Woohoo!

Yeah!

In yo FACE!

woohoo.

um, yay.

whew.

Ok, I might break something congratulating myself.  Fretmaster hasn’t actually updated the first page of that forum topic, but I’m ok with that.  I’ll modify my own winning graphic, thankyouverymuch. 

I’d like to thank my family for putting up with me hogging Guitar Hero, playing these songs over and over, and the biggest one – playing songs we don’t even like (Laid To Rest, SIX).  Playing Crazy On You was very nice, as that’s easily in my top five favorite songs on the game anyway.

What did I win, you ask?  Well I’d LIKE to say I got a new controller, or maybe an advanced copy of the Guitar Hero Encore: Rocks the 80′s game coming out next week, or even an autographed copy of GHII signed by the development team.  So I’ll say that.  I do what I like.

But honestly, I got the winner’s spot, which is nice, but the nicer thing is, I was able to increase my scores significantly by practicing and NEEDING to win.  It’s like with pool, or bowling, or anything else – when I’m competing, I push myself harder.  Some might say that the best opponent is yourself, and that pushing your way to self-improvement might work, but not for me.  I need someone to play against.  I mean, how do I really know if I’m doing my best if I don’t have someone else’s best to try to beat?  I can see using yourself as an opponent once you’ve weeded out the rest, but I have a long way to go before that.

[Edit: Here's my score on that last song.  My strumming hand hurts a bit]

In short, I finally have the Hacked Guitar Hero II DVD working on my playstation.  This is where I can play other songs instead of just Guitar Hero I and Guitar Hero II.  My goal isn’t necessarily to play just this hacked version – my goal is to be able to make my own custom songs with all the songs I already own, but this is a MAJOR step towards that goal.

The GOOD news about this custom hacked version (you can find it on various torrent sites) is:

The few songs I like on the song list:

• Journey’s “Separate Ways” and “Don’t Stop Believin’” (that’s right, TWO journey songs!  woohoo!)
• Three words: Stairway to Heaven
• Scorpion’s “Rock You Like a Hurricane”
• “Land of Confusion” by Disturbed
• Alien Ant Farm’s cover of “Smooth Criminal”
• Europe’s “The Final Countdown”

I also like the funny little sayings throughout the game.  Like instead of Easy, it’s called “LOL”.  Medium is called “Wimp”, Hard is “WOW” and Expert is “Insane”. 

Take a look at the failure screen:

And the old screen that it had when you paused the game said “PAUSED” at the top, but now it says “WHY YOU STOP”.  And when you get star power, it uses hacker terms like uber and haxx0r.

The BAD news is:

• It locks up on some previews of some songs, forcing a restart, which means loading the Swap Magic CD in again, then waiting, then putting in the hacked version.  Seems this would have been preventable after reading the forums, but until I make my own darned custom songs DVD’s, I guess I can’t talk.
• Most of the songs aren’t my cup of tea.  I mean, out of sixty-something songs, the above list is about all I’ll play on them.  Granted, I need to give them a chance but basically I’ve never heard of most of it.  Maybe I’ll be pleasantly surprised because surely someone had to have a reason to go through all the work to put these songs together.  I went ahead and put the entire song list on the hacked version down in the extended entry as well.
• No multi-difficulty ability on multiplayer.  Simply put, you can’t have someone play Expert while the other plays Easy.  But when I do my own version, I’ll be sure to do that.  Also, most of the songs don’t have any “easy” or “medium” setting.  I hear the other “guitar hero purists” on the forums saying “hey, we’re all expert here” but I have people I share my game with that can’t play expert but like the songs.  So my next huge project (which I’ve already started) is to do my own songs, just the way I want them.
• It’s evident that some of the people who put together the midi files for the songs (that’s the part that controls what notes come down during the song, and when) just simply don’t know music as well as they should.  They’re missing notes, or the notes go down instead of up, or choose to continue playing the rhythm instead of the lead.  So much improvement can be made to some of the songs.   A good example is Stairway To Heaven – there’s an obvious part where the acoustic guitar kind of doubles-up it’s it’s arpeggio-style melody and the Guitar Hero version just stays the same. 
• While most of the songs are mostly in sync, it’s still not perfect.  So you sometimes have to WATCH the notes and play at the right time instead of actually playing EXACTLY with the song itself.  I think I recall that mostly in Rock You Like a Hurricane.

