Several years ago, Konami released an arcade game in Japan called Guitar Freaks. It was part of the company's famed Bemani series of music games, and as you might have guessed, it used a guitar-shaped controller to interact with it. Several new versions of the game followed, and ports appeared on both the PS1 and PS2. With the great success of Konami's Dance Dance Revolution series in the U.S., one would think that Konami would localize Guitar Freaks as well. Sadly, that hasn't been the case, and music game fans have been forced to import if they wanted to rock out.

All that has changed now, as Red Octane and developer Harmonix (the creators of Frequency, Amplitude, and Karaoke Revolution) have decided to beat Konami at its own game with a new title called Guitar Hero.

The setup for Guitar Hero actually looks a lot like Amplitude, with a slanted plane scrolling from the depths of the screen. As each song plays, notes scroll down, and once they reach the bottom of the screen, you "activate" them. Sounds like most music games, right? For the most part, it is, but what sets Hero apart is its wicked-awesome guitar controller.


The game includes a darn-near full sized guitar controller that sports five "fret buttons," a "strum bar," and a whammy bar. To play the notes, you must simultaneously press the proper fret button (they're color coded to the notes) and, well, strum the strum bar when the note hits the bottom of the screen. Using the whammy bar at the proper time will fill up your Star Meter faster, which can then be activated by tilting your guitar upwards to enter the score-boosting Star Mode.

The main single-player mode is a career mode where you chose from one of eight characters (two must be unlocked) and work your way up through a series of venues. As you progress, more songs are unlocked and the difficulty becomes much greater. If you play career mode on normal difficulty or higher, you earn cash from each gig (the better you do, the more you get), allowing you to purchase new goodies. Aside from new characters and songs, you can also buy new guitars and behind-the-scenes videos. These extras definitely make you want to earn more dough.