Dreaming: Guitar Hero's Got Game

[color=violet]Posting this for Karutomaru[/color]

After Guitar Hero: Warriors of Rock, Activision pretty much “axed” the Guitar Hero game franchise, at least for a while. I think the reason for this is that, simply put, Guitar Hero ran out of material. All the best songs in rock history have already been put into their games, and there was very little left to make to make more of the games appealing. That is the primary reason a lot of people think that Guitar Hero can’t go on at this point, but I think there is something more than can be made from it. True, the Guitar Hero games have sucked the music industry dry, but there is still another medium that has had decades of music collected over the years they have yet to use, and it’s one I’m sure we’re all more than familiar with.



…….. I’m talking about gaming. Duy.



Since the NES days, gaming has had its own instrumental medleys and songs to go along with their games, especially as technology advanced and allowed for full bands to perform them. An entire Guitar Hero game could be built from all the various gaming tunes from throughout the years. There are plenty of modern-day game soundtracks that already use guitars to their full extent, and guitar-heavy rock remixes of retro games are fairly commonplace online, so making a game centered around such tracks seems entirely plausible.



There are several examples to specify. Imagine playing a guitar controller to something like The House of the Dead: Overkill (instrumental-only for some, of course, to keep a T rating) or a guitar variation of the Banjo-Kazooie theme. They could even try putting some of the songs from Left 4 Dead 2 in there, or the King of Fighters. They could practically make a standalone Guitar Hero game for soundtracks from Sonic the Hedgehog. In fact, game songs like this have already been done. People have already made guitar versions of different game songs online using the custom song creator in Guitar Hero: World Tour (including the aforementioned Banjo-Kazooie song), and there was an official DLC track of the Halo theme before that. They’re perfectly capable of rendering these songs into playable tracks.



Of course, if such a game were to concentrate entire around songs from gaming, they should theme the entire game’s aesthetics around it as well. They could allow for avatar accessories from different games like a Mario cap, a TF2 Scout’s headset, or even some of those impossibly ridiculous clothes from Kingdom Hearts (of course, considering the significant lack of guitar in Kingdom Hearts’ soundtrack, that may not work). All the stages could take place in various game-based venues as well. Players could play to Still Alive with Glados in an Aperture Science stage, or guitar duel Bowser in his castle with a musical collaboration of different Bowser castle themes (he plays tennis, soccer, and go-karts, so what’s stopping him?). The same could be said for classic villain Rugal Bernstein. I would pay the entry fee alone just for the crazy awesome opportunity to guitar duel Rugal on the Black Noah to this. And what about Castlevania? Hyrule Castle ? Movieland? The possibilities are endless.



There is something Activision would have to do in order to make a game like this work, however. Since game music is most often instrumental, Guitar Hero would have to start living up to its name, stop copying rock band, and go back to being all about the axe. Naturally, a lot of licensing would also be required. Getting all those copyrighted characters and song titles wouldn’t be easy or cheap, but considering Activision swims in money like Scrooge Mc Duck at this point, that shouldn’t be too big an issue. And it’s not like there isn’t an audience for a game such as this. With a diverse enough tracklist and features, this game-centric Guitar Hero game could appeal to every gamer there is. They could even get away with DLC by selling track packs for specific games so that the fans can play them, and few people would take issue. I ask you, is there a single Dtoider who would dare be against such a game? If so, speak up in the comments so that we may banish you. I kid, of course. Nobody deserves to be banned.