Guitar Hero: On Tour details: get ready to air guitar in public!

In a welcome announcement, developers Vicarious Visions today publicly revealed that they are indeed working on a handheld version of the uber-popular Guitar Hero franchise for the Nintendo DS. We already knew that such a thing was in the works, yet we had no official word on gameplay or touch screen use. Surprisingly, the company has gone a step further, and will be including a wicked hardware add-on with fret buttons that they are calling the “Guitar Grip” (check out a prototype shot below the jump). The game will be played in portrait orientation, with the DS on its side like that electonic book from Inspector Gadget (this is also the control scheme favored by the Ninja Gaiden devs).

In an exclusive interview with IGN, company president Karthik Bala said that Vicarious Visions has put a lot of thought into the development of this handheld title:

“We began prototyping ideas for Guitar Hero on DS in early 2007. We quite frankly didn’t know whether it would be possible to bring the core essence of the franchise to handheld and have it actually work. It was 20-something gameplay prototypes that were built, all trying different mechanics and uses of the hardware. Some were pretty cool, others were total disasters!”

Perhaps the most impartant news to come out of the interview for fans of the game is that the DS version will keep both cooperative and competitive multiplayer modes intact. These will both use local wireless connection and allow two players to connect in the same room. There is no official tracklist yet, but the company says that we can expect about 20 songs in total when the game ships “later this year”.

Here is what the guitar grip will look like attached to the DS in an exclusive screenshot from IGN: