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Have You Played... Frets On Fire?

Keyboard warriors

My computer couldn't run Guitar Hero, so I played Frets On Fire instead.

Who needs needlessly demanding graphics, £60 controllers or chart-topping songs? Frets On Fire asked all these questions, and answered them with a free game that let my childhood self pretend I was playing the same game as the cool kids at school. It's basically an atrocious-looking version of Guitar Hero where you use your keyboard as a guitar.

12-year-old Matt was very much into that. For a long time I couldn't work out how to import new songs, so I played the three pre-installed ones over and over until I'd barely miss a beat. Hearing them again now is doing something very strange to my brain.

Frets On Fire thrilled me as a kid, but yeesh does it look naff now. Maybe I wouldn't be hung up on its clumsiness if I actually played it again, but I'm ironically unable to run it on my modern PC.

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Matt Cox avatar
Matt Cox: Once the leader of Rock Paper Shotgun's Youth Contingent, Matt is an expert in multiplayer games, deckbuilders and battle royales. He occasionally pops back into the Treehouse to write some news for us from time to time, but he mostly spends his days teaching small children how to speak different languages in warmer climates.
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