We're but simple bloggers, unfamiliar with the illicit, seedy underbelly of pirating video games, so we won't pretend to understand how all of this works. What we do know is that the demo for Guitar Hero III – which came bundled in with Tony Hawk Proving Ground and the December issue of OXM – isn't on the Xbox Live Marketplace but if you burn this magical disc you can play it on your regular old 360. No soldering, no flashing ROMs, or any of that other stuff we're vaguely familiar with from peeking around inappropriate internet sites. Just burn and shred. Now that we've got your attention, here's the track list for the curious amongst you.

• "Hit Me with Your Best Shot" – Pat Benetar
• "Lay Down" – Priestess
• "Even Flow" – Pearl Jam
• "Rock You Like a Hurricane" – Scorpions
• "The Metal" by Tenacious D

Apparently some of you are not sufficiently outraged at paying $6.25 for three new Guitar Hero II songs. Activision announced today that 2 million individual tracks have been downloaded via over 650,000 downloadable Xbox Live packs. The number includes 50,000 downloads for the recent My Chemical Romance pack in its first week of availability and 300,000 sales for the three original Guitar Hero packs through early July.

Activision also used the opportunity to talk up the impending release of Guitar Hero 3 and its "vast array of downloadable content including songs from some of the most popular European bands." Do we smell an ABBA song pack in the works? We can only hope and pray.

Because you can't spell "boredom stricken" without CBS. Thanks to that venerable network, you'll be able to watch gamers from across the globe play Quake 4, Guitar Hero 2, Fight Night Round 3 and World of Warcraft from the comfort of your couch in ... Video Game ARMAGEDDON! No, it's the World Series of Video Games. But we can dream, right? The tournaments start filming soon and will air on four weekend days this year, the first being July 29. The play-by-play will be done by Greg Amsinger, who two of you may know is returning after calling the WSVG Finals on College Sports Television.

We jest, but we'll probably end up checking it out. But we make no promises that we won't remember after five minutes that video games are fun to play and be forced to abandon the WSVG for more interactive pursuits. If you'd like to have your five minutes of fame, more information is available on the WSVG Web site, though it seems to be having some troubles at the moment.

The whole point of backward compatibility for most PS3 owners is being able to get rid of that PS2 in the old entertainment center. Yet many PS3 owners have had to keep their PS2 units hooked up for a few reasons, namely:

1. Support for our old memory card saves.
2. Support for rumbling controllers.
3. Support for the Guitar Hero controller.
   

The first problem is solved by an official Sony adapter which you can buy for $15, use once, and then throw away, we suppose. The second problem is solved by the recent firmware update 1.7, which added rumble support for old controllers hooked up via any number of USB to PlayStation controller adapters. Yet the third and most important problem remained -- if you want to play Guitar Hero, you need to keep a PS2 handy. Pelican's new controller adapter promises to fix this final problem, but the execution is less than perfect.

An alarming abundance of outrageous attitudes? Check. Enormous shoulder pads and poor color coordination? Check. Extravagantly large hair and excessively shiny accessories? Check. With this Summer's upcoming Guitar Hero expansion, Rocks the 80's, publisher Activision is dangerously close to delivering their first Japanese RPG. Thankfully, Opposable Thumbs reminds us that it's all about the music and lists the first seven tracks from the game's 30-strong list.

• I Wanna Rock (by Twisted Sister)
• I Ran (by Flock of Seagulls)
• Round and Round (as made famous by Ratt)
• I Want Candy (as made famous by Bow Wow Wow)
• Metal Health (as made famous by Quiet Riot)
• Holy Diver (as made famous by Dio)
• Heat Of The Moment (as made famous by Asia)

Given the lack of the "as made famous" bit, it seems original recordings are provided by everybody's favorite contorted siblings and maritime birds. Curiously, Opposable Thumbs notes that Guitar Hero: Rocks the 80's will be "exclusive" to the PlayStation 2. Does that imply exclusivity for the in-store version, with the Xbox 360 receiving the expansion in downloadable form? Why would Activision limit the game's reach? After all, the pricing of Guitar Hero's online tracks makes it pretty clear that the publisher enjoys making money.

[Thanks, Jess]

Tina Turner be damned, you're getting a new Guitar Hero game every year. In a Eurogamer interview, RedOctane co-founder and president, Kai Huang, reveals that every guitar freak's favorite franchise will soon have something in common with large men tossing balls and slamming into each other. "I think that fans can definitely expect that we're going to have one major release a year," says Kai. Following that, the peripheral manufacturer plans to "release update packs and content packs so there's more songs."

