Here's our first look at the Scratch Deck, developed for Genius Products' upcoming Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3 game Scratch: The Ultimate DJ.* *
The turntable controller was developed by Numark, a manufacturer of professional DJ equipment. It's equipped with a touch-sensitive turntable, a crossfader, and five Akai Pro MPC-style drum pads -- aka really nice buttons. We won't get to actually go hands-on with the peripheral until E3 next week, but I did get to see the game in action on a prototype of this very unit, and came away impressed.
On the surface, it operates much like Rock Band or Guitar Hero -- scratch on the wheel when you're told, hit the buttons when you're told, and you'll pass a level.
But the *Scratch *difference is improvisation: To master the game, you'll have to add a bit of flair, with the game scoring you on how well you keep to the underlying rhythm. The buttons can also be configured to play one of 60 groups of samples that ship with the game, or your own soulful crooning, provided you own a usb microphone.
While the *Scratch *controller is obviously a bit larger than Activison's controller for its competing DJ Hero game, it's too early to say if the extra buttons and crossfader will justify the extra space. And then there's the issue of complexity. Budding rockers already get the gist of how a guitar works, but the art of a turntablist might escape the masses altogether, and tacking on extra features might not help the learning curve.
*Scratch: The Ultimate DJ *and DJ Hero will both be released this fall, when the great DJ Rhythm Game Battle of 2009 will be decided.
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