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With everyone and their brother talking about Rock Band and the waves it’s making in the gaming industry, I often hear the phrase "Yeah, they’re just ripping off Guitar Hero." That always makes me cringe a little bit. I find it sad that very few people in this country have heard of GuitarFreaks and Drummania. Unfortunately, Konami’s venture into the rockin’ world of guitar and drum simulation didn’t seem to register here in the States. Debuting almost seven years before Guitar Hero, GuitarFreaks hit Japan like a tsunami.

Okay, bad imagery. Anyway, back in 1998, Konami reigned as king in the rhythm game world. Games like Dance Dance Revolution, Beatmania IIDX, and Pop’n Music were present in practically every arcade in Japan (in fact, they still are), and DDR was already attracting attention here in the US. GuitarFreaks naturally followed in the footsteps of its big brother IIDX, and Konami struck gold by allowing arcades to link Drummania and GuitarFreaks machines, allowing players to rock out together, just like a real band. Later, Konami would release Keyboardmania and allow connections with it too, resulting in a 4-player jam session.

Eventually, all of those games and their assorted peripherals were ported to home consoles and times were good for Konami. The decision was made to market this impressive collection of games to the American public. After all, Americans like to rock out, right?

Well, do any of you actually own GuitarFreaks? How about Drummania? Keyboardmania? Anybody? Yeah, that’s what I thought. The American release fell flat on its face, and now, if you’re very lucky, you might be able to find one or two of these games in arcades (usually somewhere close to the DDR machine). So what went wrong? How could something so phenomenally popular in Japan go unnoticed in the States? Well, first of all, the first GuitarFreaks game that we got only had fourteen songs on it. Fourteen. That’ll keep our attention for, what, half an hour? Guitar Hero gave us forty-seven, and most of those were immediately recognizable to the American audience. GuitarFreaks songs were typically remixes of other Bemani music or just completely random J-Pop songs. Plus, the game was just plain hard. Guitar Hero gives us big friendly round buttons to hit as they scroll down the screen. Most of the time they are spaced out and easy to read. Anybody can pick up Guitar Hero and learn it in a few minutes. GuitarFreaks, on the other hand, gave us lines that were often crammed close together and hard to read. Timing was also a pain due to the aforementioned lines, and there was absolutely no appeal to the music to keep our interest. Picking up GuitarFreaks with no prior experience in an arcade is about as productive as playing DDR with one foot. It’s just a waste of quarters.

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