Pedal Powered 'Guitar Hero'
Video game modder extraordinaire, Ben Heckendorn, put his exceptional skills to use for the betterment of mankind at the GAMES FOR HEALTH CONFERENCE when he displayed his latest invention -- a pedal controller for 'GUITAR HERO.' Before you start wondering why someone would need a foot pedal for 'Guitar Hero' when the game has no drum peripheral, Ben developed this controller to aid gamers who may only have one functional hand.
"These replace the strum and whammy bar from a standard guitar, allowing you to use a single hand for the chords. What you do is use your foot and click your toes up or down to strum or navigate menus. To perform a whammy you lift up your heel - the spring loaded plate is shown in the up (full whammy) position in the photo, but normally your heel compresses it (no whammy). The pedal plugs into a modified Guitar Hero 3 Les Paul wireless controller. You can still strum the modified guitar but the whammy is only on the pedal."
Ben takes us through step by step instructions, following the inventor's process, for making the unique controllers. The Mod Master goes so far as to salvage components of old consoles to build his new creations, like the Atari Jaguar controller cable used on this project.
Heckendorn is also known for the book 'HACKING VIDEO GAME CONSOLES,' where he demonstrates how to make handheld versions of the PSOne, Atari 2600, NES and SNES systems. He's also made CUSTOM Atari 800, Wii and Xbox 360 laptops in addition to portable versions of the PS2, Genesis, N64 and Colecovision.
