High hopes for 'Guitar Hero III'

Last week I found out that I was the second best guitarist in my family. Well, at least the second best "Guitar Hero II" guitarist.

This revelation came when my wife, Tammy, and I went to a friend's house to play the X-Box 360 version of "Guitar Hero II."

I know I'm a little behind the times, because the game has been taking the nation by storm for a couple of years. And in case you are, too, here's an explanation of how it works:

The joystick is in the shape of a Gibson Explorer electric guitar (the kind used by Tommy Shaw of Styx ). Instead of strings, there are colored buttons on the fretboard that you need to push with one hand while flicking a strum lever with your other. There's also a whammy bar that bends the notes. You get points by correctly playing the colored buttons that coincide with the cues on your TV. It gets pretty hairy when you get into the "hard" and "expert" modes.

There is one catch, however. Most of the songs are not performed by the original artists — but that doesn't stop the gamer from having a great time.

I was pretty happy with how I was playing — jumping about in our friend's rec room, playing covers of Cheap Trick's "Surrender," Motley Crue's "Shout at the Devil," Kiss' "Strutter" and Heart's "Crazy on You."

I was pulling down four stars (out of five) and getting 92-percent accuracy on the songs and having a great time posing like Metallica axeman Kirk Hammett. (It felt natural, even though I am actually a drummer.)

I asked Tammy if she wanted to play, and after declining a couple of times, she strapped on the guitar and dove into a remake of the Toadies' "Possum Kingdom" — a song she had never heard.

You guessed it. She beat me. She raked in a five-star rating and whipped out a 96-percent accuracy score.

It was amazing.

Anyway, you can bet that we'll be getting "Guitar Hero III" when it comes for the Nintendo Wii in October. A few weeks ago, a preliminary song list was announced — with quite a few performed by the original artists:

• The Rolling Stones' "Paint it Black"

• Smashing Pumpkins' "Cherub Rock"

• The Beastie Boys' "Sabotage"

• Tenacious D's "The Metal"

• Weezer's "My Name Is Jonas"

• Muse's "Knights of Cydonia"

• A cover of Kiss' "Rock and Roll All Nite"