My quest to play Guitar Hero 2 at E3 was a success! I played bass and I played lead in co-op mode on Van Halen’s "You Really Got Me" (at the Vans Warped Tour, because they’ve licensed some real locations this time around) hitting 97% and 98% respectively. "Strutter" by KISS seemed to be the most popular song for people to try out, with "War Pigs" by Sabbath coming in a close second. I could have easily spent the entire day there, rocking all eight songs they had available for demo play, but there was a growing line of other wanna-be rockers waiting, and I didn’t want to bogart the whole stage, man.
While I waited to play, I talked with some of the developers, who were all really, really cool guys, and told me something rather exciting about GH2:
Les Claypool gave RedOctane the master tracks for John The Fisherman, so when you play it in Guitar Hero 2, you’ll be playing along with Les, Larry "Ler" Lamond, and Tim "Herb" Alexander, just like you were with them in the studio recording Fizzle Fry.
It was so nice to meet developers who aren’t completely in love with themselves and appreciate geeks like me who play their games, you know? Their entuhsiasm reminded me of the entuhsiasm I felt when I worked at NewTek during the launch of the Video Toaster 4000: we all knew we were working on something totally cool and unique, but we still got excited when someone who used it geeked out at us about it. I know there are pictures of me getting my rock on, so if I can track them down, I’ll post them here for maximum goat-throwing.
If you’re going to E3 and you want to play GH2, don’t bother fighting the crowds in the Sony booth (after you get past the 6 hour-long line of people waiting to play with the Wii). Go down to the Kentia Hall, and find the Red Octane booth. The lines are shorter, you can talk with the developers, and they’ve got GH2 posters and pins to give away. When you’re done rocking out, you can stay in Kentia hall and see an absolutely amazing history of video games exhibit, featuring playable Colecovision, Vectrex, Intellivision, Apple //e, Atari 2600 and other console systems, as well as look-but-don’t-touch collections of classic handhelds like the Tomytronic Pac-Man and Milton Bradley’s Macrovision. There are also about 20 arcade games down there, set for free play, including Tempest, Black Widow, Stargate, Tron, Gorf, and Crystal Castles.
UPDATE: There’s a picture of me in front of the Gorf, Donkey Kong, and Tempest machines from Ars here. For those of you scoring at home, of the machines in that picture, I played Gorf and Tempest, and I was incredibly sad that Gorf didn’t have any sound. It implied that I was a Spaaace Ca-det, though, which I answered by blasting the Flagship out of the sky. Who’s laughing now, Gorf?! Me! That’s who! Me, baby! ME!
In the picture, I’m wearing a shirt featuring the code from Konami, which I got from Think Geek. I realized as I was parking my car for E3 (I missed the train so I had to drive. Yay.) that I was kind of wearing the band’s T-shirt to its concert like a total dork. However, I got my rock on so hard on Guitar Hero 2, I’m really okay with that.
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Holy crap! Video Toaster 4000? I remember Newtek, didn’t realize you worked for them.. Amiga, AtariST, Comsoft, KJ Computers. Fun memories, indeed…
That’s when paying $500 for the Flicker Fixer, actually got you chicks! And HAM was not the other white meat…
I wish E3 was open to all geeks and not just those who can fake their way in as “Entertainment Insiders”…
Augh, NEED GH2 now! Bill Harris had it right. Guitar Hero isn’t just the best game of the year, it’s the “Best game of the ever”.
There’s games I played longer or were cooler in some detailed fashion (e.g. Oblivion), but GH was the most all around pure fun I’ve ever had with a video game.
Newtek?? They make “Lightwave” 3D software. Glad you had fun at E3 Wil. Couldn’t go this year as they are cracking down those of us who used to be able to fake their way in as “Entertainment Insiders”… As Joe rightly stated.
“Now rock on completely with some brand new components”… to quote one of my favorite bands. \m/
air gi-tar to ‘i was made for loving you’ is really the way to go 🙂
MACROVISION!!!!
I totally had the Macrovision!!!!
It had different “Face Plates” with the game embedded on them like a cartridge!!!
Bowling was super tight!!
I sold my Macrovision at a garage sale. Huge mistake. Huge.
Crystal Castles?????
OMGOMGOMGOMGOMGOMGOMG!!!!!
That game stole a year of my life (and any illusions I ever had of being any good at video games).
Maybe I should consider keeping my Coleco Vision console and games. I still have it in the box, surrounded by it’s original highly protective styrofoam so to insure it will NEVER biodegrade.
Global Warming was the name of a game cartridge, before it became a biological concern.
I remember getting my Amiga 500 circa 1990 and showing off “NewTek Demo” to everyone who would watch. Ah, the halcyon days of Guru errors and Cinemaware games!
On a separate note… as someone who regularly plays the guitar, I’m intrigued by all of the hype around Guitar Hero – but slightly worried that I’ll find it to be too “dumbed-down” compared to really playing a six-string. Are there any other axe-slingers out there who have played GH and found it to be enjoyable?
Shhh…
Dont talk about downstairs. Its the only place that is quiet and not 100 degrees.
Besides I’m still waiting to try Donkey Kong 🙂
I met Wil sorta at E3 in the classic arcade section, posted about it here with pic: http://episteme.arstechnica.com/groupee/forums/a/tpc/f/34709834/m/569004809731/p/1
Wil, come to our Ars Technica E3 lunch meet on Friday!
I still enjoy my Colecovision, 2600, and NES 🙂 While new games like the Halo series are great, and I love them. So many times the old games have more replay value. I hold out hope that game play will become more important again.
I always love the history of video games exhibits in Kentia. I was romping through the classics there today. This is the first time I’ve ever gotten to the bottom floor of the first level of Elevator Action. I was too young way back when, but it was my favorite game regardless, besides joust 🙂 I was excited to finally play a Virtual Boy, bane of Nintendo’s history, but its batteries were dead. When will I finally get to play it, so I can finally say “You guys are right, this does suck?”
I work with a guy who worked with you at Newtek supposedly. His name is Felix.
Anyway, first post here ever, woo!
Sorry, but that’s not the Konami code. The Konami code is up up down down left right left right B A SELECT start. The SELECT is missing.
You got ripped off on that shirt.
Guitar Hero II update
One of the prerequisites for a happy, healthy Mothers Day weekend, according to Jennifer, will be time spent wailing on some Guitar Hero.
Weve both had a busy week and what better way to unwind than with some fist-pumping, head-banging …
I remember Gorf. I loved that game. Then I plunked down $20 on a Commodore Vic20 Cart of Gorf, and was astonished by how CLOSE to the arcade game it was.
There were inconsistencies, but what can you expect out of a machine that does 20 column text and has 3.5 kb of random access memory?
But looking back, the one thing that I miss about circa-80’s video games, is not so much production qualities, or the campy packages..
I miss the toxic smell of 9mm transistors burning as they switched on and off.. When you first turned on a Coleco Vision, Intellivision, or any of those marvels of science, it seemed as though something was being shorted out somewhere. Every time you powered one on, it sounded like your television suffered a brief, yet quite massive stroke. You could actually hear a ColecoVision think when it was on.
You never knew if that smell was someone cooking tire stew in the kitchen, or another level of Zaxxon being loaded.. It’s that smell, and the hint of toxic flavor that made those games sexy. Ahh, da good ol days… 🙂
Let’s see an Xbox 360 achieve that!