Guitar Hero: On Tour and 'Guitar Grip' DS peripheral revealed

93 Comments by Christopher Grant Mar 19th 2008 2:27PM
Filed under: Nintendo DS, Peripherals, Rhythm

click to enlarge

Finally, after months of speculation and funny Photoshop mockups of little guitars, Activision has spilled some details on the portable DS release of Guitar Hero dubbed, as expected, Guitar Hero: On Tour. Most notable is the hardware peripheral that looks decidedly unlike a mini-guitar. Instead, the "Guitar Grip" gives you not only a place to grip your DS while playing, but four "fret" buttons and a storage slot for the game's sure-to-be-lost-quickly "guitar pick" that you "strum" on the touch-screen. Since the luckier amongst us have a full set of five fingers – with our poor thumbs reduced to simply gripping things – we're anticipating a significantly easier gameplay experience than On Tour's five-buttoned siblings.

But what about the music, man? Karthik Bala, CEO of developer Vicarious Visions, says "There are more than 20 songs in the game, with the majority being exclusive to Guitar Hero: On Tour." he continues, "We've done custom note tracking for all the songs and over 80 percent of the songs are original, master recordings." We're not sure what 20 master recordings are going to sound like once they've been squished into a DS cart, but we're hopeful they've addressed that concern. Close-up shot of the Guitar Grip and cheesy marketing vid embedded after the break.

Read – Exclusive Reveal: Guitar Hero DS [IGN]
Read – Guitar Hero: On Tour Interview [Yahoo]

Tags: Activision, BreakingNews, guitar-grip, Guitar-Hero, guitar-hero-ds, Guitar-Hero-On-Tour, Vicarious-Visions

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(Page 1) Reader Comments

FrankTheCrank: Mar 19th 2008; 2:33PM

Cool. I'm in!

Hala Madrid!!! SSBB Code:3866-7729-0830: Mar 19th 2008; 3:51PM

Yeah it looks cool but the way they play it the video looks like a lot of work I prefer to sit down and play.
And yes I'm lazy damn it!

Webslinger: Mar 19th 2008; 2:33PM

oh wow, very interesting... im excited to see how this turns out!

Crono (NDF - Knight of the Old School): Mar 19th 2008; 2:34PM

This seems a very bad idea to me. Not sure why. But it just seem...off somehow.

FrankTheCrank: Mar 19th 2008; 2:36PM

It's going to be real hard to see that tiny little screen when your trying to pull off the notes.

ballistic3188: Mar 19th 2008; 2:44PM

i think what has you thinking that is:
A. activisions crazy milking of the franchise.
B. making guitar hero even less realistic (which is hard in of itself) and it really dorky design.
C. now instead of looking stupid in the safty of your home are now showing it outside and even more so cause the ds isn't a guitar look alike

Tiptup300: Mar 19th 2008; 3:34PM

Watch the dude, hes like stroking it, showing her the OOH OOH face and then blows on it. It doesn't look any better while on the bus either.

Grant: Mar 19th 2008; 4:01PM

Epic Fail for lack of support for lefties.

kip: Mar 19th 2008; 4:59PM

What makes you think they wouldn't have a left-handed option? Put it in the other hand and flip the screens, the only difference is the notes would be backwards (just like on regular GH). It's not like it has a whammy bar that is placed somewhere that's extremely inconvenient for lefties or anything.

jsn: Mar 19th 2008; 2:37PM

four buttons? Why bother? Activisions philosophy at work. We can't make it right, but we'll make it anyway.

jesus_bon_jovi: Mar 19th 2008; 7:27PM

Having to use the fingers which are situated over the corresponding buttons without the ability to slide will, i think, make the game more difficult to play. For example the player will be required to always hit the blue buttons with their pinky instead of sliding down and using other fingers. It will make power chords difficult. When playing 'real' guitar you usually hold a shape with your fingers and slide down (same is often done on the console version of guitar hero.) Also one wont be able to 'slide into' another note during single note passages.

Lactose The Intolerant: Mar 19th 2008; 2:37PM

Guitar Hero DS.
Because you didn't look like enough of a tool with a tiny plastic guitar.

Kye NFC: 7016 - 9552 - 1191 - 8991: Mar 19th 2008; 2:41PM

Wish I could vote you up again just because of your name.

Kye NFC: 7016 - 9552 - 1191 - 8991: Mar 19th 2008; 2:41PM

Wish I could vote you up again just because of your name.

Mr.ESC: Mar 19th 2008; 2:43PM

The double post sure shows appreciation.

It was a good comment indeed and yes I also vote him up.

rTwelve [xbl:Chilblane]: Mar 19th 2008; 2:37PM

It's not April 1st is it :(

Mr.ESC: Mar 19th 2008; 2:42PM

Yeah the commercial look a bit amateurish but it could be real also Lego Halo was EGM April fools joke so there is a chance this is real.

I have to say that when I first saw that peripheral I was like WTF but in the video kind of makes sense also I love that song. I first hear it in Burnout Legends in the PSP.

Co: Mar 19th 2008; 2:38PM

Squished onto the DS cart? Umm... the DS cart holds ALOT of space, and an .mp3 of a 4 minute song is like 10 MB max. Similar compression techniques can't be too far off size-wise.

McWeen: Mar 19th 2008; 2:43PM

They aren't exactly mp3s. When you miss notes and the song stops playing the guitar part, you can't do that with a straight mp3 there is extra information and coding involved.

Not that that completely excuses a small playlist.

Crono (NDF - Knight of the Old School): Mar 19th 2008; 2:57PM

in all likelyhood, it is 2 mp3 files per song. One of JUST the guitar, and the other of the rest of the band. When you screw up a note, it mutes the guitar part, while leaving the rest playing.

This is how frets on fire does it.

