bradgrier.com

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

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…

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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Brad Grier

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8 responses to “Can’t get Guitar Hero III for the Wii? Frets on Fire will ease your pain.”

  1. Kaslo Avatar
    Kaslo

    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.

    Reply
  2. Kaslo Avatar
    Kaslo

    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…

    Reply
  3. Kaslo Avatar
    Kaslo

    Is there an echo in here???

    Reply
  4. Brad Grier Avatar
    Brad Grier

    Heh…there may be? An oddness no?

    Reply
  5. Julie, writer surefirewealth.com Avatar
    Julie, writer surefirewealth.com

    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.

    Reply
  6. Frets On Fire Avatar
    Frets On Fire

    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

    Reply
  7. bgrier Avatar
    bgrier

    @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.

    Reply
  8. cheapguitarstore Avatar
    cheapguitarstore

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

    Reply

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