And what about the controversial pricing of already released song packs? The pricing's "competitive," says Huang, though his comment may have been slightly garbled due to the degradation of interplanetary transmissions. "We've done a lot of evaluation on the pricing and the costs for each of the songs and how they work for each of the packs, and we think that they're priced competitively, but certainly we listen to the fans and we take that feedback, and if that's something we'll need to evaluate we'll do that."

An annual release of Guitar Hero is hardly something we'd consider to be terrible news, but one caveat certainly needs to be heard -- not many franchises keep their sparkle on a yearly release schedule. Even fellow music maniac, Dance Dance Revolution, has taken a few bad steps in its rapid-fire career. We cringe at the thought of seeing a great franchise doing a power slide... down a set of stairs.

"We're aware of the problem and we're looking into it." So says RedOctane in response to complaints of a Guitar Hero II patch leaving Xbox 360s paralyzed by the dreaded red ring of death. A string of users have posted their tales of woe on the official Xbox forums, noting post-patch game freezes, startup glitches and eventual system lockups. The patch was initially issued to correct unresponsive whammy bars in some guitar controllers.

Though Red Octane doesn't divulge to Eurogamer just exactly what "we're looking into it" entails, there's little hope that a further software patch could repair completely inoperative consoles. There's also no direct evidence to suggest that the patch itself is causing the Xbox 360 hardware to malfunction. The operating system might be fooled into thinking there is, however, which isn't much better than a physical malfunction. This occurrence is awfully similar to what transpires whenever a new Xbox 360 game is released -- is software causing a new problem, or is it letting you know that you had a rotten system to begin with?

We'll let you know as soon as RedOctane or Microsoft comment further.

Good news: Just a week after the release of Guitar Hero II on the 360, a handful of songs from the original Guitar Hero have now become available as DLC on Xbox Live. Crappy news: You can pick up one of the three-song packs for the low, low price of ... $6.25! Hold on, we just choked on our picks.

In exchange for 500 points you can get one of the following three clusters, for just over $2 per song:

• Pack 1: "Bark at the Moon," "Hey You," "Ace of Spades"
• Pack 2: "Killer Queen," "Take it Off," "Frankenstein"
• Pack 3: "Higher Ground," "Infected," "Stellar"

Is that a fair price for songs that were released in 2005 and have already been played by a hojillion PS2 Guitar Hero fans? Or is that just the highest possible dollar figure that could be charged without causing people to involuntarily throw up on themselves? By this standard, the 48 songs of GH (selling for $40 new on PS2) would cost you just under $100 on Live. We'd make a joke that this a great way to repay people for selling them broken guitars, but we already know that it's Microsoft's hand on the insanity-dispensing Live pricing gun.

Praise be to the Circuit City's and Wal-Mart's of the world as Guitar Hero II for the Xbox 360 has arrived a few, scant days early on Mount Joystiq. What? You actually go to a game store to buy your games? You should probably stop doing that. After shredding it up like only nerds with tiny, plastic toy guitars can, we actually took a look at the instruction manual, curious as to any information regarding the mystery port found at the base of the X-Plorer.

The gods of rock shined upon us as it is now clearly labeled the Effects Pedal port, as seen above. Opposite the page is an explanation of all the buttons and gadgets found on the guitar, including an explanation of the Effects Pedal port. How dost thou rocketh mighty ports of pedals?

(Feature currently not available.)

Rockin'! Now that we know for sure that it's for some sort of effects pedal, we curl up into the fetal position. We've been scorned in the past by these sorts of shenanigans. We're looking at you, Konami! We still want our Beatmania III pedal!

(Update - Because everyone is insane and paranoid about April Fools, we've included some actual pictures of the manual in question behind the cut. We even threw in some Mudkip because we heard that you like him so much.)

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]

You might think that today's release of Guitar Hero 2 marks the official start of the race to master the game's new songs. But that would be naive. The real battle for Guitar Hero perfection started when the demo was released to the general public in Official Playstation Magazine issue 110. In honor of the official release of the game, we've scrounged up some highly-variable-quality videos showing off some people who are already on their way to true Guitar Heroism.

Quick impressions and thoughts on some other noteworthy games shown on the X06 show floor.

