Guitar Hero: distortion pedals on the way?
by Ludwig Kietzmann 
{ Jan 9th 2007 at 4:25PM }
Game Informer has posted a pretty straightforward preview of the Xbox 360's version of Guitar Hero II, listing the ten exclusive tracks and some of the achievements waiting to be unlocked (both lists after the break). Things get a little more interesting, however, when the focus shifts to a mysterious port situated on the X-plorer controller."While RedOctane wouldn't elaborate on that port's function other than saying it will be 'gnarly,' it's the same port that's used to connect the pedals to the base station on Microsoft's steering wheel. Let's just call that a coincidence for now..." The folks at BBPS stomp the subtlety out of the article and venture that distortion pedals might be due for the next Guitar Hero installment. We don't use the word much, but that really does sound gnarly.
[Via BBPS]
Tracks exclusive to the Xbox 360 version:
- Possum Kingdom -- Toadies (original recording)
- Salvatio -- Rancid
- Life Wasted -- Pearl Jam
- Billion Dollar Babie -- Alice Cooper
- Hush -- Deep Purple
- Rock and Roll Hoochie Koo -- Rick Derringer
- Dead! -- My Chemical Romance (original recording)
- The Trooper -- Iron Maiden
- Drink Up -- Ounce of Self (unlockable bonus track)
- Kicked to the Curb -- Noble Rot (unlockable bonus track)
- Eddie Van Halen Award: Get a 500 note streak
- Life of the Party: Bought all characters
- Record Collector: Bought all songs
- Big Spender: Spent $10,000 at store
- Perfectionist: Get 100% on a song
- 200k Club: Get 200,000 points in a song
- Rock Snob Award: Refused to play an encore
- Scoremonger: Got an 8x multiplier
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
Matt @ Jan 9th 2007 4:33PM
Hopefully there will some harder achievements for us GH vets
Joe @ Jan 9th 2007 7:51PM
Great. If the PS2 had achievements, I'd have all of those.
And Life Wasted, Dead!, and Rock and Roll Coochie Coo?
Harmonix knows how to be cruel. When I get my 360, I HAVE to get this.
concaf @ Jan 9th 2007 4:44PM
but when's the release date? :(
vidGuy @ Jan 9th 2007 4:46PM
Distortion pedals? Maybe, especially if they are going to add a "Free-Play/Recording Your Own Song" mode. That would be cool. I think a WahWah pedal is more likely. It'd give you more control over your tone and bends.
Either would be a cool addition, but they'd have to be incorporated into the game nicely. Having a WahWah pedal that only affects your sound (not your points, Star Power, etc) would be pointless.
FSK405K @ Jan 9th 2007 5:08PM
So I can use the steering wheel pedals to control distortion, awesome!
TravistyOJ @ Jan 9th 2007 5:53PM
Awesome....
but when!!
Leper Messiah @ Jan 9th 2007 5:03PM
IRON FUCKING MAIDEN!!! YES!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Leper Messiah @ Apr 1st 2007 11:50AM
IRON FUCKING MAIDEN!!! YES!!!!!!!
I was hoping the first Iron Maiden song to make a guitar hero game would be Powerslave, but The Trooper is still kick-ass.
FSK405K @ Jan 9th 2007 5:31PM
Achievments wanted:
"Do you have a life?" scored 500,000 on a song
"Rock and Roll Hall of Fame" scored 5 stars on all songs on Expert
Eric @ Jan 9th 2007 5:39PM
Any word on a compatable guitar for the PS3?
SLiFE @ Jan 9th 2007 5:29PM
There's a cool quasi-free play mode in the tutorial section (at the beginning of the hammer-on/pull-off sections).
I can see an effects pedal working well in a situation like that.
As for the achievements, I'm just hoping they stack. I don't want to play through easy for points after I've already beat expert.
Vultan @ Jan 9th 2007 5:31PM
FRAMPTONE HERO. Wouldn't that be dandy?
DeadPlasmaCell @ Jan 9th 2007 5:43PM
"Real Guitar? We don't need no stinkin' real guitar" - 5 star any song on expert in performance mode. (300 pts)
/has nothin'
Randall @ Jan 9th 2007 5:56PM
That guitar is gonna suck for lefties.
Bodie @ Jan 9th 2007 5:59PM
Not to burst anyone's bubble, but couldn't it just be to hook up a second guitar like a daisy chain, extending the reach of your bass guitarist? I personally would prefer that to any kind of pedals. My Xbox 360 is to the right of my TV, so I could see the main guitar hooked up there, me standing on the right, and a second guitarist to my left hooked up through my guitar. Otherwise, I don't know if the second guitar's cord will reach, and it might be dangling in front of the TV if it did.
John @ Jan 9th 2007 6:29PM
today i got five stars on expert for the first time ever, on heart shaped box, and did a lap of my kitchen in celebration. unfortunately there was nobody there to witness my amazing feat, so i'm telling you guys so that at least someone gets to share in my joy. =)
jge @ Jan 9th 2007 6:35PM
Port for wireless adapter.
Anonymous @ Jan 9th 2007 7:01PM
"Dead! -- My Chemical Romance (original recording)"
WHAT THE HELL!? This is what we get for having MTV on board for the game.
waxingandwanding @ Jan 9th 2007 7:16PM
I heard a long time ago that they originally wanted to do pedals on the PS2 version of the game, but Sony's liscencing agreement doesn't allow peripherals to plug into eachother, meaning that the port that would've been used had to be cut out. I'm glad to see that MS isn't being so hardassed about it.
I can't find the post anymore, but I'm pretty sure it was brought up in an interview that one of the bemanistyle.com guys did with John Tam back when the first game came out.
