Here’s the most primitive version of fake plastic rock to date: the Champion of Guitars text-based adventure! At the risk of revealing spoilers, here’s how my adventure went:

Champion of Guitars

An Interactive Fiction by Bill Meltsner

Release 1 / Serial number 090126 / Inform 7 build 5J39 (I6/v6.31 lib 6/11N)

Cantina

The current management of this rather seedy venue doesn’t much care about appearances, apparently. Nonetheless, it’s become one of the hottest spots in the area, attracting surly alcoholics from all around. A variety of local acts, the vast majority unrelentingly terrible, play here every Tuesday night. Coincidentally, it’s Tuesday night.

A host of unsavory-looking people makes up your audience for the night. They’re all staring at you expectantly.

A fake plastic guitar lies on the ground in front of you.

Bolted to the wall is a television screen, dark and forboding.

>get guitar

You pick up the guitar.

The crowd around you quiets down, an expectant hush settling over the room.

>look at television

This TV screen is currently off. It also looks like it hasn’t been cleaned since this joint opened.

The screen flickers to life, revealing a grid with five columns and colored circles falling down them. Music begins to blast from the speakers.

A yellow circle slides down the screen.

>push yellow button

You push the yellow button.

A blue circle slides down the screen.

>push blue button

You push the blue button.

A green circle slides down the screen.

The audience is silent, watching your every move.

>push green button

You push the green button.

A yellow circle slides down the screen.

You get the idea. For what it’s worth, I LOL’ed, so mission accomplished. :) There are supposedly some easter eggs in there, too, if you’re interested. This was written in the ZCode language, where the Z originally stood for ‘Zork’.

Slightly less primitive, but barely, is D-Pad Hero. It’s an actual, playable Nintendo Entertainment System (NES) game that captures the .. er .. spirit .. of playing a fake plastic guitar on Nintendo’s earliest console home videogame system.

Check out some screenshots, or better yet, see the game in action:

Great stuff, although this ends up playing a lot more like Dance Dance Revolution than anything else, in my opinion.