- Battle of the Bands mode lets up to eight players get their groove on
- Comes with exciting extras that enhance your experience
- Use the innovative Music Studio to compose, record, edit and share music
- Features a humungous selection of master recordings
- Offers more localized downloadable music than ever before
Guitar Hero World Tour Game SOFTWARE ONLY WiiStart a Band…the Guitar Hero Way Guitar Hero World Tour transforms music gaming by expanding Guitar Hero’s signature guitar gameplay into a cooperative band experience that combines advanced wireless instruments with online and offline gameplay modes including online Band Career and 8-player “Battle of the Bands,” which allows two full bands to compete head-to-head online. The game features a Music Studio music creator that lets players compose, r
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(out of 422 reviews)
List Price: $ 39.99
Price: $ 9.88
- First TRUE educational product for the Wii for kids ages 5-9.
- A magical 3D learning environment packed with games and adventures and hidden surprises
- Seamlessly integrated learning games that encourage players to practice math and reading and critical thinking skills to earn virtual rewards
- Over 150 math and reading and critical thinking skill games
Take off on an island adventure packed with excitement! Designed for kids ages 5-9, JumpStart Escape from Adventure Island is the second title in the JumpStart series of adventure-based learning games for the Wii. This action-packed game invites players to use their explorer skills and brain power to find a way to escape a mysterious island after a crash landing strands them there! As players race to collect the pieces needed to repair their blimp, they’ll need to ward off the pesky fur balls
Rating: 
(out of 9 reviews)
List Price: $ 29.99
Price: $ 7.48
Review by A. Woodley for Guitar Hero World Tour
Rating:
The other reviewers tell you everything you need to know about the game. It’s a lot of fun. I couldn’t find a clear answer before buying it to whether or not my rock band guitar and drums would work with it. Thus, the point of this review is to let you know that YES they will work. You don’t have to buy a whole new set of equipment. This isn’t meant to discourage you from buying them if that’s what you want. I’m just letting you know you don’t have to if you own the first generation or Rock Band equipment. I, personally, just don’t have the space to house two drums sets. I wouldn’t have bought the game if the controllers weren’t compatible for that reason. My only small complaint is that some of the songs on Rockband 2 and GH WT overlap but there’s enough songs that don’t (Hotel California and Purple Haze) that it’s worth buying both.
Review by B. Vaughn for Guitar Hero World Tour
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I preordered this game from Amazon, but impatience got the better of me, and I bought it from Wal Mart on opening day. My review is based on that band kit, but I will be taking it back today. Why, you ask?
I played this game through two songs (Sweet Home Alabama and The Joker) and realized something wasn’t right. I’m normally a 95% player on medium (On Rock Band 2) and a 90% player on hard. Yet I was scoring in the 60′s on medium. After checking my calibration settings, I went over into the training mode, and realized that I couldn’t even make it through the basic training because the red pad was not registering every time, and was not registering hard hits at all!
I switched over to the song recording mode, and it verified that the red pad was intermittent at best, thus the reason it’s going back, and I will hope the one from Amazon is a better copy.
Now, let me say, overall, I give the feel of the drums two very big thumbs up. The pads felt much better, and they were much quieter than I was used to. However they get a thumbs down on quality. And before you think that this is just one bad experience, check around. There is a very big issue, first with the sensitivity of the pads (Apparently a program is coming out to allow you to change the sensitivity using your home PC) and second with the pads working intermittently. This second issue (Which I experienced) seems to be the most concerning, and from other sites, it looks like I am just the tip of the iceberg. I’m reading about people having to go through 2, 3, even 4 drum sets to get a good one. Many of the stores are not sold out, but are returned out. And this apparently stems from the wires to the drum pads simply being held on with silicone which is not holding everything together.
I really really can’t wait until they get this set completely fixed, but since Activision is requiring YOU to pay for shipping if it’s broken out of the box, might want to delay, at least for now.
Also, since I bought this game based on the promise of cross-compatibility, it should be stated that the drums do NOT work with Rock Band 2 at this point! Hopefully it’s just a matter of a patch coming out, but it’s a little disconcerting.
*******EDIT 11/10/08*******
As I was still having problems with a cymbal, I did contact the nice support people, who sounded quite exasperated, but immediately sent me out a tuning kit. This kit allows you to modify the sensitivity of each drum pad (Or cymbal, or pedal) to where you want it to be. Too sensitive, it may trigger when you hit another pad. Not sensitive enough, it may not trigger it all.
