In honor of the release of Guitar Hero 3, here’s an old blog I wrote where I admit I’m the only person who doesn’t like Guitar Hero games.  Give me Taiko Drum Master any day!

I have a confession to make, folks. It’s going to make a lot of you fans mad, and I’m probably the only one in the world who feels this way, but here goes. I don’t like the Guitar Hero games. Now, before you start hating on me, keep in mind that I gave the series a good try. My brother Jeff bought Guitar Hero 2 with his own money. I played it and didn’t like it. I thought it was because I didn’t know any of the music. I’m not much of a hard rocker, I only recognized two songs on the list. But then, I don’t like J-Pop either and I play the Taiko no Tatsujin games all the time, so I don’t think it’s the music. I think it’s the gameplay I don’t like. I just don’t like the guitar controller. It’s too unwieldy for me and all those buttons and things get too confusing.

But I’m stubborn and even though I didn’t like Guitar Hero 2, I’d try the 80’s version and see if I liked that better. I was a child of the 80’s after all, and I know lots of 80’s music since, for some reason, my parents back then just listen to the radio way more than now. But nope, I still don’t like Guitar Hero, even with 80’s songs. There’s not enough cool songs here still. Every music game is going to have ‘that one song’ that you thought was missing, and for me, it’s Money For Nothing. I thought that would be perfect material for Guitar Hero 80’s, what with all that trash guitar. And I loved the computer animated music video of that when I was a kid (do they still make music videos anymore?).

Another reason why I don’t like Guitar Hero is a more personal and silly trite reason. The game is just not cute enough. All the characters and graphics are all dark and forboding, and just don’t appeal to me. Sure the Grim Reaper wears 3-D glasses in the 80’s version. And there’s another character who has blue hair and wears a suit, but she’s not very nice. When you win a song, she just holds up her guitar and throws it down and walks off. Jerk. I think it would be cool if you could play as a giant hamster with a guitar, or maybe a little baby in a stroller with a guitar. Wouldn’t that be neat?

There is one thing about Guitar Hero that I like, and that’s the practice mode. You can practice certain sections of a song at any tempo. That’s an effective way to practice if you’re playing a REAL musical instrument, and it shows that the game promotes good musicmanship that way. I can’t tell you how many times I’d like to have a practice mode like that in the Taiko Drum games instead of having to play the entire song over again. Of course, on the flip side of the coin, why bother going to all that trouble to practice a song with Guitar Hero when you can just pick up a real guitar and practice like that? Then you’ll have a more useful skill in knowing how to play a real guitar instead of only the Guitar Hero controller.

Which brings me to my last point of why I don’t like Guitar Hero as much as the Taiko games. One of my favorite things about video games is that they let you do things you can’t normally do in real life. I could go down to Wal-Mart right now and pick up a beginner guitar and start learning how to play. But I doubt I’ll be able to play a Taiko drum anytime soon. For me, the Taiko games are everything the Guitar Hero games are not. Cuter, simpler, more fun, and they have music I know.

Taiko DS
And that leads me to my little review of my latest import game: Taiko no Tatsujin DS. I LOVE the Taiko games so much that I try to import the ones I can, since PS2 Taiko Drum Master kind of bombed in the US. The cool thing about Taiko DS is it comes with two special Taiko styluseses. Although they’re a bit more cheapy and plasticy than what I would’ve liked. But oh well, I still like to collect novelty DS styluseses. You’re supposed to ‘drum’ by tapping on the touch screen, but not too hard! I wondered how you would do the notes where you have to hit the drum with both sticks, since the DS can only sense one touch at a time. But they do this by having you tap the drum near the center or close to the rim rather than with both sticks. You can just use both styluses to drum faster by tapping alternately. Although for most of the songs, one stylus will suffice. One thing I have noticed is the game seems a bit easier because of this. I don’t know if it’s because I’m getting better at these games or if they purposely made the game easier (probably the latter), but on the DS one, only Oni mode has given me trouble. Too bad there’s no touch screen Taiko mini-games that I can find.

