FireHero brings the danger back to video game rock

Just as the popularity of Dance Dance Revolution allowed Guitar Hero to enter the market, Interpretive Arson's Dance Dance Immolation has given way to FireHero, an interactive "sculpture" that uses a guitar controller to control five jets of flame.

Chris Marion hooked up a microcontroller to a Guitar Hero guitar, and programmed it to control solenoids on five propane "fire poofers." The "game" part was much simpler to implement: "the player simply watches a video of the Guitar Hero chart and plays on the guitar accordingly." Marion plans to convert Guitar Hero note charts to MIDI files for the next version, something he says will allow a program to interpret them automatically — and thus autoplay the song.

But that's enough reading about the crazy fire machine. Head to Marion's site to see video of the synchronized flames shooting out in time to "War Pigs."