Now, I previously stated that some sites had talked about loose wires causing problems. In an effort to be thorough, and since my cymbal wasn’t working, I did take apart the cymbal to look at the sensor. At least for my cymbal, I noted that the wires were definately SOLDERED. I was relying on information previously supplied by someone else in stating that the wires were not soldered, and I still do not know the condition of the wires on the drum pads themselves. As I said, this was my individual yellow cymbal. Since then I have sent it back through the RMA process, which, yes, did require me to send it (insured and traceable!) at my own expense.
Also, as of this date, the GH:WT drums are still not working with Rock Band 2, which is still a bit frustrating!
Review by Kyle Slayzar for Guitar Hero World Tour
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OK, so this is a review of the game-only Guitar Hero: World Tour Playstation II game. If you’re here looking to get information and feedback on the bundle version or to hear about online play, you’re on the wrong product page.
This review is for those traditional Guitar Hero fans. The fans who…
1: Thought the price of a full set (nearly $200) is a little steep.
2: Play casually.
3: Do not necessarily own a next generation console (Xbox360, PSXIII).
4: Do not play online.
5: Just want to play some good songs.
This was the original targeted audience of Guitar Hero back in the day and has been up until about a year ago when Activision took over and began trying to sway the demographic to the hardcore players. The general audience of gamers who may not even have considered themselves gamers until they picked up a plastic guitar and began jamming to Carry on Wayward Son. To me, this audience has been abandoned in favor of a very specific audience that doesn’t mind paying more. Marketing wise it makes some sense but along the way Activision alienated their traditional family and casual audience.
I’m sure the game is uber-fantastic on the next generation consoles with the drums, mic, and internet options but for those of us who just want to play guitar, we’ve been sold short.
Let us begin.
First is the soundtrack. It boasts some excellent classic songs like Beat It, which is ironic since my review on Guitar Hero 3 called for this song and everyone thought I was insane, believing the franchise should not be “Pop Hero.” There are other great songs like Hotel California, Crazy Train, Eye of the Tiger, etc. There are even some decent recent ones by Haley Something and Jimmy Eats World. However, there are several issues with the selection.
For one, it is overwhelmingly songs from the past 15 years. The designers had a huge love for 90s music. This isn’t necessarily a bad thing, but when you’re trying to entice gamers from a wide-range of generations and bring in new ones on the basis of song recognition, you MUST balance your selection. It’s as if the designers wanted to focus on young adults ages 13-21 and throw 22+ gamers a bone or two with Ted Nugent and Pat Benetar. This is bad marketing. Rock Band, at least, had the brains to balance their selection nearly perfectly. Very few songs prior to 1975 were used and the designers could’ve used considerably more.
I have a few minor issues with some of the selection of live versus recorded tracks such as Jimi Hendrix’s Purple Haze and Sweet Home Alabama. I thought the vocals were considerably better on the recorded tracks.
Lastly, the television advertisements showed players (hilariously portrayed by famous athletes including Michael Phelps) playing Old Time Rock and Roll by Bob Segar. This excited me as I love that song, so I searched and searched all 90+ songs for it… to no avail! I should have looked on the official website for a complete track list as they didn’t include it. This is false advertising. Commercials for previous installments used songs actually from the games, this game should not have been an exception. If the song is there and I’m not seeing it, someone please tell me how to get it!
Next, the game is severely glitchy. I can tell Activision dumbed down the graphics and then directly ported it to the PSXII. Many times the characters on stage will do one move then immediately change a pose or position entirely. This happens at the end of every song. I’ve also had the game freeze a number of times when I’m customizing my character. Fortunately, this does not delete my memory card or data… yet. Lastly, the loading time is atrocious. I thought Guitar Hero 3 was bad, this one is even worse. Just to sign in under co-op, you have to wait ten seconds for the character visuals to load even if you’re already set to go. Making changes to your rocker takes several minutes and half of that is loading time.
Again, I can tell they dumbed it down for last generation systems but daaaang. This was more then awful.
My last complaints deal with the format itself. Unlike previous Guitar Hero installments, World Tour requires you to play through an entire play list to advance to the next group of songs IN ONE SITTING. This means you gotta set aside at least ten minutes to play each ‘gig.’ To make matters worse, the more you advance in the game the LONGER the gigs get. One particular gig took me almost an hour. This WILL alienate casual gamers as the game requires a lot of time just to advance. This is not Oblivion or some extensive RPG that requires a lot of effort, this is Guitar Hero, the game that is supposed to market to the casual gamer! The audience should never be forced to do anything unnecessary and that’s exactly what this is.