The rest of this post, in the extended entry, shows some of my screen shots of sight-reading the game.  I hereby assert and testify that these shots are my first time trying out these songs, and I’m pretty darned proud of them.

I went through a bit of pain and grief to get all of this to work, so I’ll likely document it in another post in case it helps others.  In short, I bought Magic Keys 2 and Swap Magic 3.8 from modchip.com (I probably should have bought it from mod-chip.com) but ended up having to use the “tape method” on the sensor on the inside because the 3rd tool just wouldn’t work on my version of the slimline.

Now when Guitar Hero hits the Wii, that will be a splendid time guaranteed for all.  Except custom song fanatics.

1. 360 Exclusive Set One

* Billion Dollar Babies – Alice Cooper
* Dead! – My Chemical Romance
* Hush – Deep Purple
* Drink Up – Ounce of Self
* Kicked to the Curb – Noble Rot

2. 360 Exclusive Set Two

* Life Wasted – Pearl Jam
* Rock and Roll, Hoochie Koo – Rick Derringer
* Salvation – Rancid
* Possum Kingdom – The Toadies
* The Trooper – Iron Maiden

3. Slim Pickins

* I Believe in a Thing Called Love – The Darkness
* Don’t Bring Me Down – Social Distortion
* Pain – Three Days Grace
* Coming Undone – Korn
* Land of Confusion – Disturbed

4. Stairway to Zeppelin

* Straight to Video – Mindless Self Indulgence
* Hells Bells – ACDC
* Dashboard – Modest Mouse
* Seize the Day – Avenged Sevenfold
* Stairway to Heaven – Led Zeppelin

5. Energizer or Duracell

* Seperate Ways – Journey
* Last Resort – Papa Roach
* Mighty Morphin’ Power Rangers
* Pirates That Don’t Do Anything – Relient K
* Rock You Like A Hurricane – The Scorpions

6. Hardwood Floor

* Save a Horse, Ride a Cowboy – Big & Rich
* One Winged Angel – Advent Children
* The Kids Aren’t Alright – The Offspring
* Jane’s Roll Call – DJ Kingpin
* The Dragon Lies Bleeding – Hammerfall

7. Gut Wrenchers

* Kickstart My Heart – Motley Crue
* Lonely Train – Black Stone Cherry
* Whiskey in the Jar – Metallica
* Blood of Ganon – Virt
* The Final Countdown – Europe

8. Ball Busters

* Crazy Bitch – Buck Cherry
* Welcome Home – Coheed and Cambria
* Sonic Adventure Song
* Bat Country – Avenged Sevenfold
* Through Fire and Flames – Dragonforce

Moar Sawngz

* ”Raw Dog” Buddy Berkman’s Ballad – Buckethead
* ”Arterial Black” Sick of You – Gwar
* ”Collide”  Black No. 1 – Type O Negative
* ”Elephant Bones” Holy Orders – Daisuke Ishiwatari
* ”Fall of Pangea” Northern Comfort – Children of Bodom
* ”FTK”  It’s Not Over – Daughtry
* ”Gemini” End of Heartache – Killswitch Engage
* ”Push Push (Lady Lightning)” – Du Hast – Rammstein
* ”Laughtrack” The Pylons are Trap Balls
* ”Less Talk More Rokk”  Shine – Collective Soul
* ”Jordan”  Smooth Criminal – Alien Ant Farm
* ”Mr. Fix-it”  Rust in Peace – Megadeth
* ”The New Black”  Concerto – Cacophony
* ”One for the Road”  Jesus of Suburbia – Green Day
* ”Parasite”  Bring Back Truth – Soldiers of Jah Army
* ”Radium Eyes”  Selkies: The Endless Obsession – Between the Buried and Me
* ”Red Lottery”  In Regards To Myself – Underoath
* ”Six”  The Frayed Ends of Sanity – Metallica
* ”Soy Bomb”  Sandstorm – Darude
* ”The Light That Blinds” You’re The Reason I’m Leaving – Franz Ferdinand
* ”Thunderhorse”  Don’t Stop Believing = Journey
* ”Trogdor”  Those Who Cannot Speak – Shadows Fall
* ”X-Stream”  Wholelottacrap – Wholelotta People
* ”Yes We Can”  Inspector Gadget

