The three Guitar Hero: On Tour games may not have been critical darlings, but they clearly did well enough for Activision and Vicarious Visions to make three of them in just over a year. When Band Hero was released, the family friendly nature of the game perfectly lent itself to a DS version, so the Guitar Hero: On Tour engine was expanded upon and we got Band Hero DS.

The guitar and bass are identical to the Guitar Hero: On Tour games, but the big new feature was the expansion to a full band game. The new peripheral was the drum grip which goes over the bottom of the DS Lite and creates drum regions that you can hit, although despite the fact that this does not fit over the DSi, original DS, or 3DS, the buttons in those regions are all that you need to hit so it can be played without attaching the drum grip to the system. The other new addition was vocals, where you would sing in to the DS microphone. As someone who primarily sings in rhythm games, I can say that it doesn’t work that well, but it could be worse.

Due to the fact that Band Hero DS wasn’t technically a Guitar Hero: On Tour game, the song sharing feature from that series doesn’t carry forward to here. Despite this, there was strong emphasis on local multiplayer and you could play a song with a full band if you had four copies of the game.

Another new thing that Band Hero DS had over the On Tour series was character customization. All the songs in the game are unlocked from the start, but by playing through the setlist on the various instruments you could unlock new venues and clothing items for your characters.

As Band Hero DS was released the same day as the console versions of Band Hero, that means it was also released the same day as Lego: Rock Band. Lego: Rock Band ALSO received a DS port, although the setlist there was just a smaller subset of the console version setlist. Band Hero DS and Lego: Rock Band DS do share a significant number of songs between the two games. They are as follows:

Blur – Song 2 (Europe only)

(Europe only) KT Tunstall – Suddenly I See

P!nk – So What

Spin Doctors – Two Princes (North America only)

(North America only) Sum 41 – In Too Deep (North America only)

(North America only) Vampire Weekend – A-Punk (North America only)

As noted in previous Setlist Checklist posts (and all future posts, as well), as the holes are continually filled in by Rock Band’s weekly DLC releases, we will update this post, and keep it linked in the FAQ page above, for future reference.

Much like the console equivalent, Band Hero has a heavy emphasis on more pop-rock hits, although the songs went a bit more obscure with the choices, with songs like All You Need by Sublime and Boots of Chinese Plastic by Pretenders. Like with the other DS games, the European and North American setlists vastly differ, with each version having 15 exclusive songs in addition to the 15 that were shared between the two games. The North American version featured artists that were more NA-centric like Vampire Weekend and Lacuna Coil, while the European version was more EU-centric with acts like Razorlight and Robbie Williams.

Across the two versions, there are 45 songs. Of that 45, you can currently play 25 of them in Rock Band, for a total of 55%. That’s the second highest percentage of all the DS Guitar Hero games, and a huge improvement over Modern Hits’ 22%.