By Brian Crecente

Last month I was working on a story for Playboy Magazine about all the cool music games that have come out lately with neat controllers. I was playing all of the games back-to-back when I noticed that both Guitar Hero for the PlayStation 2 and Karaoke Revolution Party for the Xbox have the song "I Love Rock and Roll" on them. Thus, a really bad idea was born.

The idea of trying to play both games at the same time has been in the back of my head since, but I didn't have the time or alcohol to test the theory. I call this a how-to article, but it's almost too impractical to be worth doing almost.

First you have to make sure you have the equipment. You'll need:

Playstation 2
Xbox
Xbox Headset
Guitar Hero Guitar
Guitar Hero for the PS2
Karaoke Revolution Party for the Xbox
Two televisions
A forgiving wife
Plenty of free time

(Hit the More for the Video)

Once you've assembled the necessary goodies and distracted said loved one, it's fairly simple to play both games at the same time.

I used a 12-inch television and a 32-inch television. I set the small television on top of the entertainment center, which houses my 32-incher. I decided to hook Guitar Hero up to the top one because I figured it would be better to have the screen showing the timing for the guitar at eye-level.

One of the minor annoyances during set-up was my realization that I had to have the Xbox controller at about waist level, mostly so I could start the game, but also because the damn cord to my headset didn't reach the floor.

Once I figured out all of the gear, I tried starting both games to see just how hard this was going to be. Fortunately, both games seemed to use songs that were played at almost the exact same tempo. Even though I was going to play the same song, the tune was played by different cover bands, so even a slight difference could cause issues.

Watching the intro for both games a couple of times, I realized that while Karaoke Revolution Party jumps straight into the guitar intro for the song, Guitar Hero has a lot of screwing around before the song and the guitar starts — 13 seconds to be exact. Actually, it's not exact; it was more like 12 and 9/10s of a second.

On my first attempt I started up Guitar Hero with my stopwatch going and then waited 13 seconds to press the start button for Karaoke Revolution Party. I flubbed it a few times, but even when I pushed the button right on 13 seconds it was still a hair off. And there's nothing worse in music than trying to play a guitar a half beat behind the tempo, especially when you're trying to sing.

It took about a dozen attempts before I got it nearly dead-on.

It was amazing to (try and) sing through "I Love Rock and Roll" while playing the guitar. At first I had some trouble doing both at the same time, mostly because I had just a casual acquaintance with the lyrics (as in just the chorus). But once I got past that it was really neat. Certainly something that anyone could do with a little practice.

Really, I'm surprised that Harmonix isn't already working on this obvious cross-over title.

My favorite bits were churning through the sweet solo while singing and cranking out the power chords. My least favorite bits were the parts that involved singing. I kid. I can't sing, but that's more the problem of everyone else in my house than my issue.

As the ultimate sign of my faith in you, our readers, I give you now the totally awesome video of me totally wailing away on Guitar Hero and Karaoke Revolution Party at the very same time without the influence of alcohol or a single singing lesson.

Luke tells me that I should warn readers not to be imbibing any form of liquid or chewing food while watching said video of my musical sucktitude. Now enjoy, or something.

Oh, one word of warning about the video, besides the fact that it features my atrocious singing, I started this little project when it was light out. Unfortunately, dusk had firmly set in by the time I landed the timing. Kinda dark, sorry about that.

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