This is an awesome game that I came across the other day. Have you ever played any of the Guitar Hero games? If you haven’t, then you don’t know what you are missing out on. Guitar Hero can be quite addicting, but it costs a lot to buy it. If you don’t own one of the systems that Guitar Hero is on, then you aren’t going to be able to get it anyways. On the other hand, you could download Frets on Fire.

Frets on Fire is a great opensource game that mimics the Guitar Hero games, except instead of using a guitar, you use your computers keyboard. You may be thinking, well that’s not much fun. Well, you are supposed to hold your keyboard as if you were holding a guitar. This would only work of course if you had a normal keyboard, and if you weren’t on a laptop or had some oddly shaped keyboard.

You use the F1-5 keys for the notes, and the Enter (Return) key for the pick. One very nice thing about Frets on Fire is that you can import songs from Guitar Hero. So if you have a friend who owns Guitar Hero, then you can follow the instructions on how to import them. Or, you could always visit the Frets on Fire forums and download some songs. The Frets on Fire community lists a lot of songs to download and import them to your library. You have to be registered on the forums in order to get the songs. They are in the Tune Posting section.

Don’t think this is some cheap alternative to Guitar Hero. Granted, you aren’t going to get all the fancy graphics and muliplayer abilities, but the gameplay for single player is great. Frets on Fire is a great way to feel like you’re playing Guitar Hero when you don’t actually own the game. It’s great for college students like me who are broke and don’t have the money to buy anymore games. =)