Activision strums up some Guitar Hero: On Tour Decades info

At E3 last month, one of the big announcements for DS was a sequel to DS game Guitar Hero: On Tour (pictured). Perhaps not surprising seeing as the game has sold massively well and publisher Activision has developed the guitar fret peripheral so might as well get full use out of it, but we weren't expecting the sequel so soon.

Now, IGN has been talking to Karthik Bala - Vicarious Visions' CEO - and extracted some new information on Guitar Hero: On Tour Decades, which is due out some time in the autumn.

On the subject of the new features that will be implemented in the game, Bala says the deveopment team's primary focus was to perfect some of the ideas and elements created in Guitar Hero, polish its presentation and deliver even more songs. Improvements in the compression technology used means 28 songs will be packed into the new game (that's two more than in the original).

The big news announced at E3 however is that Decades introduces a new song streaming and sharing feature, so if two players each have a different copy of Guitar Hero, they'll have the full track listing from both versions to choose from in multiplayer. Bala tells IGN the feature allows the game to not only be backward compatible but forward compatible with future versions of Guitar Hero: On Tour too.

It was an idea the development team came up with during the making of the original game, but was too technically complex to pull off. Now Bala says they're able to stream entire songs between two DS units with no loss of data or quality. The game won't be compatible online, but the feature is apparently on the wishlist for future games.

Finally, a partial list of songs that will be included in Decades has been named. The full track list will feature songs from the '70s up to the '00s and they're all original songs with no covers. The songs revealed so far are listed below. Our fingers are already cramping at the thought of playing "I Believe in a Thing" Called Love by faux rockers The Darkness...

Red Hot Chili Peppers - "Can't Stop"
Paramore - "crushcrushcrush"
All-American Rejects - "Dirty Little Secret"
The Darkness - "I Believe in a Thing Called Love"
Jimmy Eat World - "The Middle"
Linkin Park - "One Step Closer"
Foo Fighters - "The Pretender"
Seether - "Remedy"
Smashing Pumpkins - "Tarantula"
Fall Out Boy - "The Take Over, The Break's Over"