There’s the regular game where you can play songs, and a daily mode where you play a song a day. Every DS game seems to have a ‘daily mode’ now. Daily mode is important for unlocking new stuff, though. You can also do multiplayer wireless game sharing, but I haven’t figured out how to do that since it’s all in Japanese. But the rest of the game is VERY import friendly. I mean, if I can figure it out, anyone can. You can get ‘e-mails’ from characters in the game. I don’t know what they’re saying, but sometimes they have presents like new sound effects for your drums, new songs to play, or other stuff. You can customize your drum by coloring it any color and dressing it up with the stuff you get from e-mails. I heard there was a game freezing bug in Taiko DS that would freeze your game if you tried to dress them up, but I did it and my game still works fine. I think that if you dress up all three drums on the files, it might freeze, so be careful with that. Some of the different drum sounds you can use are farting noises, the drums saying D and S, and my favorite: Pac-Man sound effects. The only other new thing I’ve found gameplay-wise is sometimes you have to drum and tap the side of the rim alternately to swing one of those “Secret of Mana Flammie Drums” back and forth. What are those things called?

Taiko DS Songs
Of course I can’t go without mentioning what songs are on here. The ones I know, anyway. There’s a lot of anime songs here. Since I don’t know much about anime, I don’t know what the songs are. But I think one of them is a Doraemon song. Doraemon is a popular anime blue cat with no ears. You’ve probably seen him even if you never realized it. There’s also a lot of J-Pop on here, so I don’t know much about that either. But at least the DS version doesn’t have “No More Cry” like some of the other Taiko games. Man I hate that song. There’s also some songs that sound like you’d play a Taiko drum to at a Japanese festival. And a few folk songs with Japanese lyrics. One of them is a Claire de Lune Debussy-ish song that’s also played in Frogger. And another one is a familiar tune that I can’t remember the name of, but we sang a version of it around the campfire a long time ago that went, “She was the cutest girl I ever sawwwww…sipping cider through a strawwww…” If you don’t know it by that, I can’t help you anymore. Also some classical pieces like the William Tell Overture, Can Can Dance, Flight of the Bumblebee, and a weird combination of the Wedding March and Hall of the Mountain King with people making weird noises in the background.

And of course there’s video game music, which is what I’m most familiar with. Since the DS is a Nintendo product, you can play the classic NES Super Mario Bros. theme on here (though you could also play it on one of the Japanese Taiko arcade games). The Mario Bros. song is a medley of the main theme, underground theme, invincible theme, and other jingles like the time almost over bit, flagpole slide, and the last six notes are the fireworks from the castle! On the bottom of the screen is an 8-bit scene from the game, with pixellated Mario, Luigi, and others dancing along.

There’s also a song called “Go My Way” which is from a Japan only game called The Idolmaster, which is one of the few Namco games that I know next to nothing about. The only thing I can tell you about that game is that my friend has an Idolmaster background on his Xbox 360 menu screen that I thought was kind of cool though I’m ashamed to admit that. You can also drum to the Taiko DS main theme, the theme from Mojipittan (a popular kanji word puzzle video game that would never come out in the US), the hard rock remix of The Genji and Heike Clans (also on Taiko Drum Master), and the menu screen music from Mr. Driller Drill Land (I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: Go Shiina rocks!)

My favorite song on here is like the Super Mario Bros. song. It’s a medley of classic Namco Famicom songs. They start off with the intro from Pac-Man, and play themes from other games like Dig Dug, Mappy, Galaga, Xevious, Legend of Valkyrie (the crappy NES one, not the awesome arcade Valkyrie game), Family Stadium (also known as RBI Baseball to you and me), Family Tennis, Family Jockey (a horse racing sim), Tower of Druaga, SkyKid, and Galaxian. On the bottom of the screen where they have characters dancing, they have 8-bit versions of Mappy, Pooka (Dig Dug), Gil (Druaga) and others dancing, and the background is the “Namcot” box art logo from their Famicom games.

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