"Guitar Hero 5 has Johnny Cash in it!" "No." "It lets more than one person play the same instrument!" "No." "I get Guitar Hero Van Halen for free with it!" "Nope." "It lets you play as your Avatar..." "Really?"
And thus, Guitar Hero 5 was brought into our home.
It's funny to think that when I finally get my wife on board about a certain game, the plan usually backfires somewhat. In this case, buying Guitar Hero 5 on a whim came at the very particular cost of my wife playing every song as her Xbox Live Avatar. Imagine the total buzzkill of rocking out to Blur's "Song 2"...as a three-foot-tall cartoon.
Okay...I can see you're with me. Good.
Now, imagine my relief when a particular jam session ended, and she asked me, "How much is the drum set?"
Unfortunately, the set itself was too costly in both our opinions, so the matter ended there. As fate would have it, though, three weeks later my Guitar Hero World Tour Axe decided to stop responding, and while browsing for a replacement I came across the World Tour Complete Band kit's new low price. "Honey! I can get the drum set, a mic, and a replacement guitar for the same price as the drum kit!"
She agreed that the time was right to complete the band kit; I could simply get trade-in value for one of the extra game copies, and make the purchase that much more worthwhile. So I stopped at a Wal-Mart on the way home from an early-morning ship arrival...but they were out. In fact, they had taken the price tag completely off of the shelf. Okay, no big deal. There was another 24-hour Wal-Mart nearby. But a quick stop there yielded the same result -- it would have to wait until Sunday.
When the morning sun rose, I swung by GameStop on the way to Sunday morning church. "Sorry," they told me, "we're out, and we're not ordering more, according to the system. The closest store with them in stock is in Dallas."
As I really wasn't interested in driving for four hours for this kit, I tried the closest Best Buy. Nothing. At this point I was already late for church, so instead of visiting more locations, I just starting Googling phone numbers and desperately calling. I called two Target stores, two more Best Buys, two GameCrazy stores, and three Toys R Us stores. Between the nine retailers, one Target had the kit for nearly double the price, and one Toys R Us thirty minutes away had three kits left. In my frustration, I implored the internet. I didn't get much sympathy.
Nightmare, I tell you! Niiiightmaaare!!
I couldn't get to the Toys R Us in time on Sunday, so I bided my time. Monday was pretty terrible; trying to work while hoping some little kid didn't snag the last band kit was excruciating. I could picture myself like an angry woman on Black Friday, shoving toward the "R Zone" to declare what was mine and defending it with my life. I think at one point I even scratched gouges into my desk chair arms. Marc tried to placate me earlier that morning with a very kind offer that I knew he was good for, but despite his kindness I was on edge.
The most ironic part of all this was that I was on the hunt to find something that would encourage my wife to continue turning the Guitar Hero experiences that we loved into an episode of The Smurfs, but with less blue. (No, Mr. Murphy, I am not discriminating against Smurfs.)
Finally, the work day was over, and I took full advantage of our babysitter in order to travel halfway across Houston and over the ship channel in my quest to claim a band kit. The look on my baby daughter's face was hilarious -- she badly wanted to know what the heck that huge, colorful box was doing occupying Daddy's entire front seat. What she didn't realize is that this box would guarantee future nights of co-op...and that it was worth all 40 hours of effort to get it.
Dinner was served, the baby was put to bed, and my wife arrived home from work. The hour had finally come for her to see the new drum set! I already had the game booted up and the instruments connected. She saw that I'd been trying it out and smiled sweetly. "Is it fun?"
I grinned like a child. "Yeah, pretty fun. What song do you want to play?"
And after a grueling two days of hunting through the city for a discontinued item, my beautiful, graceful wife sat down behind the drum set and queued up the stupidest song to ever appear on a music game roster: "Me and My Gang", by Rascal Flatts.
Holy crap.