It's probably 5 colored buttons that plug into the GBA slot...

I know what it is!

I believe the original source said that it won't use the touch screen.

I can't imagine what this is... a little teeny guitar would be cute and everything but without a table to stick the ds on it wouldn't work really. And anything that makes you hold the DS would really let you see the screen right while playing.

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Originally posted by: UncleBob
I believe the original source said that it won't use the touch screen.

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I don't think GamesAreFun was the original source for this though... I read about this sometime before...

I fail to see the point of a portable Guitar Hero in the first place. The whole hook of the game is that you get to pretend you can play the guitar. Without the big guitar controller that hook is gone.

After seeing Guitar Freaks at a bowling alley last weekend can I ask why Guitar Hero got so much praise for being innovative? Seems like a completely rip-off to me. Freaks came out in 1998, YEARS before Guitar Hero. Yet Hero won the GDC Excellence in Game Innovation award. I assume it's igorance fueling this like how Halo gets praise from people who have obviously never played any other decent FPS in their life?

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Originally posted by: Ian Sane
I fail to see the point of a portable Guitar Hero in the first place. The whole hook of the game is that you get to pretend you can play the guitar. Without the big guitar controller that hook is gone.

After seeing Guitar Freaks at a bowling alley last weekend can I ask why Guitar Hero got so much praise for being innovative? Seems like a completely rip-off to me. Freaks came out in 1998, YEARS before Guitar Hero. Yet Hero won the GDC Excellence in Game Innovation award. I assume it's igorance fueling this like how Halo gets praise from people who have obviously never played any other decent FPS in their life?

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"Their answer was that the game was easier to approach and that GF is more for hardcore gamers."

Translation: We're ignorant asses and are stuck with egg on our face the second someone who knows what they're talking about calls us on it.

That answer is actually really similar to the ones I hear about Halo when people mention that PC FPS games have been doing more than Halo has for years and that Goldeneye already proved that a good FPS was possible on consoles. Apparently Halo introducing routine FPS conventions to a console game (and with much of the mainstream media that went ga-ga over a console from MS being unaware of Goldeneye or Perfect Dark) is considered some great innovation and thus Halo is for some reason regarded as a landmark game. Guitar Hero was released on the PS2 while Guitar Freaks is an arcade game, and arcades are dead outside of Japan. That's Guitar Hero's big accomplishment. The developers were smart enough to rip off a good idea and introduce it to a larger audience that has a memory of about six months.

Hell DOOM gets all the praise for what Wolfenstein 3D not only did first but managed to be successful at. The good thing is both games were made by the same company so the right people at least get the praise. Same with Renegade and Double Dragon. Either way Technos was the innovator.

Part of being innovative in the video game market is making new, creative video games. The other part is being able to market them.

I wonder how Vicarious Visions will do with a rhythm game..

Yeah, Guitar Hero wasn't innovative in its design, but it was successful (and perhaps "innovative") in marketing it to the mainstream...

More on topic, I think it's lame that Nintendo has designed systems that really need no peripherals, and yet companies (Nintendo included) insist on making peripherals for them. You could make an awesome Guitar Hero game using the touch screen and the buttons. But noooo

Wow. Now that I'm aware that Guitar Hero is not teh invonativz, I shall immediately start hating it like I'm supposed to. Thank you for opening my eyes to the truth. I can't believe I let myself have so much fun with something so unworthy.

Seriously, does it even matter? What about the old saying, "Good artists borrow; great artists steal?"

I don't think the intention is to bad-mouth Guitar Hero. Just lamenting the fate of poor, overlooked Guitar Freaks. Even if it were to make a comeback, it wouldn't be able to shake the stigma of being a "Guitar Hero ripoff." Ironic, no?

But you're right, this is extremely normal in the games industry; it's how genres are created. With Rock Band coming out, and Jam Sessions just released, perhaps a trend is starting, and in a couple years "instrument simulator" will be a persistent subgenre of the rhythm-action game.

Thinking about it is Guitar Freaks even that innovative? All these rhythm games are pretty much just Beatmania with a different controller and that was probably influenced by Parappa the Rapper. How hard was it for Konami to look at Beatmania and think "let's make this with a GUITAR"? Rhythm games seem to be a fair bit overrated as innovative games. The custom controllers create the illusion of innovation but really it's still always been timing controller input with a beat. They're still fun games and if the different controller each time keeps the concept fresh, that's great, but they're not that creative. I could probably whip up a saxaphone game concept in five minutes.

Guitar Hero deserves praise as a quality game, just not as a creative one.