1. Someone knows how to do useful, cool video effects.  Every guitar hero video should be this cool – it shows the portion of the screen you need to see, AND you get to see the fingers, strumming and mechanics.
2. He’s really really good at the best song on Guitar Hero II (YYZ by Rush)
3. There’s not an extreme lack of humor. 
4. This reminds me of how I would introduce myself to The Internets if I was that good on the game.
5. The ending is something you HAVE to stick around to watch.
6. I needed a good excuse to try out my new video plugin on WordPress.

P.S. One of the “follow-on” links at YouTube was this one for something called a “custom song” in Guitar Hero – and they’re playing Metallica!  I’m perusing the comments now to figure out how this was done and how to get more songs.  I’m desperate for some Steely Dan, Yngwie Malmsteen, Steve Vai, etc…  even Beatles, Duran Duran, Bon Jovi, Def Leppard and others just to help please the fans!

Now I have to find out how to do custom songs!!!!!  I found a few links that I’ll pursue:

• Play custom songs on hacked Guitar Hero II – Joystiq
• Digg – Totally metal hack allows custom Guitar Hero II songs
• Digg – Make Custom Guitar Hero Songs!

It was so frustrating.

Until tonight!  I got my 3 stars and passed it so I could move on.  Here’s a little glimpse of me rocking out and finishing that gnasher of fingers:

This was especially exhilarating because the encore when you finally pass all four songs in the “Furious Fretwork” section (Madhouse, Carry Me Home, Laid To Rest, and Psychobilly Freakout) is none other than YYZ by Rush.  I’m such the Rush fan.

I was able to finish YYZ, Beast and the Harlot and Institutionalized without getting boo’d off the stage, and I’m pretty proud of that.  But then Misirlou was next and I barely got half-way through.  Them’s some fast picking required!!!

So now I just have 3 songs left to eke my way through Guitar Hero II.  Ah, good times.

Death Threat Records
“We do rock right.”
Los Angeles, California

Dear ___DADDY________,

Congrats, you beat Guitar Hero II on Hard. That’s no small feat.

Think you’ve got what it takes to really blow their minds? Try this bad boy out on EXPERT. They call it EXPERT for a reason. There may be a reward waiting for you if you succeed.

So stretch out them stubby little fingers, Tex, you’ve got truckload of pain awaiting you. The power of ROCK compels you.

Hugs,
The Management

Whew. Wait, a reward, you say? Well let’s get rockin’ on EXPERT then!

Then after I ‘accepted’ that letter, I got another one on the same letterhead:

CONGRATULATIONS
You have unlocked PRO FACE-OFF mode! 

You know how whenever you play FACE-OFF Mode, your buddy screams about how you got the easier track and less notes and blah blah, out comes the waaahmbulance? No more, my shredding friend.

Check out PRO FACE-OFF Mode in the Multiplayer menu and go note-for-note in the ultimate guitarmageddon.

Have fun,
The Management

By the way, my score on Freebird (the last song of the set, an encore actually) was 4 out of 5 stars and a score of 242946. But I bet I can beat it since it was my first time playing it on hard. And a 208 note streak!