About

Thanks for visiting Fake Plastic Rock. I’m your host, Jeff Atwood. I’m a long time gamer and dyed in the wool superfan of the music (or rhythm) video game genre, having played or bought every game on the market featuring fake plastic musical instruments of any kind:

Seriously, I owned all these games. My cup overfloweth with fake plastic musical instruments!

Not to mention all the music / rhythm game precursors that used standard console controllers, like PaRappa the Rapper, Gitaroo-Man, Vib-Ribbon, Guitar Freaks, Rez, Elite Beat Agents, Bust-A-Groove, Frequency and many others. I bought and enjoyed them all– but my favorite music games always had a fake plastic instrument of some kind. Your garden variety console gamepad just can’t offer the same experience.

There’s something hypnotic about the melding of fake plastic musical instruments and rock. The original Guitar Hero is easily one of my all-time favorite game experiences. It was plenty of fun solo, but best experienced with two guitars and a friend. Now Rock Band has seamlessly blended drums and vocals into the mix as well, for mind-blowing four player action. (You also indirectly learn why there’s so much tension in bands; getting four people to agree or synchronize is surprisingly difficult, even when they’re all willing.)

I’ve been accused of being unheathily obsessed with Rock Band and Guitar Hero. Maybe that’s true. I’m not happy unless I’ve infected as many people as possible — there’s nothing quite like the sheer joy of rocking out on fake plastic musical instruments with your friends and coworkers. This blog is about the future of fake plastic rock, in whatever form it takes.

Need to get in touch with me? email me at jatwood@codinghorror.com.

What you look like while playing Guitar Hero
what you look like while playing Guitar Hero

What you feel like while playing Guitar Hero
what you feel like while playing Guitar Hero

(via Digital Luddite)

For those about to Fake Plastic Rock, I salute you.

Posted by Jeff Atwood
20 comments

I would like to add links to my Guitar Modding 101 thread over at http://www.scorehero.com (I’m pretty sure you are familiar) but all of the mods are found on the same page on your site. I would like to address this issue in one of two ways. The first would be for you to split up the mods on your website so I can link to their individual URLs for the mods.
The other solution would be to repost these mods in the scorehero forums. I would be happy to transfer over all of these mods into individual threads over there and of course first and foremost your website and the original author would be given full credit. This could be the best option since I would provide links to this page to drive traffic here and the forum provides a better venue for people to discuss them. Let me know what you think would work best.

– BriGuy – Staff Moderator at http://www.scorehero.com

BriGuy
April 5, 2008 at 11:16 am

Nevermind…I figured out how to link to individual posts.
Great job on your site!

BriGuy
April 5, 2008 at 11:24 am

First of all, congratulations for your site.

Just one (maybe useless) comment: I am Brazilian, I have lived along Samba for all my life, and I can say: Samba definetly DOESN´T HAVE MARACAS.

I haven´t played the game, it may be very funny and all, despite the (big) cultural mistake.

Lucas Uyezu
April 23, 2008 at 7:04 am

Hi Jeff,

http://fakeplasticrock.com gives (i.e. omitting the “www”) a 404. I just wanted to let you know, in case it’s unintentional. Please feel free to delete this message once you see it :)

Ates

Ates Goral
April 29, 2008 at 9:53 am

Homage to “Fake Plastic Trees” by Radiohead maybe?

Phenomenally good song.

Brian
May 11, 2008 at 1:57 pm

I’ve been lurking for a little while now, but I wanted to thank you for this wonderful blog! I love the mix of news, commentary and your fabulous articles on customizing your FPR experience. I’m disabled, with good dexterity but limited strength, but my love for RB and your articles have inspired me to make some changes to my guitars that keep me playing better and longer! Thanks again!

JamieGuy
June 10, 2008 at 6:13 pm

Hey there Jeff, not sure how else to contact you so I’ll just leave a message here. I just came across this interesting mod created for a girl in a wheelchair who wanted to play the Rock Band drums. The mod describes how they hooked up a doorbell button to a drumstick so that she could use that to replace the kick pedal.

http://www.kinetic.com/channelk-rock-band-mod.html

Will
July 7, 2008 at 9:04 am

Love the site – always popping back for news, often head here first before checking google or other forums! But i had noticed that you have been poiting out the heritage of the guitar/drum rhythmm game genre but dont cover much of the pc scene – i understand games like frets on fire dont have the specific peripherals you love – but http://www.guitarpraise.com/ (dont know if you are religious or not – im not…) is a christian guitar game, with contemporary songs of praise and comes with its own controller! lol

Anyway – keep up the good work… whiteee.

