Trend: Guitar Hero Karaoke

Using the popular music video game, bars all over the US offer “Guitar Hero nights” as alternative to karaoke.

Trend Description:
Guitar Hero is a popular series of music video games, using guitar-shaped gaming devices to simulate playing guitar. Players have to follow the colored notes on-screen which correspond to the buttons on the guitar-shaped controller. This simple concept allows everybody to fullfill their dream of being the frontman of a rock band - and not just virtually anymore: More and more bars and clubs are offering „Guitar Hero nights“ now, either as an alternative to karaoke or as real competitions.

Cases:

Bar Play
Developed as a video game to help people experience the thrill of a life concert, Guitar Hero now is taking over in the real world. Concert tours are featuring Guitar Hero booths ans contests between sets and more and more bars in the US feature Guitar hero nights. Pianos, a downtown Manhattan bar even claims to have tripled ist revenues on those nights, according to the New York Times. Other bars and clubs featuring Guitar Hero are River Gods, in Cambridge, Massachusetts, The Red Room in Portland, Oregon, O’Meara’s in Manassas, Virginia, and many more.

The next Guitar Hero
Developer RedOctane (acquired by Activision) ensures the further success of Guitar Hero by releasing Guitar Hero 3 this fall. The „Legends of Rock“-Version lets players choose from a variety of new songs, there are also more venues and characters and a new multiplayer mode, called Battle Modversions which will feature wireless controllers as well as online multiplayer and downloadable content. Since the music is crucial for a game like this, ther was also a 80ies version released this summer. The most exciting thing might be the development of Rock Band by MTV and Harmonix Music System (the original developer of Guitar Hero) which allows players to also hit the drums, to strum the bass or to become a singer.

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Trend Impact:
From being a commercially and critically success (average review score by critics according to Metacritic was 91%), Guitar Hero has become a cultural phenomenom. Guitar Hero is fun, easy to use, but still challenging, plus people do not have to listen to terrible karaoke versions of their favorite songs and performers can feel – and mostly also look - much cooler than the average karaoke-star.

RedOctane

Guitar Hero 2

Unofficial Guitar Hero III Website

New York Times: Virtual Frets, Actual Sweat

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