By Clarence Yu

In continuing with the “tradition” of band-centered video games in their Guitar Hero franchise, Activision has finally confirmed that Guitar Hero: Van Halen is currently in development and, according to a report from Joystiq, will be due for release hopefully by the second half of this year.

Previous band-centered games in the Guitar Hero franchise include Guitar Hero: Aerosmith and Guitar Hero: Metallica. In both cases, the band made a ton of money from game sales, while at the same time experiencing a boost in their album catalog sales.

Arguably however, Van Halen might be a little more difficult to put down on a video game.

First of all, Activision has confirmed that the game will only feature David Lee Roth era songs, which effectively narrows down the possible albums in the game to six: Van Halen (1978), Van Halen II (1979), Women and Children First (1980), Fair Warning (1981), Diver Down (1982), and 1984 (1984). The band had also recorded two new songs with Roth on 1996’s Best of Volume I–the superb songs “Can’t Get This Stuff No More” and “Me Wise Magic.”

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By Clarence Yu

AFTER almost 45 years of wowing audiences and guitar freaks, and influencing a good generation or two of excellent guitar players, Jeff Beck has been inducted into the Hall of Fame.

Finally.

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Remember FunTwo? He’s now all grown up. I stumbled upon this video from YouTube Live, which features two of my guitar idols, Joe Satriani and FunTwo–yes the young and mysterious YouTube guitar virtuoso who played Canon in D. Watch them jam:

Here’s FunTwo’s famous YouTube video: