What happens when you take the Beatmania format and apply it to a guitar? That's the question answered by Konami's Guitar Freaks series. The same basic format as Konami's other games applies here, too. Notes scroll up to the top of the screen, and you have to play the notes when they meet up with a timing line. But the difference between Guitar Freaks and Beatmania is that you hold down the notes and then strum them using a guitar controller, rather than just mashing out the notes like a piano.

The game may look visually similar to Konami's other games, but the guitar controller makes it a fairly different experience.

The introduction of a guitar controller makes for some silly fun, as the temptation to "get into it" seems to be much higher here than it is with many other games in the genre. Part of that is helped along by an extra function in the guitar controller that triggers when you tilt the guitar upward. The game uses this feature to accent specific notes and generally mark the end of a phrase.

A big part of the fun in Guitar Freaks is its over-the-top song list. Later versions of the arcade game got more and more into providing cover songs, but at its purest, you're rocking out to decidedly Japanese takes on rock, blues, metal, and ska. Songs like "Happy Man" and "Ska Ska No. 1" helped define the Guitar Freaks games as completely different animals than stuff like Beatmania and Dance Dance Revolution, which focused more on dance-friendly music.

Later installments include cover versions of songs originally made famous by the likes of Alanis Morissette and Guns N' Roses.

While the early installments in the series contained most of the best original songs, later installments got larger song lists. The arcade version also gained the ability to link up to DrumMania machines, allowing for two guitarists and a drummer to play the same song. That ability carried over to the PlayStation 2 Guitar Freaks games, though the PS2 drum controller was sort of lame.

Everyone may be all up in arms about how amazing Guitar Hero is these days, but don't forget that this style of gameplay started with three buttons and a strum bar back on the PS.

--Jeff Gerstmann, Senior Editor

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