For the British racehorse, see: Quest for Fame (horse)

Quest for Fame (horse)

Quest for Fame is a British-bred and British-trained Thoroughbred race horse who won the Epsom Derby in 1990 and who raced successfully in the United States.- References :...

.

Quest for Fame is a music video game

Music video game

A music video game, also commonly known as a music game, is a video game where the gameplay is meaningfully and often almost entirely oriented around the player's interactions with a musical score or individual songs...

 developed by Virtual Music and distributed by IBM

IBM

International Business Machines Corporation or IBM is an American multinational technology and consulting corporation headquartered in Armonk, New York, United States. IBM manufactures and sells computer hardware and software, and it offers infrastructure, hosting and consulting services in areas...

. They were eventually acquired by Namco

Namco

is a Japanese corporation best known as a former video game developer and publisher. Following a merger with Bandai in September 2005, the two companies' game production assets were spun off into Namco Bandai Games on March 31, 2006. Namco Ltd. was re-established to continue domestic operation of...

 (who then made the arcade version in 1999) to create karaoke

Karaoke

is a form of interactive entertainment or video game in which amateur singers sing along with recorded music using a microphone and public address system. The music is typically a well-known pop song minus the lead vocal. Lyrics are usually displayed on a video screen, along with a moving symbol,...

 machines.

In 2001, they resurfaced with a web-based subscription product named Music Playground, allowing the user to purchase the instrument tracks for already-owned audio CDs and play along with them. The service failed to attract a sufficient number of users and was finally shut down in August 2003.

The game

Quest for Fame is a simulation adventure game

Adventure game

An adventure game is a video game in which the player assumes the role of protagonist in an interactive story driven by exploration and puzzle-solving instead of physical challenge. The genre's focus on story allows it to draw heavily from other narrative-based media such as literature and film,...

 where the player becomes a rock guitarist, working his way up from lonesome bedroom rehearsals to becoming a garage band member, playing clubs and ultimately becoming a rock

Rock music

Rock music is a genre of popular music that developed during and after the 1960s, particularly in the United Kingdom and the United States. It has its roots in 1940s and 1950s rock and roll, itself heavily influenced by rhythm and blues and country music...

 legend.

The game is based on tunes by Aerosmith

Aerosmith

Aerosmith is an American rock band, sometimes referred to as "The Bad Boys from Boston" and "America's Greatest Rock and Roll Band". Their style, which is rooted in blues-based hard rock, has come to also incorporate elements of pop, heavy metal, and rhythm and blues, and has inspired many...

 and is played by a special device called "V-Pick" that's included in the box. The device is connected to the PC via the parallel port

Parallel port

A parallel port is a type of interface found on computers for connecting various peripherals. In computing, a parallel port is a parallel communication physical interface. It is also known as a printer port or Centronics port...

. It contains simple vibration sensing electronics so that the player can simulate playing a guitar by strumming it along a tennis racket, a baseball bat

Baseball bat

A baseball bat is a smooth wooden or metal club used in the game of baseball to hit the ball after the ball is thrown by the pitcher. It is no more than 2.75 inches in diameter at the thickest part and no more than 42 inches in length. It typically weighs no more than 33 ounces , but it...

 or just the thigh.

Virtual Music also sold a more realistic virtual guitar device that could be connected to the computer's serial port

Serial port

In computing, a serial port is a serial communication physical interface through which information transfers in or out one bit at a time...

. Additional buttons permitted adjusting the player's guitar volume and feedback effects in the game. Instead of being equipped with full strings, there was only a small part of the guitar with exposed nylon strings or one metal string on the body.

The game contains cartoon

Cartoon

A cartoon is a form of two-dimensional illustrated visual art. While the specific definition has changed over time, modern usage refers to a typically non-realistic or semi-realistic drawing or painting intended for satire, caricature, or humor, or to the artistic style of such works...

-ized artwork consisting of drawn backgrounds with embedded video sequences played by actors.

The game includes a helpful display called the "Rhythtm EKG" (short "REKG"), indicating the guitar activity of the currently playing song in the upper half and the player's input in the lower half. If the EKG peaks of both categories are closely matching, the player is playing well.

The rhythm and lead guitar tracks vary in difficulty as the game progresses.

More information

Quest for Fame was the successor to pretty similar earlier games called Born To Rock and Welcome To West Feedback (bundled with the Virtual Guitar). These games included a variety of music instead of primarily Aerosmith tunes.

A very limited game engine was included on a CD-ROM track on Aerosmith's Nine Lives

Nine Lives (Aerosmith album)

-Bonus track :-Bonus tracks :-Bonus tracks :-Bonus tracks :-Artwork:...

, but it also included drum tracks for the first time in a Virtual Music title. A virtual drumpad input device called "V-Stix" was introduced by the company with the Nine Lives game engine.