Notes shattered and burned as Drake Ewing played on, the sounds of Warrant’s “Cherry Pie” echoing around him. His concentration grew intense as his fingers flew across the guitar neck.
Finally the song ended. The screen showed the tally: 98 percent note accuracy.
Not bad for a 10-year-old.
“He’s got an ear for it,” his mother Erin Ewing said, watching his warmup round. “I couldn’t carry a tune if I had a wheelbarrow to help me.”
Carrying a tune wasn’t an issue Thursday night. Following one was. That’s when Hastings held its first ever “Guitar Hero II” competition, the video game for everyone who’s ever wanted to play air guitar and make it count.
Thirty-four people turned up for the tournament, some bringing their own “guitar” game-controllers instead of using the ones provided by the store. With the shaggy hair and heavy metal shirts that a few contestants arrived in, a bystander could be forgiven for thinking a concert had just let out.
But clean-cut or mullet-maned, everybody brought one common quality — a passion for the unusual and addictive game.
“I play for about three or four hours a night, probably,” said 16-year-old Michael Knight. “It’s usually what I do as soon as I get home from baseball practice. It’s just the love of the game.”
Hastings held its first video game tournament about two months ago, drawing 23 people for a more traditional shoot-em-up. But when the store employees started asking what to do for an encore, “Guitar Hero” easily topped the list.
“I think everyone loves music,” store manager Chris Ortiz said. “There’s something everyone can play and get involved.”
“Play” might be the wrong word. “Guitar Hero” is more akin to the old game “Simon” with a little bit of “Space Invaders” thrown in. In the game, a player’s “guitar” has five buttons on the neck and a trigger on the body for “strumming.” As the song plays, different-colored notes scroll across the screen. To keep up, a player has to press the buttons in the right rhythm and for the right duration, strumming at the right moments.
Zap all the notes and you’ve got a power ballad. Miss more than a few and it’s time to go backstage.
It’s fun, even if it bears as much resemblance to guitar playing as Indiana Jones does to archaeology. In fact, that may be part of the appeal.
“I’ve tried a real guitar and I’m terrible at it,” Michael said.
For Ewing, it’s one of the few video games that she can play side-by-side with her son. And the game’s selection of tunes — the best of KISS, Mötley Crüe and so on — almost amuse her.
“It’s music from my generation, stuff I wouldn’t expect him to know,” she said. “I’m always having to explain to him who Mötley Crüe was and why they did their hair that way.”