During El33tonline’s very first appointment of gamescom 2011, I was treated to a gameplay demonstration of Skylanders: Spyro’s Adventure by Toys for Bob studio president Paul Reiche III (the Paul Reiche III!), as well as Vicarious Visions game director Ben Throop, who both showed a few new neat features of the game across Wii, Xbox 360 and the 3DS that we hadn’t seen before.

Continue reading El33tonline’s preview of Skylanders: Spyro’s Adventure.

Vicarious Visions has released the first Guitar Hero: On Tour Developer Diary.

Continue reading if you are interested in how the Guitar Hero: On Tour Guitar Grip for the Nintendo DS was created. Karthik Bala, CEO of Vicarious Visions, takes you behind the scenes in this first part of the Developer Diary and also reveals the never-before-seen prototype of the Guitar Hero: On Tour Guitar Grip.

Developer Diary

Hi folks,

My name is Karthik Bala, CEO of Vicarious Visions. We’re the development team behind the upcoming release of “Guitar Hero: On Tour” - the first ever Guitar Hero game for Nintendo DS. Over the next few weeks, we’re going to be talking about the rollercoaster ride we’ve been on this past year in the development of the game. It was a very unusual project to work on and we wanted to share some of our experiences with you.

The game actually started out over a year ago as an idea that some of our handheld guys were batting. The question was, “would it even be possible to bring the Guitar Hero experience to portable form?” That question quickly led to the major aesthetic challenge we needed to solve, “How do you recreate the essence of Guitar Hero for a portable without making everyone carry around a full size plastic guitar?”

We all thought it was crazy… and so did the guys at Activision and Red Octane. But we wanted to give it a try as a research project. Worst case, it wouldn’t work and we would learn a bunch of stuff and we move on.

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Activision has announced that the first installment of the Guitar Hero series will be released on the Nintendo DS later this year.

IGN and Yahoo got the exclusive scoop and have confirmed that Guitar Hero: On Tour is currently in development at Vicarious Visions.

Guitar Grip

Guitar Hero: On Tour will feature the same rhythm-based game play that has become synonymous with the Guitar Hero franchise. It will also feature the Guitar Grip, a new peripheral that has been developed by Red Octane and which allows players to play chords much like you would on the guitar peripheral of the console versions.

Simply plug the Guitar Grip into the GBA slot on your Nintendo DS, hold the DS vertically and slip your hand into the special strap. Players will use a stylus pick (which can be stored in the peripheral) to strum strings on the DS’s touch screen while pressing the corresponding fret buttons on the Guitar Grip. The microphone of the DS will also come into play although details for this have yet to be revealed.

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