360's Guitar Hero II guitar works in Windows, Frets on Fire

via Joystiq


The USB-equipped X-plorer guitar that ships with the just-released Guitar Hero II for Xbox 360 has some interesting tricks up its nonexistant but metaphorically convenient sleeve. No, we're not talking about breaking or shape-shifting (sheesh) -- we're talking about things like effects pedals and oh, what's this, Windows support? Randy tipped us off that the guitar controller works in Windows Vista, but we had to check for ourself. The above image was captured in Windows XP. The five frets control the first five buttons, Back and Start control buttons 7 and 8, the d-pad and strummer control the Point of View Hat, the whammy bar controls the X Rotation, Star Power controls the Y Rotation, and the Z Axis sorta just wiggles when you move the guitar. The X Axis / Y Axis does nothing (gotta save something for that effects pedal, no?).

Of course, we quickly fired up freeware PC clone, Frets on Fire, to see if we could manage to get these two to play nicely together. Sure enough, after a minute of changing the control configuration, we were able to rock out! Unfortunately, while Mac OS X recognized the device immediately (pic after the break), it failed to be detected as an HID-compliant gamepad by either GamePad Companion or the open source Xbox 360 Controller driver. Additionally, this blogger couldn't convince the Mac OS port of Frets on Fire to load so we're unable to determine if the game would support the device directly. Any Mac using 'stiqers able to get the X-plorer to work?