A little thing called ScreenBurn Festival was also going on at SXSW this year. It was kind of like a smaller trade show full of video games. It turned out to be mainly just a bunch of jr. high kids sitting around a the demos playing first person shooters. There was one really neat product that was being demoed there though. It was a cool game for the Nintendo DS similar to Guitar hero, but better in quite a few ways. I belive the game is called Jam Sessions and works really well with the DS touch pad. You chose the cords with the directional controller (displayed on the upper screen), and then you use a real guitar pick to strum some virtual strings on the lower touch screen. The game is published by Ubisoft, and I was talking to the guy at the booth and he said that you can basically do whatever you want with the game (play your own songs), but there will be songs on the game to play along with. It won’t be in the Guitar Hero style though, since you’re actually strumming and chosing notes to play instead of just hitting colored buttons. I played around with it and it works really well. I don’t really think it will teach you how to play the guitar, but for just messing around (it is just a game), it’s pretty cool.
