Guitar Hero: World Tour developer snuck into China to fix drum kits
Posted on Mar 12, 2023 by Brian(@NE_Brian) in News, Wii
Guitar Hero: World Tour was the first entry in the series to introduce drums, which brought its own set of problems. In fact, the production issues surrounding the kits were significant enough that director Brian Bright ended up sneaking into China to fix things.
In an interview with wired, Bright felt he had to take action after discovering that the initial drum kits he was seeing “had a lot of crosstalk and dead zones, to the point of being unplayable”. Because of this, he ended up buying a ticket to China, without telling his boss, to meet RedOctane. Then, on their way to the factories, they had to sneak past a checkpoint because they were bringing Xboxes with them that weren’t allowed in the country.
Here’s Bright’s full story:
“I had been working on the battery design for a while and we were starting to get some early kits from RedOctane in China. The kits had a lot of crosstalk and dead zones, to the point of being unplayable. I remember sitting at home thinking I had to go to China, so I bought a ticket without telling my boss, and the next day I made a special version of the game that showed the values of drum speed on screen in GH music studio. I flew to Hong Kong that night and met Lee Guichard from RedOctane.
I remember we crossed the border into China in a van, where Lee and I were hiding in the back with a bunch of Xboxes, which weren’t allowed in China at the time. We passed through this huge checkpoint where armed Chinese soldiers interrogated our Chinese drivers. Luckily they didn’t look in the back of the van and we were able to get to the factories in mainland China. We fixed a bunch of issues using this special development version of the game and were able to get the battery back to a pretty good state. Unfortunately, there were a few thousand kits that weren’t up to snuff, but I think we made almost five million kits after that batch.”
Guitar Hero: World Tour will arrive on Wii in 2008.