''Quest for Fame'' is a

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. Music video games may take a ...

developed by Virtual Music Entertainment and distributed by IBM. They were eventually acquired by

Namco was a Japanese multinational video game and entertainment company, headquartered in Ōta, Tokyo. It held several international branches, including Namco America in Santa Clara, California, Namco Europe in London, Namco Taiwan in Kaohsiung, ...

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

karaoke Karaoke (; ; , clipped compound of Japanese ''kara'' "empty" and ''ōkesutora'' "orchestra") is a type of interactive entertainment usually offered in clubs and bars, where people sing along to recorded music using a microphone. The music i ...

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 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 most often refers to: * Rock (geology), a naturally occurring solid aggregate of minerals or mineraloids * Rock music, a genre of popular music Rock or Rocks may also refer to: Places United Kingdom * Rock, Caerphilly, a location in Wales ...

legend. The game is based on tunes by Aerosmith 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. It contains simple vibration sensing electronics so that the player can simulate playing a guitar by strumming it along a

tennis racket A racket, or racquet, is a sports implement used for striking a ball or shuttlecock in games such as squash, tennis, racquetball, badminton and padel. In the strictest sense a racket consists of a handled frame with an open hoop across which a ...

, a

baseball bat A baseball bat is a smooth wooden or metal club used in the sport of baseball to hit the ball after it is thrown by the pitcher. By regulation it may be no more than in diameter at the thickest part and no more than in length. Although histor ...

or just the thigh. Virtual Music also sold a more realistic virtual guitar device that could be connected to the computer's

serial port In computing, a serial port is a serial communication interface through which information transfers in or out sequentially one bit at a time. This is in contrast to a parallel port, which communicates multiple bits simultaneously in parallel. ...

. 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-ized artwork consisting of drawn backgrounds with embedded video sequences played by actors. The game includes a helpful display called the "Rhythm 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'', 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. {{DEFAULTSORT:Quest For Fame 1995 video games Aerosmith Arcade video games Guitar video games Classic Mac OS games Video games based on musicians OS/2 games PlayStation (console) games Video games developed in the United States Windows games