In 2008, the rhythm game craze was so intense that even the portable Nintendo DS was not immune – so Activision made a handheld fret accessory called the Guitar Grip that let you hold the console while playing a miniaturized version of Guitar Hero. Now, with Fortnite Festival helping bring rhythm gaming back into vogue, the people behind many of those original plastic instruments are keeping the spirit of Guitar Hero DS alive.
CRKD has just announced the NEO S Purple Wave controller, a Fortnite Festival-compatible device that works across PC, Switch, and mobile devices. If you take a regular gamepad, make it boxy, and wrap the old Guitar Grip around the outside, you’ve got a pretty good idea of what to expect. It’s not quite the authentic Guitar Hero DS experience – it doesn’t look like the external buttons will just wrap around your Switch or phone – but it offers such a similar way to play that all the old-school Guitar Hero fans are making the same comparisons.
“While CRKD is not Red Octane, the majority of the hardware team remains as the core product development team at CRKD,” the company says in a blog post, “with a community focus on bringing premium, innovative, collectible gaming gear to fans around the world.” Red Octane is, of course, the hardware company responsible for the original Guitar Hero controllers, though they only consulted on the Guitar Grip device back in the day.
Either way, the Red Octane spirit certainly seems to be alive at CRKD. On top of Fortnite Festival, the NEO S controller is also compatible with community-made Guitar Hero tributes like Clone Hero and YARG, and CRKD has already given some prominent community contributors an early look at the device. Judging by the clips shown so far, this is going to be a very effective rhythm gaming device.
Perhaps most excitingly, CRKD says that the NEO S is just the start of “a small portfolio of rhythm gaming products” set to launch over the “next six months.” This already has the rhythm gaming faithful hopeful that CRKD is going to launch a fresh line of proper guitar controllers in the classic Guitar Hero style.
PDP, the company that made the later iterations of the Rock Band controllers, launched its own guitar peripheral earlier this year in the PDP Riffmaster, but it’s naturally in the Rock Band style – meaning it has the same mushy strum bar that annoyed a certain set of rhythm game fans (like me) back in the day. So my fingers are crossed that CRKD might give us an alternative with that delightfully clicky, precise Guitar Hero feel. In the meantime, the spirit of the Guitar Grip lives on.
The NEO S Purple Wave is currently available for $59.99 on CRKD’s official site. It’s expected to begin shipping on November 29.
When does Fortnite Chapter 6 start? We’ve got all the details at that link.