• Guitar Hero II (360): Not playable, but demo'ed continuously by two rock gods with the stamina of heavyweight boxers (see picture). They confirmed that the final Xbox 360 guitar controller would look like a Gibson Explorer but refused to comment on wireless capabilities or the intriguing D-pad on the base. Game itself looked nice in hi-rez, but graphics lagged a bit with the music at this early stage.
• Viva Piñata: Playable tutorial walks you through building a house, attracting new piñatas and making baby eggs. Rare demo with ten hours of progress showed a thriving garden brimming with life and fully accessorized piñatas. Hired helpers prevent the game from becoming a micromanagement chore. Looks like it could be a hit with the Pokemon set.
• Forza Motorosport 2: Game had major frame rate issues, making it very difficult to play and/or judge. PR handlers say it's 60 percent complete... that last 40 will be an uphill battle.
• Halo 2 (PC): Game played great with the mouse and keyboard, and looked great on the decked out Dell Dimension 9150 with large widescreen monitor. Other than that, it's still Halo. Map editor was not available for demo.
• Crackdown: Grand Theft Auto meets Hulk: Ultimate Destruction in a mess of a game with rough graphics, sloppy controls and an awful camera system. Needs serious work to be a worthy contender.

That about does it for X06 posts from Barcelona. Sorry if I didn't cover your favorite game, but there wasn't enough time to do justice to everything available on the show floor. If there's anything you're still wondering about that wasn't covered in our X06 posts, I'll do my best to answer specific questions in the below comment thread in the coming days.

Confirmed in the October issue of EGM, here's the list everyone has been curious about ever since they first got their rockin' fingers on the original's colorful plastic frets. Take a look at the Guitar Hero 2 song list and tell us your personal favorites:

• Nirvana; "Heart-Shaped Box"
• Primus (original recording); "John the Fisherman"
• Stone Temple Pilots; "Trippin' on a Hole in a Paper Heart"
• Anthrax; "Madhouse"
• Motley Crue; "Shout at the Devil"
• The Police; "Message in a Bottle"
• The Pretenders; Tattooed Love Boys"
• Spinal Tap; "Tonight I'm Gonna Rock You Tonight"
• Heart; "Crazy on You"
• Allman Brothers Band; "Jessica"
• Lynyrd Skynrd; "Freebird"
• Avenged Sevenfold; "Beast and the Harlot"
• Dick Dale; "Misirlou"
• Lamb of God; "Laid to Rest"
• Alice in Chains; "Them Bones"
• Reverend Horton Heat; "Psychobilly Freakout"
• Black Sabbath; "War Pigs"
• KISS; "Strutter"
• Butthole Surfers; "Who Was in My Room Last Night?"
• Van Halen; "You Really Got Me"
• Guns N' Roses; "Sweet Child O'Mine"
• The Rolling Stones; "Can You Hear Me Knocking?"
• Rush; "YYZ"

(The bands I can't wait to mimic: Nirvana, STP, Skynrd, Black Sabbath and GnR. Rock on Joystiqers!)

Last month, RedOctane teased visitors to the Guitar Hero MySpace page with a graphic cryptically promoting something called G.H.O.U.L. Earlier this week, they revealed the project as the Guitar Hero Organized Underground League, a set of sponsored tournaments where you provide the organization and promotion and RedOctane provides the banners and prizes.

We were totally stoked about this, until we saw that RedOctane is only taking "a limited amount of sponsorships" for the time being. But why should that stop you? Here's a quick checklist of things we recommend to have on hand for your own rocking Guitar Hero party/tournament:

• PS2, Guitar Hero, two guitar controllers (consider investing in wireless)
• A good speaker system (crank it to 11!)
• Plenty of alcohol (or grape juice, if you're under 21 *cough*)
  
• Non-greasy finger food (don't want any slippery frets)
• Atmosphere (Disco ball, strobe light, smoke machine, etc.)
• Costumes (fake wigs, top hats, mascara, etc.)
• Plenty of floor space (for tricks/excessive rocking)
• How to Play Air Guitar (to peruse in between rounds)
  
• Plenty of beginner and expert players (for two tourney brackets)
• Massive whiteboard/poster board (to display results)

Anything to add, Joystiqers?

In case you missed it on Friday, IGN posted a pre-E3 hands-on preview of Guitar Hero II's new co-op mode. It's a departure from the first game's multiplayer mode in that the two players have to depend on each other a lot more to pass each song and thereby make beautiful music together.

While the old multiplayer option will still be around in the sequel, the new mode mixes distinct lead guitar and bass or rhythm parts where each player affects the other in various ways, whether by failing if either performance slips (as in DDR), sharing the same Rock Meter (with mistakes from either player resetting the score multiplier), and needing to both go vertical at the same time to activate the shared Star Power. Thankfully, different difficulty levels can be assigned to each player.

The Joystiq team out in L.A. will probably find something to do until they get their sweaty paws on a guitar controller or two on the E3 show floor (maybe one of those wacky press conferences will help pass the time), but we're sure the wait to try the latest build of this rockin' series will be worth it. The seven songs available at E3 are listed below.

[Thanks, murph]