Guitar Hero Tournament finds BV's Guitar Hero

Finals may be around the corner but that does not mean that students could not use a study break once in awhile. On Wednesday Resident Life and The Underground hosted the Guitar Hero II Tournament in Dows Conference Center to give students an opportunity to let off some steam. The tournament was set up so that two players played the same song in single player mode, battling to see who had mad skills and techniques to rack up the most points. The player with the most points advanced to the next round. Students who advanced got the chance to win the grand prize of either a Nintendo Wii or their very own video game shopping spree.

Resident Director Jeremy Ward, with help from junior Bre Kathman, decided to host this event in order to do something fun for the students.

"We wanted to try some new program ideas, alternative ideas that we thought students would like," Ward said.

Thirteen people signed up for the tournament, including Brooke Loving, Travis Burns, Chris Finster, Nathan Clark, Chris Jones, Dominic Harris, Brandon Williams, Jeff Blunk, David Jorgensen, Michael Cramer, Cody Erbes, Aaron Smith, and Jessica Warneke.

The tournament drew about 40 to 50 students from campus to win door prizes and watch their colleagues battle it out.

The plan was to start the first round on medium in order to give anyone who may not have as much experience the opportunity to play. The second round proceeded to the hard level, and the third round was left to first-year student Cody Erbes and first-year Chris Finster to battle it out for the Guitar Hero title. Finster was ahead at the beginning and then it was neck-and-neck until the very end when Finster attempted to use star power but realized it was not powered up enough, which pushed Cody to an advantage. In the end, Erbes was named BVU's first annual Guitar Hero Champion.

The Guitar Hero series has been sweeping the nation over the last couple of years, extending its popularity to people of all ages. Since the drop of Guitar Hero III on October 29, 2007, it has generated revenues of more than $14 billion from copies sold in the United States alone. In 2007, it became the number one best-selling video game of all time in a single year, even surpassing the highly anticipated Halo 3.

It is no doubt that the GH craze made an impact on college campuses nationwide, BVU students included. Over the last year, students have been playing constantly, brushing up on their skills and bringing some steep competition of BVU's best players to the tournament.

"The hardest thing about the tournament was the competition. There were a lot of guys who were really good and most of the match-ups were close," Finster said. All in all, the tournament proved to be a success for the first time running and may be brought back again.