As rumored for months now, one of gaming’s hottest
franchises will be going portable this summer. Activision revealed to the press
today Guitar Hero: On Tour for the Nintendo DS.
One of the biggest questions surrounding the move from home
console to portable for Guitar Hero would be the handling of the crucial
external peripheral. A typical Guitar Hero controller would be an illogical
solution for on-the-go gaming, so Activision developed an accessory that plugs
into the Game Boy Advance port on the bottom of the Nintendo DS.
Players then grip the DS in a “book format,” and strum on
the touch screen with an included guitar pick according to notes played on the
top screen. Unlike the home games, however, there are only four fret buttons
rather than five.
Vicarious Visions, known for its outstanding translations of
Activision titles such as Tony Hawk to
handhelds, is handling the development duties for Guitar Hero: On Tour.
Karthik Bala, CEO of Vicarious Visions, told Yahoo!
and IGN that the
developer went through more than 20 prototypes of the fret attachment before
settling on the version presented today. “At some point, we hit upon the idea
of creating a peripheral that would have the fret buttons plugging into the GBA
slot of the DS,” he recalled. “We figured that attaching a full-size guitar or
even a mini-guitar would be too awkward to play on the road, hence the design
of the more compact Guitar Grip, which gives you the tactile sense of the fret
buttons, with the touch screen depicting the strings of the guitar.”
Bala also said that there would be more than 20 songs in the
final game, with many of them being master tracks and new material not found in
the previous Guitar Hero games. Guitar Hero: On Tour will also support
four-player multiplayer, with both competitive and cooperative modes. Bala also
shot down the idea of a PSP version in the near future.
Guitar Hero: On Tour will hit this summer in North America,
Europe and Australia. No price has been announced.
