Much as we love Guitar Hero II, sometimes the effort of trying yet again to complete the game on medium difficulty (!) proves a bit too much, and we want someone or something to take over. So we were, like, totally stoked to find out that the Guitar Heronoid could be the answer to our enthusiastic but completely inadequate skills at the game.

The Android consists of two robot hands attached to a shop dummy torso, as well as a visual recognition system that can detect which frets the robot needs to press, and a brain that marries the two together. We don’t really understand any more than that, but we can see that it’s a pretty interesting idea. The one fly in the ointment would seem to be that it’s actually not very good at playing the instrument yet. We won’t get too smug yet, though, as we plateau’d at GHII a long time ago, and it looks like the robot’s just getting started

One last question: if a machine rocks out using another machine and there’s no-one there to hear it, does it make a sound?

By Chris Blenkarn