A while back, we were told that an arcade version of
Guitar Hero was to be released sometime in the near future. To say I was excited about this news is like saying Activision is thinking of ramping up production on the
GH franchise.
To get this out of the way: I'm a sucker for music games,
Guitar Hero included. As much as I've grown to loathe the series, I can't help but buy each iteration that comes out – just to see whether it's going to be even worse (or have harder solos) than the last one. It's this masochistic curiosity that attracted me to
Guitar Hero: Arcade, when my friend told me it had arrived at the arcade he works at.
In theory, things seem like they'd be great. At last, a public outlet for all the practice I've put into this damned game! I'll get some friends together, we'll get a roll of quarters, and spend a few hours at the arcade. Just like the good old days, right?
I went to The Orleans casino today to get a feel for the game that I'd surely be sinking my moderately difficultly-earned dollars into for the foreseeable future, and to get a few pictures of the cabinet. After getting change, I meandered over to the machine and gave it a quick once-over. Looks good enough, pretty slick LCD in a Bemani-style cabinet. Aesthetically, it's like a modern-day
Guitar Freaks machine.
There's a coin-slot / dollar slot, one "start" button for each player, and two familiar-looking guitars hanging on the front of the machine. Hanging the guitar around my neck, I was once again reminded of Guitar Freaks. This time, though, it was more of a kinetic nostalgia. These controllers are
heavy. It feels like they put Guitar Hero buttons on a Guitar Freaks controller. Given that Konami had a hand in making this arcade port happen, though, that's not entirely surprising.
Unfortunately, the differences in the controller don't end there. The buttons are spaced further apart than they are on modern home-version controllers, and harder to press. At best, the buttons reminded me of a cheap third-party
Guitar Hero II controller. The strum bar is solid, but doesn't click as much as the home-version guitars do. These aren't huge differences if you don't play on Expert, and they may change after the game gets broken in a bit.
After putting in my dollar and hitting start, I was greeted by a difficulty selection screen that looked a lot like the one present in
Guitar Hero III. Then I was taken to a song selection screen that looked a lot like the one from
Guitar Hero III. It's at this point that I started to suspect that I had just put a dollar in a machine to play
Guitar Hero III.
Scrolling through the song list, I noticed a few selections with an interesting note next to them. It read: "PREMIUM SONG (Insert 4 more coins to play)". Okay so wait. I just put a dollar into this machine, which I am strongly suspecting is a port of a two-year-old game, but with a worse controller, and to play the "good" songs I need to put in
another dollar? I chalked it up to "Eh, Activision," and kept looking.
I scrolled through the 25-or-so song setlist and found "The Metal" by Tenacious D. I like that song, and I can tear it up, so I chose to start with that one as a warm-up. The Guitar Hero III interface came up and and I was on my way. Then I discovered the machine wasn't calibrated right.
Two minutes and four stars later, I was feeling pretty disappointed in my one-dollar investment. "Oh well," I thought. "That was just a warm-up. I'll kill the next one." It had me put my initials in for the high-scores list on "The Metal," and then took me back to the attract screen – "Insert Coins" message flashing and all.
OKAY SO WAIT. I just dropped a dollar to play a port of a two-year-old game (with a worse controller), with a third the song list of said two-year-old game (many of which you need to pay another dollar to play), and had to compensate for poor timing judgment on the machine... And that's it? I get
one song?
It's at this point that I was feeling reassured of at least one thing: That I was playing a
Guitar Hero game. Activision, being the ever-brilliant minds they are, saw an opportunity to cash in, and they jumped on it. Sadly, this game is going to make them millions, despite the complete lack of effort or interest they put into developing it.
I know that some of these issues can be solved by the arcade operator (calibration, amount of money you pay for a game, etc), but that doesn't excuse the game's inherent faults. A poorly-designed controller paired with a one-song-per-game system, and topped off with the fact that
this game came out two years ago means that anyone who willingly plays this game more than a couple times is either new to rhythm games, has money to burn, or is likely drunk.
Guitar Hero: Arcade is the absolute epitome of a cash-in. And it's people like me, who insist on feeding more and more money to this ever-growing mass of repetition and creative stagnation, who will ensure that we'll see a sequel or four in the coming years.