Whiteee
November 19, 2008 at 1:55 pm

Me again – i know you are great with the news, so i was i spotted this on the redoctane shop before you had posted it!

http://www.redoctane.com/Guitar-Hero/Accessories/Guitar-Hero-World-Tour-Faux-Drum-Cover

Just like the rockband ones i guess – only the one though. Will take ages to be out in the stores over here – wondered if there were any on your side of the pond?
whiteee

whiteee
December 11, 2008 at 10:36 am

Hey, I just got Guitar Hero World Tour but didn’t get the bundle because i heard that you can use the rock band drums but now i was reading your site and i am a little skeptical of getting the guitar hero drums but it seems that you always play them in your videos so honestly which ones are better? And while we are at it i got someone’s opinion at gamestop and he told me that guitar hero was better then rock band 2 what do you think?I bought rock band 1 and unfortunately i didn’t like it very much so that’s why i also got excited to buy guitar hero because i’ve never had a guitar hero. All the websites i’ve been to said that rock band is better? So did i make a mistake buying GHWT?

Let me know i also wanna buy some drums so let me know which one’s are better…

I want to know
December 15, 2008 at 10:49 pm

Both are worth owning. I prefer Rock Band simply because of the song catalog I’ve built up on it. I also prefer the Rock Band 2 interface to GH:WT. But when it comes down to playing the songs, I find both equally fun. I’m just glad there are competing systems to further the innovation. The difference between GH 1 and GH 3 weren’t significant, but now with Rock Band on the scene things have to evolve or risk extinction.

phloopy
January 2, 2009 at 12:55 pm

Guitar Hero for the Commodore 64 – thought you might like this:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WyCMM6e1Lbo

Pretty well done for an old clunker.

Steve
April 13, 2009 at 6:28 am

Guitar Hero instrument photo repair guide: http://www.powertuneplus.com/gh/

David
April 29, 2009 at 6:39 am

Hey I just wanted to stop by and say hi before I got off the computer. I thought you’d be interested to know that I’ve been reading your blog for two and a half hours straight and the only reason why I’ve stopped is because I’m about to pick up my fiance from work.

KEEP POSTING VIDEOS AND WRITING GREAT ARTICLES

My fiance and I enjoy rockband almost every single day, he plays the guitar on expert and most songs on the drums on expert as well, I’m into the drums playing hard/expert

If there were any way to suggest bands for rockband to start featuring my answer would defiantly be muse. ANYTHING MUSE ON ROCKBAND.

I thought I should let you know that because you’re into everything fake plastic rock so maybe you can get that request out for me.

Anyways, once again thankyou for this blog and I will be bookmarking you!

Adora

Adora
November 13, 2009 at 8:53 pm

Hello there! Your reviews are very good!

Do you recommend a website that has a good stock of different “fake plastic” guitars, for Playstation 3?
I’ve gone through several, but none of them so far ship to Brazil!

I want a wireless mad catz fender bass (either sea foam or white) but I can’t find it anywhere!! I only found 1 -wired- white one that ships here on eBay and that’s it.

Thanks!

Luiz Armando
January 13, 2010 at 3:53 pm

Thanks for posting the pro cymbals setup. Sounds silly to say now, but I couldn’t get that third one arranged properly with my (nonstandard) drum base until seeing that you latched it to one of the other cymbal stems and placed green below blue. #ThingsLearnedToday

Matthew Glidden
May 16, 2011 at 6:05 pm

Any suggestions for new buyer which Drum set, guitar are best I’m leaning towards rock band. Also does anyone make decent DJ hero turntable

kofi b.a
April 5, 2012 at 11:18 pm

Hey, I have a couple of practical questions that may have been posed elsewhere but you probably have the answers to…

(A) What is the best way to keep the darn drums from sliding all over the floor?

(B) My girlfriend has a 3.5 year old that loves to “play” the drums along with me, and of course I love to do it with him, but when I watch those huge wooden sticks fly around in his tiny hands I get very nervous for my $1200 extremely fragile glass-fronted plasma screen TV. What I would like is a pair of drumsticks his size, with something soft on the tip, and most importantly some kind of lanyard that I can tie to the drums or to him that will keep them from accidentally flying across the room. I can find kid’s sized drumsticks, but not anything like what I want – any suggestions?

Gaius
May 18, 2012 at 9:51 am

Hey! Thanks for this blog/website thing, have enjoyed reading it many times.

I was just wondering if you would be interested in making an article on your own opinions on why the two major players in the plastic rock genre decided to call it quits so suddenly. I’m sure you have some insight I don’t have, don’t think I was fallowing the news at the time, but obviously the publishers have chosen to invest their money elsewhere.

Any thoughts you have about the matter would be interesting to read.

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