Guitar Hero: On Tour is currently in development at Vicarious Visions, the team who previously worked on the Tony Hawk and Spider-Man series on the Nintendo DS, as well as the Nintendo Wii version of Guitar Hero III: Legends of Rock. Guitar Hero: On Tour will feature the same rhythm based "play to the music" gameplay of the other Guitar Hero titles and will also feature its own peripheral.
The peripheral is called the Guitar Grip and gives the player the ability to finger chords similar to the console versions. The Guitar Grip plugs into the Gameboy Advance slot at the bottom of the Nintendo DS. Players then put their hand through the strap of the grip and then position the DS in a vertical way.
"We began prototyping ideas for Guitar Hero on DS in early 2007," said Karthik Bala, CEO of Vicarious Visions. "We quite frankly didn't know whether it would be possible to bring the core essence of the franchise to handheld and have it actually work. It was 20-something gameplay prototypes that were built, all trying different mechanics and uses of the hardware. Some were pretty cool, others were total disasters!
"At some point, we hit upon the idea of creating a peripheral that would have the fret buttons plugging into the GBA slot of the DS," he recalled. "We ripped apart an old GBA cartridge and did some electronics work on it to rig up a prototype device. As awkward and crude as that prototype was, that's when we knew we were onto something. We figured that attaching a full-size guitar or even a mini-guitar would be too awkward to play on the road, hence the design of the more compact Guitar Grip, which gives you the tactile sense of the fret buttons, with the touch screen depicting the strings of the guitar."
On Tour will feature more than 20 licensed songs, from bands such as Nirvana, OK Go and No Doubt and is set for release in Winter. Players will be able to pick from six different guitarists. The game will feature an extensive single player campaign and will also support two player co-op play.
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