Nate: Mar 19th 2008; 2:58PM

A *lot* of space? Sure, if this were 1995.

They hold 64 or 128 megs. at 4 megs a song, 20 songs is 80 megs, leaving very little room for the actual game.

Fernando Rocker: Mar 19th 2008; 3:01PM

They can use a high capacity card, like the one in Archaic Sealed Heat.

"Because of the data storage requirements, it was the first DS game released on a 2 gigabit (or 2048 megabit) game card"

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ASH:_Archaic_Sealed_Heat

Nate: Mar 19th 2008; 3:16PM

Sorry, you're right. 2gigabits = 256 megabytes. That would seem to make it big enough even for 20 128kbps MP3s and plenty of room left over for the game itself.

I still wouldn't say that's a *lot* of space.

Tim Dorr: Mar 19th 2008; 3:22PM

That's assuming they use MP3 at all. Chances are they're going with some specialized format, probably ADX or AHX. AHX targets a 64kbps and 32kbps bitrate, so they should end up being just fine. I wouldn't expect audio quality is anything to write home about, but it's certainly not going to suck too bad. Plus, you'll be too distracted by playing the game to notice artifacts :P

Fernando Rocker: Mar 19th 2008; 3:24PM

Nate

I don't think that thats how is going to work... just an mp3.

Look... lee me try to explain... my limited english will make it hard:

For example, Elite Beat Agents, lets take a song... September by Earth Win and Fire. The song is divided in sections, for example, the chorus part, is a .5MB file, so, everytime you hear the chorus, is the same file, repeated... this can be done because the DS can read the cars faster.

So, they can do the file size not so big.

I dont know if you undestand me.

Parsnipzilla: Mar 20th 2008; 2:42AM

Actually, the DS carts are around 1GB

xFenixKnightx: Mar 19th 2008; 2:38PM

Holy Shnikes!!! Its full of WINNNNNN!!!! Buying!!

xFenixKnightx: Mar 19th 2008; 2:54PM

My kids will go crazy over this. Who cares if its not an actual guitar anyway. Sure, like if the other controller really makes you feel like your a rockstar. LMAO!!

treqie: Mar 19th 2008; 2:42PM

I wonder how that will work for left handed.

Papa: Mar 19th 2008; 2:45PM

The same way Guitar Hero handled left flips.

Papa: Mar 19th 2008; 2:45PM

*Lefty

Tim Dorr: Mar 19th 2008; 3:23PM

Just turn it upside down and there you go :)

deaftly (Brawl - 1075-0467-4222): Mar 19th 2008; 2:42PM

/facepalm

Dan Russell: Mar 19th 2008; 2:44PM

Can I use it in my Phat?

Curtis the Claw: Brawl Code 1075-0441-3284: Mar 19th 2008; 2:56PM

Good question...it looks like it fit perfectly into the lite so maybe a no for phattys?

ThornedVenom (Harley Quinn Defense Force): Mar 20th 2008; 3:22AM

I'm pretty sure you could, otherwise Nintendo would bitch about alienating a big part of their clientbase.

I'd personally send a ninja to the executive who thought that making a DS lite exclusive was a good idea.

Gun Barrier: Mar 19th 2008; 2:45PM

lol thats awsome!

CJC: Mar 19th 2008; 2:47PM

This looks like it would be awkward to play.

arrrgh: Mar 20th 2008; 4:28PM

yeah, 4 fingers on four buttons and a pick to strum>? sure that's awkward. when you suck ass

ALH: Mar 19th 2008; 2:49PM

seems kinda awkward to me, though i must say i'd love to give it a go.

zelderman: Mar 19th 2008; 2:55PM

PASS

mr mobius: Mar 19th 2008; 2:56PM

The only thing I can see getting from this is repetitive strain injury and motion sickness from trying to move the stylus back and forth quick whilst fingering the side of the ds and trying to see the screen to see the notes.

John Z: Mar 19th 2008; 2:57PM

The obvious problem is that, the way I'm seeing this being held, the screen winds up facing away from the user. Not cool. The other obvious problem is that it needs some kind of a strap to prevent dropping... kind of like camcorders have.

Sound quality... well, I'm not expecting much out of the DS, actually, but people are forgetting that the fret button box could hold some expansion RAM/specialized decoder hardware to make the music sound really, really good. We shall see-- Ouendan/EBA sounded pretty damn good, all things considered, and they didn't use any special hardware.

Fernando Rocker: Mar 19th 2008; 2:59PM

The sound quality is because the tiny speakers, not because the power of the DS.

Try conecting any game to external speakers or use a good quality headphones.

Prince Elgin the 1st: Mar 19th 2008; 4:08PM

it has a strap and u hold it like a book. That means no issues other than one less note.

Fernando Rocker: Mar 19th 2008; 2:57PM

Very cool... now, Elite Beat Agent uses a small card, and holds like 15 songs...

Hopefully they are using a high capacity card, like the one used in Archaic Sealed Heat... I think its a 512MB card, or 256MB card, dont remember very well.

They can put like 50 songs easily.

PS... I send this tip a few hours ago and did't get a special thanks =(

xFenixKnightx: Mar 19th 2008; 3:00PM

Thanks,

A special one at that! =)

elpmis: Mar 19th 2008; 3:02PM

Now we need a mini DS Lite Rock Band

One mini guitar such as above

One dude taping the screen w/ a stylus for drums

and one guy singing into DS's mic

Curtis the Claw: Brawl Code 1075-0441-3284: Mar 19th 2008; 3:07PM

That would be insanely awesome to see a group of 4 people playing Rock Band DS.

Nate: Mar 19th 2008; 3:12PM

I hope Harmonix is smart enough never to defile their good name or the good name of Rock Band by trying to cram it into a platform it has no business being on.

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