You’ve seen people playing Guitar Hero or Rock Band.  You see them having a lot of fun, but you don’t have the dough to put down for a shiny new PS3 or Wii, plus the game and controller?

Don’t fret.  These guys have got you covered.

Frets on Fire

The game takes the concept of the keytar to a new level.  Rather than use your keyboard for boring old typing, it’s now a musical instrument capable of tearing off brutal licks just like James Hetfield.

Seriously though, if you’ve played Guitar Hero or Rock Band and wanted to play the game with songs you have, this game will let you do it, with the tools and know-how from a devoted community.  It can also, with the built-in importer, bring in Guitar Hero 1 and 2 songs, provided you have the discs.

FoF Main Menu

Song Selection Screen - Hey, here's a mix tape for ya

FoF Traditional Play View - Just like Guitar Hero

FoF Side Play View - For the, um, slide keytar

The usual suspects have versions available for FoF: Windows, Linux, and OS X.  Also, I’d like to point out that it was written using Python, pygame, and a few other free add-on libraries.  It’s a cross-platform success story by itself.

So get going and start turning out some heavy shreds on that keyboard!