a potential money maker, but will it make the kind of money a traditional game will make? I doubt it, the gaming industry is huge I would love to see the ratio of gamers to guitarists but I can imagine it is very one-sided.

This made me laugh so I thought I would share it seeing as it has a Guitar theme, I wondered how long it would take for Guitar Hero to infiltrate the craziness that is Christmas lights, at least they chose a good track Eric Johnson’s “Cliffs Of Dover” although I don’t like the fact that they use covers on Guitar Hero and you can tell at times that this is not Eric it is still a pretty close version. I wonder how long it takes to set up lights like this?

Thank you. We owe you everything.

Disney has teamed up with Washburn Guitars to create a new Guitar Hero style game that uses an actual guitar as a controller.

Disney Star Guitarist trains you on the guitar by displaying Guitar Hero-like note information that applies to the frets and strings of an actual guitar. The game can teach you specific songs and ranks your progress as you go, based on how many notes you hit.

It seems they have beaten Guitar Rising to launching what I’m sure will be a very profitable share of the gaming market, especially considering Disney’s marketing capabilities and crossover promotional possibilities!

I think this is a very positive step and although it is initially aimed at Tweens and therefore they have made it a little bit too Disney, I’m sure they will release packages for the rest of us shortly after so we are not stuck playing along to Hannah Montana!

There is a fun interactive and embed-able widget that anyone can use to create their own virtual rock group. The widget as you can see to the left can then be shared and the band with the most votes will win prize packs or two years of digital music worth $730! In fact the winning band members get your choice of Game Console, Guitar Hero World Tour Complete Band Game which as well as the software includes a wireless guitar controller, wireless drum kit controller and wired microphone. 10 runner up bands get the Guitar Hero World Tour game. So far I only have 2 members in my band Noize Master so looks like I’m not going to win… oh that and the fact that I’m not a US resident

Have fun and good luck!

Guitar Hero® Official Website: http://worldtour.guitarhero.com
KFC Rocks Website: http://www.kfcrocks.com
Check out the crowd surfing game on kfcrocks.com which is a guitar hero style tap the keys in time flash game!

If there is one thing certain to spark a debate among the guitar community it is the mention of Guitar Hero but love it or hate it the game is going strong with more and more artists jumping on board, some even releasing complete albums on it, Aerosmith somehow managed to get their own version of the game creating a new and painfully endless source of revenue for Activision, I’m sure this format will be flogged to death.

Anyway a couple of months ago I featured the aptly named company called Painted Axe who create some custom paint jobs on electric and acoustic guitars. I received an email from Mike at Painted Axe with news about their most recent venture, Keri Kelli faceplates for Guitar Hero. Keri Kelli is the guitarist for Alice Cooper, and has also worked with Slash, Skid Row, Warrant and Vince Neil. He had this to say about the game:

““The overwhelming worldwide popularity of a guitar-oriented video game is just amazing. Guitar Hero has opened the doors to the electric guitar for a legion of kids these days; it just seemed incredibly cool to be able to make my own brand of face plates available to the market,”