Nintendo Wii makes Mr. Noobie a Guitar Hero

I keep up pretty regularly with all things technology in the news. Which means I've known for quite some time that Guitar Hero is one of the most popular video games right now. I've even run into several adults that have the game and talk about how addicted they are to it.

But until recently, I had never seen nor played Guitar Hero. That all changed on Father's Day when I received Guitar Hero for the Nintendo Wii game system. Many, many hours later I was still playing and my fingers on my left hand actually hurt from playing too long.

If you are one of those that haven't heard of Guitar Hero let me give you a breakdown of the game. Although it is available for almost any game system, my overview will be heavily biased towards the Nintendo Wii version since that's the version I own.

Guitar Hero comes with a mini Les Paul series guitar with actual guitar frets and a whammy bar. The Wii controller, sometimes called a Wii-mote, sits right into and connects to the base of the guitar. To play the game you strap on the guitar and strum along with any number of guitar-heavy rock n' roll songs.

The beauty of this is that you don't have to be a musician to play the game. You just have to recognize colors easily and have a good sense of timing. That being said, I do think anyone with a good musical background or any sense of rhythm has a distinct advantage in this game.

To play the guitar, you watch the screen for a series of colored dots that travel from top to bottom on the screen. Your job is to press your finger down on the guitar fret with the color that matches the color on the screen. Then when the colored dot reaches the button of the screen you strum the guitar to play the note.

Sounds relatively simply but it isn't. I found out quickly that I needed to take the tutorials and practice a song or two before playing the real game. Incidentally, the real game as I refer to it is called Career Mode. In Career Mode, you start out playing a backyard party. If you play well enough and enough times you get invited to another gig at a slightly bigger venue. If you don't play well, you get booed off stage and have to try again. Currently, I'm doing a UK tour and pretty proud of my progress.

There's a little more to Guitar Hero like wow'ing the crowd with the whammy bar and earning Star Power but I'll spare you from getting too confused for now. Instead, just know that in this techie's opinion, Guitar Hero lives up to all of the hype.