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:

As you can see from the above picture, you hold the DS on it’s side, the notes come down the regular screen on the left, and the touch screen on the right is where the shredding happens. Will you need to use the standard stylus to hit those power chords and blistering solos? Absolutely not. A guitar pick is also included with the package, and it stores right in the unit for safekeeping. Simply slide the pick back & forth over the strings on the touch screen to strum the notes, and slide it around over the whammy bar for those long notes.

The standard single player mode will be present, as well as a hearty multiplayer battle mode, which will incorporate “power-up” attacks, similar to those in Guitar Hero 3. Revealed attacks so far are the returning “Amp Overload” that makes the notes blink in out of sight for a few seconds and “Broken String”, which snaps one of the guitar’s strings in two, rendering it useless until repaired. The new twist on repairing broken strings this time however, is not to simply mash the corresponding button until fixed, but to draw a line along the fret board on the touch screen where the string should be. (I’m already liking this attack better than in GH3) Some new additions to power-ups include a “Flashbulb” type-attack, which whites out both screens, making it impossible to see what you’re doing until they slowly fade back into sight, an “Autograph” maneuver which will require players to “sign” in order to continue playing, and an attack that will set your opponent’s guitar on fire, requiring them to literally “blow out” the flames, using the DS’s microphone.

OK, sounds interesting, right? But the meat of these games always boils down to the track list, and there are going to be 25+ songs included with this baby. Not only that, 20 of them are EXCLUSIVE (so far) to this game! According to the game’s producers, roughly 85% of the content will be master recordings, and the only reason for the few included cover tracks are solely because those master recordings could not be located. All right, here are the confirmed tracks so far:

• “All the Small Things” - Blink-182
• “Are You Gonna Be My Girl” - Jet
• “Do What You Want” - OK Go
• “Spiderwebs” - No Doubt
• “We’re Not Gonna Take It” - Twisted Sister

Sounds like a blast! We’ll have more info on this portable shredfest as it becomes available. The game is currently scheduled to hit retail on June 22nd for an MSRP of $49.99. Here’s what to look for on store shelves: