Can’t get Guitar Hero III for the Wii? Frets on Fire will ease your pain.

by Brad Grier on January 16, 2008

in Doing

My wrists are cramping. The keyboard was not designed to be used like this, but I’m having a blast! Damn you Frets on Fire!

I’ve been looking forward to getting Guitar Hero III for the Wii since before Christmas. But, as anyone not living under a rock will know, GH3 has been sold out everywhere since its release.

Perhaps, Activision (the publisher) is holding up shipments until they get through fixing the mono output bug.

Until that time, I’ll have to make do with Frets on Fire, an Open Source and freely downloadable Guitar Hero clone for Windows, Linux and Mac.

The I tried it last night, and must admit, it’s a blast! A fairly simple game, you hold your keyboard similar to a guitar, with the fingers of your left hand curling around the keyboard (from the back to the front) to hit your ‘frets’ (F1 – F5 keys). The Enter key is your ‘pick’.

The rest is all in the timing.

There’s a pretty entertaining tutorial, and three songs included, as is a song editor. Music packs are also available online, from the usual bittorrent sources. And you can also import tracks from any of your Guitar Hero DVDs. Very cool.

Frets on Fire will also let you use your USB Guitar, should you already have one. Alas, I don’t, so I’ll have to get used to holding that damn keyboard…

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{ 8 comments }

1 Kaslo January 16, 2008 at 5:26 pm

Too funny… I found FoF a few days ago. It’s a blast, but the “keyboard as Guitar” interface isn’t so hot on a laptop.

2 Kaslo January 16, 2008 at 5:39 pm

Too funny. I found Frets on Fire a few nights back. Pretty good clone of GH. Too bad the “keyboard as guitar” concept doesn’t port over to a laptop as well as a desktop keyboard…

3 Kaslo January 16, 2008 at 5:41 pm

Is there an echo in here???

4 Brad Grier January 21, 2008 at 9:21 pm

Heh…there may be? An oddness no?

5 Julie, writer surefirewealth.com February 5, 2008 at 11:02 pm

I suppose a guitar hero must do what a guitar hero must do! It’s amazing how many innovations people can come up with. It makes me wonder if the maker (s) of Frets on Fire have anticipated the short supply of Guitar Hero III and so decided to create something to occupy their time while waiting for the actual product to be re-supplied again.

6 Frets On Fire July 24, 2008 at 12:04 am

Frets on Fire is a great game, for those who can’t play GH3, frets on fire will make you really happy, you also can play GH3 songs on frets on Fire, lot of mods, multiplayer mode, i also have Frets on Fire mods multiplayer, really awesome :)

Frets On Fires last blog post..Download Frets On Fire Mods

7 bgrier July 24, 2008 at 7:53 am

@Frets On Fire -
Yeah, I’ve since played a bit of GH, and actually like the open-ness of Frets on Fire. More songs, various options..etc.

8 cheapguitarstore August 2, 2008 at 10:20 am

Frets On Fireis a blast. I read your post and went to try it out. Thanks for the suggestion!

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