As readers of the site know, I am somewhat of a music game addict.  This means we have several fake plastic instruments lying around our house.  After buying many, selling them off to finance upgrades, etc., we are now "down" to all Guitar Hero instruments.  We have a Les Paul from GH3, a trusty ol' X-Plorer from GH2, and the latest and greatest (for another few weeks anyway) the GH World Tour axe.  For the most part, we've been quite pleased with all these guitars, save a really sensitive tilt sensor on the Les Paul.  Our drum set is from World Tour, and, unfortunately, a few weeks back, the red drum pad stopped working. This wasn't a big deal at the time.  My oldest son was away visiting family, and wouldn't be back for almost a month.  So, the youngest boy and I played guitar together.  The kid can play almost anything on easy, so it worked out great.  However, a week ago, big brother returned.  This left us with a dilemma of global proportions: who had to play the broken drums? Now, you may be wondering, why not just fix the drums?  Can't you go online and order one of those tuner kits from RedOctane for free?  While this may have been the case late last year, apparently there is no way to do so now.  Or, at the very least, I was unable to get one, after jumping through all the appropriate hoops I knew of.  Opening up the drum set was not an option for me, as I am paranoid about breaking, shorting out, or otherwise destroying a rather expensive piece of gaming hardware.  Paralyzed by fear, I left the drum pad in a state of disrepair.  

Amazon's deal of the day is a doozy for fans of Guitar Hero: World Tour.  While the instrument bundles are normally around $190 - that gets you the drums, microphone, guitar and game - Amazon has them today only for $89.98!   This goes for every system: Xbox 360, PlayStation 3, PlayStation 2 and Wii!

Welcome back to our two-part Co-Op Couples editorial, Rocking Out! Find out what really irks this married shredder, and how to find the remedy. (No Jason Mraz jokes, we promise.)

In lieu of Co-Op Casual Fridays today, we bring you another installment of Billy's Soapbox.  This article focuses on two co-op and casual friendly games: Guitar Hero and Rock Band.

Aerosmith was the first.  Metallica will soon be the second.  The Beatles are on the horizon.  Now, it appears that another successful band will hit your home consoles in rhythm game form.  Guitar Hero Van Halen has been rumored for quite a while, and now it seems the rumor is gaining strength.

Amazon's deal of the day promotion is very co-op friendly.  If you are itching to have a rockin house party and need some more plastic instruments for people to break...er..play, well then this deal is right up your alley.

 Remember when we told you about Heidi Klum dancing around in her bra and panties to sell Guitar Hero: World Tour?  Right, how could you forget.  Activision is going to continue their underwear crusade to help sell their Guitar Hero franchise, and this time they've gotten another model to help out.

I'm going to try to make it through this news item without calling any Activision CEO's Satan.  This will be difficult for me, as it appears that the milking of the Guitar Hero franchise will be strong as ever in 2009.

If you recall, our review of Guitar Hero World Tour was somewhat mixed.  The game itself was slightly disappointing when compared to Rock Band 2, but the hardware, particularly the drum set, was quite a bit nicer than the Harmonix offering.  Perhaps you've been wanting to try the GH drums out, but couldn't justify buying the bundled microphone and guitar controller too.  Your lucky day is coming, on February 15th to be exact.

GoGamer is having a monster sale on the Guitar Hero: World Tour Bundle for the Wii and Xbox 360.  Right now you can get the full setup which includes guitar, drums, mic and game for $99.  That's a savings of $100!

To introduce this news post, we give you an inside look at the actual day to day operations of Co-Optimus.com, archived from 11/14/08.

Here's a slightly off topic news post.  We all know there's an ongoing battle for the best music game out there.  Whether it's Guitar Hero, Rock Band or Rock Revolution everyone has an opinion on which one plays better, has better music and has the best co-op experience.