Guitar Hero

By Rocky & Kristine Fields

While driving down Highway 9 in Lake Stevens, we noticed a sign at Highway 9 Casino advertising Guitar Hero on Saturday nights. We decided to head in and check it out. We’ve been searching for a venue with this game so we were excited to see how it worked and how exciting it was.

It was easy to find seating as there were literally only four people in the area where the game was, and one was an employee. Two guys were playing along to a rock song we had never heard before. They stood there concentrating on the game, not rocking out or looking like they were having fun, just concentrating really hard. The colored buttons on the screen were flying by really quickly and it looked like they must have had it on a fairly difficult level. Player one won the round, though we weren’t sure why or what had happened. They handed the guitars to the other two guys in the room, one walked out and went back to work, and they proceeded to play another round.

We weren’t acknowledged in any way other than one guy apologized for cussing when his round was over. It didn’t appear that anyone in particular was running the “show”, so we decided after watching four rounds that we’d had enough.

Granted, the game wasn’t intermixed with karaoke, as we were thinking could be fun, but after seeing the game alone, I really wonder how much fun it would be to try to incorporate the game alongside of singing karaoke. I’m beginning to think that it’s not going to be a money-maker for any establishment, especially after seeing a Saturday night completely dead with just Guitar Hero available as entertainment.

We’ve gotten lots of feedback on our last two articles that had to do with Guitar Hero, and I believe we’ve come to the conclusion that Guitar Hero, while it may be a fun game to play maybe at home or away, we don’t believe that it will stand alone in a bar environment for very long. It does bring out the twenty-something male crowd and they do love it, however, it gets boring watching someone stand there and press keys. We noticed that you can’t really even hear the words to the songs so that if you wanted to sing along it would be quite difficult. Maybe in time they will come up with a game that encompasses both playing instruments and singing (besides the Rockstar game) where it could be so interactive and exciting that it could possibly take over a karaoke night someplace at some bar. We don’t see it happening anytime soon, and certainly not at any of our venues. Sorry guys, but we think we’ll be sticking with regular karaoke. Feel free to bring your guitar and play along though, or any other instrument for that matter. We’ve actually had a saxophone player, guitar player and trumpet player bring their instruments to our shows and play along while others that have sung. Karaoke can always evolve into something more, but honestly, it stands alone just fine.