To a certain degree they did keep the boss battles albeit under different rules. Instead of sending battle thingies back and forth to screw the other up, you just play and play. I still think they could have done without it. Lastly, they now make you pay money to unlock certain gigs. I think this is a big no-no especially since the songs were not even worth it unless you’re a Tool fan.
Now, despite my large reservations I do have some praise. The designers did fix two major issues. The first is when you pause. Originally you had to immediately jump in the song but now you have a few seconds to align your hands. The second improvement is that you can now hoard star power in co-op and build star power even when it’s deployed. This makes point maximizing that much easier.
Then there’s the sound studio. I’m still trying to get it to work but I think you need the full kit. It’s a nifty idea but will be lost on those who just bought the game only.
All in all, the game is not bad but the designers forgot many things. It seems as though you have to play it on a next-gen console and with the full set in order to truly appreciate it. This is bad for marketing. I’ll stick with Wii Music until the prices on the sets drop like 50%. Get Guitar Hero 2 if you’re new to this. It’s not glitchy, had great songs, and doesn’t require a whole paycheck to own.
Review by Kevin P. Holt for Guitar Hero World Tour
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I always preferred the Guitar Hero guitar to the Rock Band guitar (play-wise anyway) but the quality of the Guitar Hero guitars is weak. GH3 guitar had problems with the connection between the neck and the body. That has been fixed with GHWT, but the new one lacks in new areas. Mostly the strum bar. Occasionally mine registers extra hits (RedOctane’s fix is to “hold” the strum bar and not “strum or flick”). Also, it will occasionally not register strums at all (My solution to that problem is to smack the body of the guitar with my palm, which I shouldn’t have to do at all). And, probably the most irritating thing, my strum bar feels like it’s rubbing against something on the up-strum, which throws my flow off just enough to miss notes.
I’ve done some research and I’m not the only one having these problems. GHWT would be an awesome game if the guitar wasn’t crap. I highly recommend GHWT if you have a guitar the works properly.
Hopefully they can get it right, because the guitar feels good in my hands, except for these couple problems.
Review by Jack Treese for Guitar Hero World Tour
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I picked this up at midnight for the launch at Wal-Mart. I couldn’t afford the band kit just yet, so this review is based solely on the Guitar Kit for the Wii.
And about that new guitar controller… it’s just nothing short of amazing. The fret buttons are lightly spaced apart more, and we have a touch pad to work with. This pad is very useful for tapping during solos, making it easier to keep your multiplier going when you need it to. There’s also a dedicated star power button next to a more sturdy strum bar. Add all of that to the more heavy-duty feel of the controller and you’ve got what Guitar Hero fans have been wanting since its start in 2005.
Now, the software… once again, it’s fantastic. Wii owners like myself were disappointed when Guitar Hero III was released to the system sans downloadable content. The online capability was nice, but no new content left a stale taste after a while. This time around, Activision redeemed themselves by not only adding DLC, but allowing the option to save it to an SD card rather than to the limited memory on the Wii. The premium songs are reasonably priced at around 200 Wii Points (or $2) per song. Also, several online play modes have been added to keep you busy, even if you’re limited to only one instrument.
There’s a new Music Studio feature that allows you to make your own music and share it online with other players. While a very nice feature indeed, at first it can seem overwhelming with the vast variety of choices for your sound. This mode is best to be explored with a full band however. In the mean-time, there’s a very fun (and very Wii-exclusive) feature called “Mii Freestyle,” which enables even the most “newbish” players to make some beautiful sounds. One person can play with a guitar controller, while the other joins in with the drum kit or the Wii Remote and Nunchuck.
In addition, Quickplay now allows you to earn in-game cash while you’re playing. Also, you’re now able to pick up to six songs for your Quickplay session. In-game cash can be used to unlock bonus material, new guitars, new characters, and even new customizations for your own in-game character. Oh by the way, you can create your own rocker now too.
I may have even forgotten a few slight details, but the point is that no matter what route you go down, Guitar Hero World Tour is definitely a worthy title to add to your Wii collection, and is easily the most addicting video game of 2008.
