Scott Bush

An SAT-level analogy question begins this entry:

Dance Dance Revolution is to Asian teenagers as what is to nerdy (yet sexy) guys in their late 20s:

1. Macarana revivals
2. Star Trek conventions
3. Guitar Hero
4. Modding XBoxes

Answer: 3 (though half-points would be awarded for either 2 or 4)

Yes friends, RedOctane’s Guitar Hero (GH) is here and it’s going to destroy more fingernails than Dance Dance Revolution (DDR) did to damage relations with your downstairs neighbor. I, along with a few friends from high school with too much disposable income, wasted—nay, invested—Sunday afternoon in an activity that can only be described as Rocking Out.

For the sadly uninitiated, GH can be summed up like this: take a Fischer-Price style toy guitar with colorful buttons along the fret and a fat toggle switch on the base. Connected to said instrument is a PS2 displaying colored “notes” that accompany awesome covers of heavy metal songs in categories such as “face-melters.” Connected to the guitar is you: off-beat, swearing, cramped-handed and (after an hour or so) sweaty. It is (without as many hand cramps) essentially DDR on a guitar.

** WARNING **: This product WILL cause finger cramping equal to slamming your left hand in the door of a Hummer (and H1, not a wimpy H3). Additional injuries can occur when whipping your guitar up to initiate “Star Power,” should you rock hard enough to earn such a privilege.

When I took guitar lessons years ago from a good friend (he’s in a sweet band, Central Services), I learned two things: 1) how to play a decent G chord; and 2) playing guitar is hard. Therefore, I was surprised when my on-screen character was wailing away to mad applause from the psuedo mosh-pit in the game. Sure, I was on the game’s easy setting, but I didn’t fare too badly on medium, either. Hard kicked my mullet-wearing ass, however. My favorite track was “I wanna be sedated” not by the Ramones, but “made famous by the Ramones” (remember, these songs are all covers). Metal Church’s Iron Man, I was surprised to learn, sucked compared to Sir Mix-a-Lot’s remake years later. Live and learn, that’s what I say.

But I’m getting off track. If you own a PS2 but not GH, you are—forgive me—a fool. If you don’t own either, you should run, not walk, to Best Buy or where ever and Do the Right Thing. If you own GH but not a PS2, well… that just doesn’t make any sense. What’s wrong with you?