Guitar Hero has matured as a franchise to the point where, like most aging rockers, it can now reliably go on tour. Yes, the franchise can travel the country and rely on its fame to draw in the fans and rake in the cash, and what else can embody a game series going on tour like a brand new portable release?

In all seriousness, Activision has pushed the boundaries of what was thought possible with Guitar Hero by releasing Guitar Hero: On Tour for the DS. It was a calculated risk, since the game would be the first in the series to not have a guitar controller peripheral to use. Once again, though, the Guitar Hero formula has proven successful and Guitar Hero: On Tour has become a hit. We take a closer look at the game's rockin' success.

Sell out first week for On Tour
According to the NPD, Guitar Hero: On Tour was the second best selling piece of game software for the June period. The title was the best seller on the DS charts and was also the best selling portable game. Overall, Guitar Hero: On Tour sold 422,300 copies during the month of June.

Guitar Hero: On Tour's performance is yet another impressive milestone for the already hugely successful franchise. The series was wholly unproven on portable systems, excluding Guitar Hero III Mobile, with a $50 price point (expensive for a DS game) and a large but necessary peripheral. Despite these factors, Guitar Hero: On Tour captured the series' retail magic and managed to sell 300,000 units within the first week, making it the largest DS launch in Activision history by a factor of eight.

"Guitar Hero is one of the most successful entertainment properties and continues to push the boundaries of innovation with Guitar Hero: On Tour," said Mike Griffith, President and CEO of Activision Publishing in a release. "The game's breakthrough peripheral brings the Guitar Hero experience to the 41 million DS users in North America and Europe, where they can play anywhere, anytime."

It's pretty fun, besides the cramps
While most everyone is familiar with the mechanics of Guitar Hero games by now, Guitar Hero: On Tour obviously couldn't follow that formula to the letter given the lack of an actual guitar controller. Instead, the game makes use of a "Guitar Grip," which plugs into the GBA slot. Players slide their hands into a wrist-strap and hold the DS like a book pressing the four fret buttons on the grip while strumming the touch screen using a pick stylus, making for a very decent simulation of the Guitar Hero experience overall.

Let the hand cramping begin!

As you'd expect from a Guitar Hero game, Guitar Hero: On Tour features a career mode, where you play through a series of tiered songs, and the game also features multiplayer modes that take special advantage of the DS' capabilities. In the wireless multiplayer mode "Guitar Dual" there are power ups similar to Guitar Hero III's "Battle Mode." By completing a special sequence of notes, players can light their opponent's guitar on fire, requiring them to blow it out using the mic, or cut a string leaving the afflicted player to restring it, or even forcing them to sign a fan's shirt using the stylus.

Despite being regarded as a good replication of Guitar Hero in portable form, critics weren't completely pleased with Guitar Hero: On Tour. Many of the complaints focused on the Guitar Grip, which was accused of being uncomfortable and difficult to use at times. Others stated that the sound quality was lacking, due to the compression needed to fit the songs onto a DS cart, and that the track-list itself was small and lacking in variety. Guitar Hero: On Tour has an average of 73 percent on GameRankings.com.

"If you can accept the limitations in control comfort and song selection (not to mention its $50 price tag), there's no reason why you shouldn't be able to get into Guitar Hero: On Tour," reads GameDaily's 8-out-of-10 review by Robert Workman. "The gameplay is functional, the presentation stays true to the series and there's lots to do, either solo or alongside a friend. It's an ideal on-the-go selection, especially while waiting in line for tickets to a rock show. Heck, you might just create your own."

Red, yellow, green, blue, what will you do!?
Guitar Hero: On Tour had a pretty sizable promotional campaign for a DS title, with TV spots and the like, showing that Activision was taking the first portable incarnation of Guitar Hero very seriously. We feel we must, however, call Activision out on their "how to" trailer for the game. The web trailer, which ostensibly teaches you how to play Guitar Hero: On Tour, has a singing voice-over guy who provides overly enthusiastic responses to each instruction. While some may find it slightly humorous at first, over the course of the three and a half minute trailer, he gets REALLY old, making for one of the most excruciating and grating trailers we can think of in recent memory. Anecdotally, everyone we talked to who saw the trailer was more put off than intrigued by Guitar Hero: On Tour, though it obviously didn't hurt sales of the title all that much.

Terrible trailers for the game aside, Guitar Hero: On Tour turned out to be about as big a hit as Activision could have asked for with their first DS Guitar Hero game. The results were so good that the company has already announced a sequel in Guitar Hero: On Tour Decades. Activision shows no signs of letting up on the Guitar Hero brand, with Guitar Hero: On Tour being one of five likely releases to come for the franchise in little over a half year. Still, with the continued and unprecedented success of the brand, it's not hard to see why the company does all it can to leverage it to the fullest extent.