Court of the Ginger King: The Trial of Guitar Hero
You can stop rubbing those eyes. Yes, the Ginger King is back! After a two-month hibernation, the beast returns, and as usual, his temper is flaring. What’s bothering him? Oh, just a harmless little game that hardly hurt anybody. Of course, Mr. Michniak thinks otherwise. Folks, this could get ugly — but we like that around here. Let’s get this rolling! -Michael Roffman, Editor-in-Chief
Very few can escape the allure of Guitar Hero. She’s a bitch mistress. When I first laid my hands on her, it was the special summer of 2005. This was pre-release. I was drunk and surrounded by gorgeous models in Downtown LA at an awards after-party — a rock n’ roll type story if there was ever one. Guitar Hero hadn’t hit stores yet so everyone was intrigued by the crazy controller. By the following fall, it was a runaway hit, of course.
I have never walked away disliking a game more in my life. This game is fucking brutal: the controls suck, the playability is limited, there are too few songs! I thought at the time, who is going to play this game? Yes, I realize everyone.
Don’t doubt that this is a true story. I have the G-Phoria drink menu that I stole, and if you really wanna get technical, I can show you the three 40-inch signs I ripped off the wall and brought back with me to Chicago, too. After all, where would I be without evidence?
The simple matter at hand here is that people who love Guitar Hero have a lot of problems. First of all, you can’t listen to the songs you play three million times ever again. Goodbye Santana, we hardly knew ye! Oh, but maybe you like “Anarchy in the UK”? You’re a bad ass, you know that song in and out, right? Well, I hope you enjoy never being able to listen to Never Mind the Bollocks again.
Fuck you Guitar Hero! You’ve ruined great music and while I’m at it, you’ve ruined an instrument for a generation of people (see: South Park, “Guitar Queer-O”, Episode 1113). Damn you Activision or whoever made this stupid game. Sorry, I don’t have time to “google” your sorry ass, multi-billion dollar company. Naturally, I’ve got better things to do — like scratch my balls and drink my homemade iced tea (it’s delicious).
Moving on from healthy genital aeration, let’s get down to the real idiocy of this nonsense. Recently, a Guitar Hero reality show and a concert tour have been discussed, which of course will go into production. My question and concern and overall response: HOW THE FUCK IS A CONCERT TOUR SCHEDULED? How can a video game have a concert tour? How? Do they just haul fat kids around across the country? Do they expect us to sit and watch these rejects play the game, while eating Doritos and drinking Mountain Dew at the 50 yard line?
First of all, I would admittedly pay to see that, maybe that’s wrong, but a reality show? That’s really just a step too far. Back in my day, reality shows were about things like seven strangers practicing race relations in a Hollywood apartment. Reality shows pushed the boundaries of what we could tolerate in terms of watching people eating unappetizing things. Now, we have crap like Rock of Love Me Like a Hurricane (oops, wrong irrelevant ’80s metal band reference). We already have shows that follow white suburban ghetto wannabees playing Madden, we don’t need people with zero musical talent playing Guitar Hero, at least not on my television.
Another problem is this bullshit on YouTube. STOP putting fucking videos on YouTube that feature your irrelevant video game skills. Look, I have a YouTube account just like everyone else, we could all put videos of us doing cool stuff that we do alone in our room (like scratching my balls with one hand and drinking my homemade iced tea in the other). This could be a great comparison video to show next to the best score from the Dragonforce stage in Guitar Hero III (maybe II, maybe World Tour, maybe I don’t care). What I’m really trying to say is that if you are filming your Guitar Hero trials, you need to tape yourself doing other stuff. I suggest walking thoughtfully through a forest or use the art medium of video to explore something other than someone else’s ideas.
I realize I might be getting too deep for some people. Hey, I don’t know who reads this site. I’ve never even met anyone who works here! Hell, I might work for a telefax machine tucked away in an office in New York (just kidding, Alex.)
Look, if you love Guitar Hero, you have some serious fucking problems. You are bastardizing good music by wearing out the songs and associating them with a challenge of a game as opposed to the challenge that should come from the songwriter’s or musician’s message. What’s unfortunate is that these songs get played out before they should and this game is so massively loved that we as a society are going to be bombarded with shitty reality shows and concert tours with those aforementioned fat kids. This can’t be good people, it just can’t. Video gamers are already highly ignorant (have you heard X-Box Live?). No one should tolerate a society run by gamers. So, run for the hills! Soon it’ll be all YouTube videos of shitty high scores! Oh god, why? Why has thou forsaken me? This dirty, dirty temptress of a game! It will destroy us! Destroy us! Destroy us…
Oh, by the way, here’s my own Guitar Hero high score! All there for your viewing pleasure, on YouTube…
Guitar Hero and Rock Band are part of a much bigger scheme to force children across America to turn away from Top 40 radio stations and illegally download some exciting music they otherwise may have never heard. So really, these games are chiseling away at the profits of the talentless swarms of “artists” in the top 40 lists, and in turn putting a little more cash into the pockets of deserving musicians. That’s what I like to think, anyways, when I am playing for countless hours on end, day after day.
