Archive for April 2008
Filed under the “Better Late than Never” Category, RockGamer.com would like to announce that our team took home the top prize in the Battle of the Bands Charity Event we attended last month (the last photo pictured below).
Team in Training sponsored the event, a Rock Band competition at Starter’s in Longwood, Florida and was there to raise money for the Lymphoma and Leukemia Society with over $350 being raised towards the goal.
Five bands competed in the event, including one representing RockGamer.com - and there was some stiff competition. Dr. Rocktopus came dressed in full superhero costumes and was easily the most technically accurate team. 8 Bit Mafia - a team made up of folks who work at EA in Orlando came in second to RockGamer.com and had a great themed look with hats and ties. Continue Reading “RockGamer.com Takes the Gold in Orlando Competition” »
Story from thebatt.com by Kenny Ryan:
The fascination of artificial intelligence has captivated people for years and was the focal point for the “Guitar Hero” playing robot, Slashbot, built by a group of Texas A&M engineering majors as part of their senior project.
Vinny Lapenna, a computer engineering major, is a member of the four-man team that built Slashbot. He said the inspiration for the project came from an episode of “South Park” that focuses on the game “Guitar Hero.”
“We all saw that episode and we all thought it was really funny,” Lapenna said. “For some reason it just became an inspiration for us to make a robot to play ‘Guitar Hero.’?”
The robot is built with five mechanical fingers to play the notes along the neck of the guitar and another that strums the notes at the correct time. Slashbot knows when to play by taking the video signal from the group’s PlayStation 2 and reading the grayscale pixels of the fret board as they move down the screen. Each time it detects the white dot at the center of each note approaching, it waits the appropriate delay to strum the note on time.
Slashbot reliably plays many songs on “Expert Mode” with approximately 96 percent accuracy.
“There’s a YouTube video where I duel it, and I got 96 percent to its 97 percent,” Lapenna said. “In my defense, I could have scored higher if we tried again.”
Groupmate Michael Voth, a computer engineering major, sacrificed his PlayStation 2 and copy of “Guitar Hero,” and left it in the lab for the semester so the robot could be built. Lapenna testified that it was a group effort in which everyone did their share.
Other group members were electrical engineering major David Buckner, who plays drums for a local band, and computer engineering major Mitchell Jefferis. The group was united by its sense of humor and love of rock ‘n’ roll.
Just posted on the official Rock Band forums. Three individual tracks next week:
- The Mother Hips – “Red Tandy”
- The Mother Hips – “Time Sick Son of a Grizzly Bear”
- Smashing Pumpkins – “Zero”
The usual fee of $1.99 (160 MSpoints) applies. I’ve never heard the 2 Mother Hips tracks myself - convince me to buy them for reasons other than being a DLC completist!
For our Guitar Hero 3 players on Xbox LIVE, here’s your friendly reminder that the latest All-Nighter event is this coming weekend from sundown Saturday, 4/26 through sunrise on Sunday, 4/27. This latest friendly competition is sponsored by Xbox, Toyota, and Peavey, where 24 winners will come away with a really cool prize: a custom Peavey AG RiffMaster guitar controller!!!! This thing is the real deal - same weight & size as the actual guitar. Here’s a look:
How cool would that be to have the feeling of playing a REAL axe during our favorite rhythm games? OK, to enter, all you need to do is download the free “Toyota Matrix Xbox All-Nighter Registration Gamer Picture” from the LIVE Marketplace BEFORE 5:59am PDT on Sunday, 4/27. For official contest rules, click here.
If for some reason, you’re like me and are unable to participate due to social obligations this weekend, (working for this site has gotten me SO popular!) you can always save up the scratch and just purchase a similar controller direct from Peavey. (NOTE: Only PS2 guitars are currently available - guitars for 360, PS3 & Wii will be available come Fall) Pre-order one of their custom designs, or designs your own!
As many of you know, I started playing music games less than 6 months ago. I was introduced to Rock Band and Guitar Hero III on the same day, and went out and bought both of them plus Guitar Hero II all in one fell swoop because I couldn’t decide on a favorite at the time. Since November, it’s been interesting to watch the marketplace battle between the two gaming giants with downloadable content being released mostly by Rock Band and new games being announced by the GH franchise (Guitar Hero:IV, Guitar Hero: Aerosmith). First round goes to Rock Band.
However, I was excited about the new Def Leppard pack that came out today as downloadable content. Two awesome older songs and the release of a new song sounded promising so I downloaded today and gave them a shred. Here’s my take:
Continue Reading “Review: Rock Band’s Motley Crue vs. Guitar Hero’s Def Leppard” »
Have you ever played Guitar Hero enough to want to take it with you on the go? That’s been an impossibility with the franchise - until now. This June, Nintendo DS owners can shred wherever their travels take them with Activision’s first portable entry in the Guitar Hero franchise - “Guitar Hero: On Tour”.
How can this be pulled off effectively enough to be fun you may ask? Well, the folks at Red Octane have developed a plug-in peripheral they have dubbed the “Guitar Grip” which ships with every copy of the game, and it plugs into the Gameboy Advance cartridge slot. Both the original DS and DS Lite models will support this new piece of hardware. Your hand wraps around the back of the DS and holds both the system & peripheral in place, allowing easy access to the 4 fret buttons on the Guitar Grip. (Believe me, it’s a lot easier to see than it is to try & explain…) Check it out:
Continue Reading ““Guitar Hero: On Tour” to Melt Your Nintendo DS This Summer” »
In a recent interview with Activision’s CEO in the May edition of Conde Nast Portfolio magazine, Bobby Kotick answers a few questions that lead to more questions. Are we looking at drums and singing in the next release of the GH franchise ? How do you sort through thousands and thousands of local bands to add to a game that will have mass appeal? Here’s an excerpt of the 4 page interview (click the link above to read the entire piece):
Today is the day we get our first album release on Rock Band - and it’s Judas Priest’s 1982 record Screaming For Vengeance. For those of you who want a preview of the songs now before you log into the new music store on the Xbox (and for you PS3 folks getting this later this week) here are some videos we found posted on Joystiq.
Also, check out the poll on the front page and let us know what your plans are for the Judas Priest release - picking it up or snubbing it?
Continue Reading “Judas Priest Album Arrives on Rock Band Xbox 360″ »
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