Aerosmith ahead of music videogame trend by 15 years

Is Mike Fritz the father of music videogaming? Back in the early 90s he was hired to write a script for a music videogame which had interest from rock sensation Aerosmith and was called Quest for Fame. This PC only game predates the 1998 Konami arcade game GuitarFreaks which I wrote about back in July and was nearly 15 years ahead of Guitar Hero: Aerosmith for consoles and the PC.

Boston.com has a good piece on Fritz recalling the Quest For Fame gameplay:

Players plug a "virtual guitar" into the computer to make music in the game. Fritz still owns a couple; they’re almost the same size as a real electric guitar and fairly heavy. Unlike the make-believe instrument in Guitar Hero, the Quest For Fame virtual guitar has strings, and there are no colorful push buttons on its neck.

Strings? Very cool. The whole five colored button guitar thing doesn’t appeal as much to me since I play a real guitar. And while I can play almost no songs on expert difficulty in these games I can play several songs on a real guitar. I guess this is one of those Virtual TO Reality moments where reality wins out.

I was intrigued by Quest For Fame and checked eBay to see if anybody had the game for sale. Indeed, there were two listings as of this writing with the cheapest buy it now price of $34.99, but CD only, no guitar. Apparently the guitar was sold separately with a serial port connection as gleaned from Wikipedia.

Another guitar-oriented videogame for the PC, one that allows you to be able to play using a real guitar, is planned to be released in 2009" called Guitar Rising.

Been keeping my eye on this one.

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