Fantasy

The house lights go down. The speakers hum. The crowd roars as you stride confidently onto the stage, your favorite axe slung over your shoulder. You cast your eyes across a sea of adoring faces, each one desperate for you to hit that first note that will send them into a frenzy. Your pick flashes as it catches the spotlight when you spin it through your fingers. Then you start to play.

The members of the audience lose their individuality and blur into a single organism pulsating with energy. That's when you realize that the audience is now an animal and that it will turn on you if you starve it.

Despite the music ringing in your ears, there is something else you hear in the distance, something that doesn't belong: it's a crass, nagging sound that grows louder, refusing to be ignored. The louder it gets, the further away the audience feels. It's the sound of your mother yelling upstairs for you to turn down your music. You're 12 years old, and it's past your bed time.

Perhaps you didn't have these delusions of grandeur like I did as a child, but it's those daydreams that come to mind when I play these games. The Guitar Hero franchise and now Rock Band have found the way to tunnel into my childhood and take me back to those air-guitar days of superstardom.

How Did We End Up with Rock Band and Guitar Hero III?

When Red Octane and Harmonix released Guitar Hero in November 2005, no one could have guessed how ultimately successful it would become. This wasn't the first music or rhythm game or even the first guitar title. But it connected with people in a universal way by tapping into the archetypical fantasy of the rock star. Guitar Hero didn't teach anyone how to play guitar, but it allowed people a taste of the satisfaction that comes with making music by immediately rewarding or punishing the player with every note. Play the game well and the song sounds just like it should. Play poorly and the only thing louder than your own flubbed guitar notes is the booing of the audience.

Judy Nails steps to center stage. From Guitar Hero III: Legends of Rock

The success of Guitar Hero lead unsurprisingly to Guitar Hero II, which was equally if not increasingly loved by the console gaming populace. Guitar Hero II proved that the first game was anything but a fluke and that this was a very real and viable money train with Red Octane and Harmonix as the conductors. As if mirroring the tale of countless garage-bands-turned-radio-stars before them, both companies were courted by large corporations looking to capitalize on their success. In June 2006, videogame publishing giant Activision acquired Red Octane and the rights to continue publishing games under the moniker "Guitar Hero." Only three months later MTV announced plans to acquire developer Harmonix. The band was officially split up and the future of the genre was unknown.

Armed with the Guitar Hero brand and the publisher of the previous three games - including the PS2 expansion Guitar Hero Encore: Rocks the 80s - Activision quickly tasked Neversoft, the developer of the Tony Hawk series, with creating Guitar Hero III. The rub was that even though Activision owned the name of Guitar Hero, they did not own any of the code of Guitar Hero and Neversoft would have to develop the third game from the ground up.

The announcement of Guitar Hero III came as no surprise to anyone, but MTV's plans for Harmonix remained cloaked until April 2007, when the CEO of Harmonix Alex Rigopulos made Rock Band public.

Rock Band promised to take the core experience of Guitar Hero - namely playing the guitar and bass sections of songs - and add drums and vocals for a total band experience. Guitar Hero fans, like this writer, gasped imagining the possibilities but we also shared some very real concerns. How will the drums work? Can Neversoft replicate the careful balance of existing Guitar Hero gameplay? Will Rock Band spell the doom of Guitar Hero? All our questions were answered in time.

"Why Don't You Just Play a Real Guitar?"

Before we look at the two games, I want to quickly address the inevitable haters. An interesting phenomenon occurs where there are discussions about Rock Band or Guitar Hero. It starts when someone says something along the lines of "Why don't you just play a real guitar?" as if this is the first game that has emulated an activity that can be performed in real life. This same ridiculous argument could be applied to every sports game and driving game ever released, yet we've been spared such a stupid criticism until now. Playing guitar and playing Guitar Hero is not the same thing because one of them is a video game. Therefore, one is not a substitute for the other. Guitar Hero and Rock Band are - like most games - immersive fantasies, and musicians should not feel threatened by them.

I've played a lot of Guitar Hero and Rock Band but I do not consider myself a "guitar player" - even though I own three guitars and have been in several bands in my lifetime. I can play guitar but I don't on a regular basis. So why do I opt to play Guitar Hero and Rock Band rather than my real guitars? Who's to say the two activities are mutually exclusive? Sometimes I prefer the fantasy that I'm playing songs with a full band and the roar of an audience to the reality that I'm playing them alone in my basement as my dogs watch. Guitar Hero is a method of actualizing air guitar and you don't have to stop playing air guitar just because there's a real guitar in the house.

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