yeah, even at risk of sounding like a douchebag, i enjoy rock band a lot. but its not as if i play it by myself when i get home from work, sulking in my loneliness. it gets played on the weekend, when there are 4+ people, and we are all shitfaced. i agree with the guy before me, it is a personal karoake machine, but you get to sing “Aqualung” instead of “Wake Me Up Before You Go-Go”. (if you have money to burn, rock band has several hundred songs, many of them actually good classic rock stuff, still plenty of them bad, but you get to choose because they are downloads)(guitar hero has much less song selection, and most of what they do have is gayer than rock band as well)
but yeah, people who take it too seriously (to the point of noticing that you actually even have a point score to obtain at all) are big dickfaces.
and playing them whilst hammered doesnt ruin the song later, because the next morning you pretty much only remember singing along to music and falling over, nothing specific enough to matter. (also i kinda hate myself for possibly just bragging about being drunk, super douchey)
Running the songs into the ground via relentless attempt to master them on the hardest settings, and the resultant dick-waving, is indeed stupid. However, those people are a distinct minority.
Most people who play GH — and ESPECIALLY who play Rock Band, since it’s intended to be played with a group — aren’t playing the game that way. They’re playing because it’s fun to pretend you’re actually playing and that you actually are a rock star. It’s karaoke plus buttons. And if you’ve got a problem with karaoke, I’ve got a problem with you.
Wanna try some of that iced tea though. After you wash your damn hands.
Kids don’t listen to Puff Daddy? Your dream is in jeopardy.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qhktUN4kGvU
Guitar Hero is a’ight. It ain’t no thing. One time I realized I had been playing for 8 hours straight. I said to myself “time to get a job.” I tried to get a job for 3 months after that and then gave up. At that point, Weezer’s message about “not getting a fucking job” started to mean something to me, and my little brother.
But then I got a call from EA, and they gave me a temporary job for $11 an hour. At lunch everyone would have Guitar Hero Tournaments and visit the EA store to buy the newest titles for almost half the price. It felt like I had hit gold. Then the 18 year old beside me disappeared one day. Turns out he had a car accident with no health insurance. He was a big fan of Initial D. That’s wack.
But still, when I get home from a long day of job hunting, mostly all I want to do is sit and watch VH1 or the food network or revisit my Dreamcast game collection. If my parents would send me about $200 more per month, I could afford a Game Rush subscription, etc. It seems cynical, but I calculated it, and if I had played Final Fantasy XI Online for 4 years instead of going to college, I would have saved $45,000, I would have all of the material possessions on my wish list ($26,208 in total), and my old boss at EA probably would have promoted me, and respected me more.
Eventually the quintessential image of American culture will be people standing completely still, doing nothing. Standing at the ready!
Evidence for my last sentence appears not to have made past Moderation, as it appeared on the surface to be gibberish.
Telefax! What are you, 60? You gonna go down and have a phosphate at the drug store? How’s the new serialized Fitzgerald in Colliers? Guitar Hero YouTube videos are the worst, I want to hear the song, not 4 minutes of clackety-clack. Who are the people who get good at this game? I can’t play this game for more than 10 minutes without getting rheumatism. Luckily, I’m too terrible at the game to ruin any songs: the original artists will always be better. I must disagree with Zatzbatz, we obviously can’t spell however we like.
really, it’s more like 5 years too late, it’s only 3 years too late for you
I think that the Sex Pistols and Santana were due to be played out about 30 years and 40 years ago, respectively. And in the comments section, we can spell however we like.
This article is about three years late. It is not funny, either.
bim, what about when that 8 year old has no concept of who the rolling stones are or what they represent. I personally don’t want little kids singing paint it black without knowing what the song is all about.
zatz, it is spelled Bollocks and I think that these songs always get played out, but they are getting played out way before they are due to get played out.
“Problems” gets played out when a rebellous teen can’t handle his girlfriend cheating on him, not when a toddler is trying to unlock a new outfit for Lars.
Guitar doesn’t exactly take obscure jams and wear them out. Santana and Never Mind the Bollox were played out WAY before guitar hero got it’s grubby hands on them.
i think guitar hero is really cool for another purpose entirely. Its gets kids interested in music at an early age. Now instead of singing whatever shit is on top 40 radio my 8 year old brother knows the words to rolling stones songs and recognizes muse and the smashing pumpkins when they come on the radio. so cudos to guitar hero
air guitar also sucks, im undecided on seat belt guitar because that sounds very dangerous which is cool
no, nowadays kids watch puff daddy
thanks to guitar hero I now know where to put my fingers when I’m playing air guitar (or seat belt guitar for when I’m in the car).
Plus, guitar hero slightly edges out Kanye West* when it comes to recognizing classic rock songs.
*- kids don’t listen to puff daddy anymore
Jun 6th, 2009 at 11:00 am
[...] wait for it, the Devil’s advocate? Just a few weeks ago, our ol’ Ginger bastard ticked off readers by slamming the video game juggernaut, Guitar Hero. Now, he’s digressing on how it’s, [...]