Rasgueado @ Jan 9th 2007 7:24PM
It actually makes more sense to me that it would be for a wah pedal than distortion. You automatically get a guitar sound for each tune that, but wah would be something that you could manually control.
KR @ Jan 9th 2007 8:10PM
""Rock and Roll Hall of Fame" scored 5 stars on all songs on Expert"
No thanks. I hate those "Smash TV-esque" achievements. Achievments should be challenging - enough so that people know you are really good at the game if you get them all, and more than you could do just by renting it - but it shouldn't require you to dedicate a year of your life (or whatever) to it.
Oh, and My Chemical Romance sucks. If you like them, shame on you.
The Maiden track will be fun as hell on bass.
kitsune @ Jan 10th 2007 5:42PM
Well, people were modifying their PS2 guitar hero controller to accept stomp boxes. The most common mod I think I saw was to wire it to trigger the star power feature so you didn't ahve to tilt the guitar up or go for the button during a hard solo. Would be way cool if they did something along those lines with this port.
Rallion @ Jan 9th 2007 8:39PM
That particular My Chemical Romance song is actually quite a good fit for Guitar Hero. And I definitely like it more than a few of the songs in the PS2 tracklist. (I like pretty much everything more than I like Institutionalized.)
FSK405K @ Jan 9th 2007 9:31PM
It's not THAT hard to get five stars on everything on expert. I don't play often and am only missing a fifth star on a few songs. (12 years of violin might give me an edge)
Mojo @ Jan 9th 2007 9:33PM
How can anybody not like Institutionalized?
All I wanted was a pepsi.
Deth @ Jan 9th 2007 10:05PM
Bodie- Why would you need to daisy chain guitars if they are wireless?
Or maybe they are not wireless...
Cheers!
troy @ Jan 9th 2007 10:43PM
Life Wasted!
I really think that this could be the reason I break down and finally get a 360.
geekjutsu @ Jan 9th 2007 11:45PM
Jeez, how lame.
Nothing sucks worse than getting a game for one system, and then finding out that the re-release on a different system will have more things to it.
I KNEW the 360 version would get some new tracks, but stuff like The Trooper is a smack in the face to us PS2 players.
If this list had been released before the game was released on PS2, I would have waited.
Kritz @ Jan 10th 2007 1:49AM
I'm more interested in the headset. A way that we can talk in private chat while rocking out, or the ability to play on XBOX LIVE WHILE ROCKING OUT CO-OP?
A man can dream. :\
>> Kritz
Werbal @ Jan 10th 2007 3:15AM
My Chemical Romance has no purpose existing, let alone being on a GH game.
If Fall Out Boy is on GH III, I'm killing Harmonix.
Sinister Rouge @ Jan 10th 2007 5:07AM
I'm buying that for The Trooper alone... not that I wouldn't have immediately bought it before, natch.
puppo @ Jan 11th 2007 3:56PM
\m/ Crimean War \m/
Nudgenudge @ Jan 10th 2007 10:24AM
"Hush...Hush..."
The 360 becomes more and more sexy to my eyes.
TheGameMaster @ Jan 10th 2007 10:24AM
i play real guitar. I'm not buying distortion pedals or ANY kind of pedals for a game. That's just a stupid idea. Even worse than such ideas as "Atari Lynx, Halo, and the Sega Dreamcast" THAT'S RIGHT I SAID IT!! GET MAD AND RAGE!!!! stfu noobs.
crono141 @ Jan 10th 2007 11:04AM
Give me dragonforce or give me death.
Zzap64 @ Jan 10th 2007 11:50AM
"i play real guitar. I'm not buying distortion pedals or ANY kind of pedals for a game. That's just a stupid idea. Even worse than such ideas as "Atari Lynx, Halo, and the Sega Dreamcast" THAT'S RIGHT I SAID IT!! GET MAD AND RAGE!!!! stfu noobs."
Then your a fool.
Go sell all your first person shooters and buy a gun, sell all your sports games and buy equipment. Quit Fight Night round 3 and go get your head punched in by a real boxer, Throw away GT4, F1 and any other driving games plus any steering wheel you might own and go buy a Maclaren F1 and drive around at speeds in excess of 200mph. And the Wii?? Burn it if you own one. God forbid you use an extra addon controller to enjoy a game that little bit more..
Seriously, you need to think before posting and making yourself look an idiot.. Guitar Hero is a superb game and I've been playing 'REAL' guitar for over 10 years and I still have fun on GH and would deffo consider buying a pedal for the game if it was done well and worked right. Your missing out on a brilliant game because your "too hardcore" to waste time and money on a stupid thing like GH. Not that it bothers me as I get to play all the good games because I'm not an elitist snob and you get to spend your time making "hardcore" comments on joystiq..
/laughs at idiots - Its like shooting fish in a barrell
Judas Hendrix @ Jan 17th 2007 6:16AM
"34. Well, people were modifying their PS2 guitar hero controller to accept stomp boxes. The most common mod I think I saw was to wire it to trigger the star power feature so you didn't ahve to tilt the guitar up or go for the button during a hard solo. Would be way cool if they did something along those lines with this port."
No offense, but tilting the guitar is an integral part of this game. Can you imagine one of Slash's guitar solos if he just held the guitar horizontally the entire time?
Guitar Hero isn't just about playing a fake guitar for points. It's about your suspension of disbelief, it's about rocking out, and it's about looking like a moron as you point that axe skyward shooting rock enough to kill an angel and inherit his powers to make your rock that much stronger.
And most importantly, it's about loving every Goddamned minute of it. The tilt helps immerse you in the entire experience.
Yes, I take this game way too seriously.