Speaking of addicting…
Review by Janssen for JumpStart Escape From Adventure Island (Wii)
Rating:
My kids that would play this game are My daughter who is 5 and my son who is 7. They both are very very good at the wii and we have an xbox. They love the JumpStart game for the computer and played it till they “won” the game. The controller for this game is so hard to use. My daughter tried to play for 10 minutes until she gave up. So I tried it, it was very hard to go where you need to go. You hold the remote sideways just like many of the games have you do but something just doesn’t connect. At one point my daughter was running into a dark wall in outerspace on this game and couldn’t get turned around and didn’t know it was even a wall. After watching us try to figure it out my son was not even interested in trying. I think he thought the game it self looked way to easy, find the oval…
Review by mom of 4 for JumpStart Escape From Adventure Island (Wii)
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I bought this game the moment it came out. We love Jumpstart on the PC so I thought this would be an excellent way for my kids to do something educational on the Wii. My kids are super bright and would have no issues with the “educational” piece of this game. However, you can’t even get to that! The game starts by forcing the player to go into an underwater world. There are some super tough games that have to be completed before moving on. It’s not a matter of academic toughness just control of the Wii remote toughness. One has to roll a pearl on to a pearl shell…. It is tough for little ones and made the game less fun. They lost interest after the first attempt. What a waste. Wii has to come out with some easy to control games for little ones.
Review by Lisa for JumpStart Escape From Adventure Island (Wii)
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I bought this for our 8 year old. We have been fans of the computer JumpStart games for years with our 3 older children. He loves playing, and I love that he is learning at the same time. You can set the levels and advance as the child learns new things, so the game should last for several years. He hasn’t figured out everything yet, but that is part of the challenge. It could be frustrating for younger children. The instructions do tell how to play each game. I would recommend it for those that like their kids to have fun while learning. It is not all learning, but a balance, and you can guide them to the activities they need to work on improving. You can set it on practice if you want more learning than fun. I look forward to more games for Wii from JumpStart.
Review by E. Nottingham for JumpStart Escape From Adventure Island (Wii)
Rating:
I homeschool and am always looking for educational software. But Jumpstart missed an opportunity here.
An overview of activities.
Jumpee Quick Change– creates a mii–NOT EDUCATIONAL
The Tree House– decorates a house like a Webkins–NOT EDUCATIONAL
Jet Pack–reading skills
Egg Push–mindless pushing an object within a time limit–NOT EDUCATIONAL
Rubble Trouble–math skills but only one problem at a time and the score card on screen blocks the view of available answers, making it more difficult to analyze the 4 sets of answers.
Goon Lagoon–just hunting out objects and jumping and smashing things. NOT EDUCATIONAL
Foot Frenzy–”dancing” to music but consists of slight movements of wii remote left, right, up, down. Not interactive like the Step Exercise part of Wii Fit. –NOT EDUCATIONAL
The Slide–moves to underwater adventure
Manta Ray–math skills–beginning level of patterns is at 2nd grade level maybe. Not for early learners. Still trying out others.
Peal Push–same as Egg Push–NOT EDUCATIONAL
Bubble Trouble–reading skills
Secret Caverns–same as Goon Lagoon–NOT EDUCATIONAL
Fashion Show–dress up your mii and walk the run way. FOR GIRLS ONLY (unless you have boy who plays with Barbie)–NOT EDUCATIONAL
The Sub-takes you back up to the island.
They really missed the educational boat on this. Mindless games outnumber educational opportunities. Even good kids interested in learning will find it hard to not to get distracted by the mindless activities. Mindless games should be awarded on achieving certain levels of educational time. Kids should not have to hunt for the educational opportunities. ( Wish Leapster would develope Wii games. They do educational games right.)
The control functions on this game are awkward. Moves quickly and jerkily. For some people causes a motion sickness feel. Things tend to spin almost. We haven’t found a function to slow down the motion when playing for example the The Manta Ray math game. Other than getting additional items for your mii, see no reason to actually collect the seashells. Does not seem to unlock additional play or anything. Too bad mindless activities don’t have to be “unlocked”.
I guess it’s better than nothing.
We also have Big Brain Academy for Wii. It needs a mii and it’s kind of insulting but only educational. A blend of the two, with mindless activities being “rewarded” would be an improvement.
It does work so I will give it 2 stars. We have educational software for our computers that do not work or only halfway work that include Adventure Workshop 1st-3rd Grade and some JumpStart programs. Not working would earn 1 star.
So have to give it a low score because as a video game it would be awful and as educational game it’s lacking.
Review by M. Adam for JumpStart Escape From Adventure Island (Wii)
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both my children love this game, the 5 yr old has a little bit of trouble since she is still learning the Wii paddles but she is getting better and love game.