Atari Hero Band?

[jaesonk]

Guitar Hero & Rock Band are pretty popular games, not your typical shoot-em up entertainment.

 

The controllers are pretty simple, a few fret buttons and a strum button. With a PS->Atari adapter, you could use existing guitars rather than make new ones. The whammy bar is nice but isn't really necessary. You could scale back on the fret buttons too to simplify it.

 

The note dropping is pretty basic as seems within the realm of the Atari's capability, but I'm not a coder. I used to play a lot of Kaboom. That seems similar enough, or something like River Raid. You don't need all the fancy 3D background graphics for the basic game. Just two vertical fret bar columns. A star power effect could be one of those psychedelic border patterns, not sure of the official term.

 

The current band games focus on Rock music. They neglect other types. As for a homebrew, music licensing would probably be prohibitive. An atari version could tap other styles of music within the public domain. There are a few christmas games in the atari-age store. A jingle-bell edition with holiday music might be nice. Or one with available atari game themes.

 

Can the 2600 handle music for more than one player? Maybe a game like this would be more suitable for the 7800. How many songs could be stored?

 

Difficulty could be easy or hard with the difference being the speed of the notes dropping, and/or the use of 3 vs 4 fret buttons. Maybe a loop length for the songs could be an option. Play songs through more times for high difficulty.

 

Miss too many notes & song fails. Score points on number of notes hits. Atari Power for extra points.

 

I think it's amazing that folks still code for these classic systems. Hats off to every one. I still have a 2600, 5200, 7800 and Jaguar and have bought a number of games through atari-age for these system. Keep up the great work. Thanks.

 

Jaeson K.

[cosmosiss]

I'm no expert, but this sounds to me like a job for the 5200.

[Noelio]

A star raiders keyboard controller could be useful as a guide of some sort. Shouldn't have to sacrifice any functions on the GH controller.

 

I think guitar hero has five fret buttons(5 leads plus ground), the pick simulator (2 leads plus ground) then you have a few other buttons non play related I think.

 

On a similar note... Something I was thinking about...

There was a device called the "G-Vox" which included a hexophonic pickup (1 mini pickup per string) that came with a guitar trainer / game of some sort about 10 years ago.

I still got it all here somewhere.

 

You used a real guitar to basically play midi notes which could then be assigned any patch / instrument sound but note data could be used as a game controller too.

That would be a cool option as the interface box throws out fairly simple data that easily converts to midi. It used a pc's serial port to talk to the pc.

 

Roland makes hexaphonic pickups too in the GK-2 / 2/a and 3. I smell a potential ST project.

 

Would be cool to rig up a midi "guitaraoke" game along the lines of guitar hero using such a device. I used to use the G-Vox before I got into roland guitar synths etc and

can say that the tracking is good enough for game control for sure.

 

Guitari / G-Tari!

Edited December 27, 2007 by Noelio

[Bruce Tomlin]

TOUCH-TONE HERO!

 

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