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At some point during my freshman year of college, Dance Dance Revolution became an overnight craze that swept through young kids like wildfire.  I never really cared for it all that much, but I did play a flash-based version of it in my dorm on the computer called “Flash Flash Revolution.”

In this game you basically pressed the corresponding arrow key to match the moving symbol just like DDR.  I was much better at this than the version using your legs and considerably less ridiculous looking.

As the years went by I never really thought of this game again, until recently, when Guitar Hero completely exploded onto the scene sparking every man, woman, and child to strap up and unleash their inner colored-button-shredder.  I always scoffed at this game as I have played the “real” guitar since age 8.   When I played, think Randy on South Park.

Anyways, I eventually thought “I wonder if I could find a free Flash version of Guitar Hero just like I did in college.”

Well, lo and behold, I stumble across Frets of Fire.  Basically, Frets on Fire is an open-source version of Guitar Hero that natively uses the keyboard in place of the guitar.  But but but! Since it’s open-source, that’s means two very important things: 1) It’s completely free and 2) Computer programmers around the world are constantly improving on the design, graphics, functionality, and support of the software.

Just about any song EVER can be incorporated in the game and you can now use an XBOX Guitar Controller hooked up through the USB to a Mac or PC.  If you look around via Google, you can even find skins or “themes” for Frets on Fire to make it look in presentation nearly identical to any of the actual Guitar Hero games.

So basically, thanks to some Finnish computer programmers, I no longer resemble Randy and instead look a little more like this douche on YouTube (well hopefully not too much like him…).

P.S. Just for shits and giggles, how old is this kid? Put’s the douche above to shame!