October 16, 2008

Vicarious Visions talks about the next iteration of the mobile Guitar Hero game
By Michael Lafferty

“Players can buy Decades and play against someone who doesn’t have the title with on-line local sharing”

Unless you’ve never been remotely around the world of video games, chances are very good that you’ve heard of Guitar Hero. Well, the stage is almost set for the next round of GH releases on the major platforms as well as the handheld version. Neversoft is behind the PS3 and 360 console versions with Vicarious Visions handling the DS and Wii platform iterations.

It was the DS iteration that held center stage at a teleconference held Wednesday, October 15. GameZone was invited along to hear the particulars of Vicarious Visions Guitar Hero On Tour: Decades.

David Nathanielsz and the crew from Vicarious Visions were on one end, fielding a few questions about the title, but opened the discussion by talking about one of the most prominent features of the new game, the song-sharing capabilities. For the first time, players will be able to share the song list with another user through the local WiFi connection. But least you think this is only between those who own the Decades game, think again.

It seems that when they first designed the game (and you can read GameZone’s review of the first DS release of Guitar Hero; and our preview of Decades ), they were already thinking of expansions and so Decades will be backwards compatible.

“Players can buy Decades and play against someone who doesn’t have the title with on-line local sharing,” Vicarious Visions group members stated. “Our goal is to provide the opportunity to share songs with other skus, so the opportunity is there to create a library of music.”

When asked what factors go into the selection of the music for the new game, several were stated. Because the game is played off a ROM, the song length is important. The team wants to try to cram as many tunes as possible into the expansion and ROMs can only hold so much information. Another factor is if the song has “crunchy guitars,” (guitar effects that have a lot of overdrive sounds), it won’t sound good through the DS speakers. And with all the songs in release in the Guitar Hero franchise, they are also going for songs that are exclusives to the DS platform.

One of the journalists pointed out that Decades has opportunity for alternative guitar instrument and asked if that will continue and maybe be expanded to other instruments.

The team was a bit evasive about being pinned down with a straight answer but noted that “We are always thinking about directions we can take with Guitar Hero on the DS.”

They noted that “it was a lot of work (to get Guitar Hero) onto the DS,” but gave credit to the developers at Vicarious Visions “thinking how we could make a music-rhythm game work on the DS. It was a long effort. And we were thinking about other things we might add.”

One of the things that could be added, and was included in the original design was the aforementioned “full compatibility of all modes.”

In addition to the song sharing, other elements new to the Decades version are the variance in some of the attacks in the duel mode. Also, “the fidelity and quality of our characters and venues is dramatically improved in Decades.”

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