Band Hero – Behind Scenes – Taylor Swift

Band Hero is an expansion game to the Guitar Hero series of music video games, due to be published by Activision in November 2009 for the Wii, and Nintendo DS consoles. The game is structurally similar to Guitar Hero 5, and will support full band play (lead and bass guitar, drums, and vocals) including the drop-in/drop-out and in-song instrument and difficulty change menus, and additional multiplayer modes as Guitar Hero 5.

Gameplay

According to Jeff Gerstmann of Giant Bomb, the game, from its first trailer, appears to be functionally similar to the feature set for Guitar Hero 5, including bands composed of any combination of four instruments, drop-in/drop-out play, in-song menus to change difficulty and instrument, and additional multiplayer modes compared to Guitar Hero 5′s “Rockfest”. Taylor Swift and Adam Levine (of Maroon 5) have been confirmed to be playable avatars in the game. Both performed motion capture for their in-game avatars.

The “drum skin” for the Nintendo DS Lite will be used to allow Band Hero players to simulate the console-based version of drumming.

Band Hero for the Nintendo DS will feature the ability to play the same instruments as the console-based versions. Though the game is compatible with the DS, DS Lite, and DSi, only players on the DS Lite will receive the “full band” experience due to the nature of the hardware extensions for the unit. Guitar and bass parts will be played with the same “Guitar Grip” previously created for the Guitar Hero On Tour series, though this unit will not work on the Nintendo DSi due to lack of a GBA slot. The gameplay for guitar and bass is considered to be the fourth iteration of the Guitar Hero On Tour design by developers Vicarious Visions, and have further improvements to meet with different strumming styles. A new “drum skin” that fits over the bottom half of the DS unit will provide four “pads” for drumming that map to the unit’s directional pad and face buttons; this design was selected over use of the touch screen due to the inability of the touch screen to recognize near-simultaneous taps, a factor that would have interfered with the drumming experience. The drum skin is limited to the Nintendo DS Lite due to the skin’s form factor. The decision to design towards the DS Lite rather than the newer DSi was due to the much larger volume of DS Lite units that have been sold relative to the DSi. The DS microphone will be used for vocal parts. The DS will have 30 of the songs from console versions. The game also supports up to four player multiplayer in a similar manner as Guitar Hero 5 using the DS’s local wireless connections, allowing any combination of instruments. However, there is no support for the Nintendo Wi-Fi Connection nor plans for additional downloadable content for the DS game.

Soundtrack

Band Hero will feature more than 65 songs from “mainstream acts”, according to MSNBC. Songs from Avril Lavigne, Blink-182, Snow Patrol, Jesse McCartney, Pink, The Go-Gos and The Killers will also be on the disc. The game will also allow Guitar Hero World Tour’s downloadable content to be used within Band Hero, and is expected to also use similar content for Guitar Hero 5. In addition, some on-disc songs from both Guitar Hero World Tour and Guitar Hero Smash Hits will be importable into Band Hero and Guitar Hero 5 for a small fee, with music licensing limiting those that cannot be transferred. Box Art for the “Band in a Box” version of Band Hero shows that Duffy, Duran Duran, Robbie Williams & Kylie Minogue and the Spice Girls will all feature in the game as well.

Due out: November 3rd, 2009

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