‘Guitar Hero’ star shows pluck, poise, persistence
EVERETT – Lots of kids long for a special talent.
Dylan Phifer found his sitting in a brown leather chair in his living room.
The 12-year-old Everett boy’s superpower is playing the popular video game “Guitar Hero.”
He’s not just better than his friends and better than most of the much older players at the local game store.
He’s one of the best in the world.
Right now a videotape and witness statements of his as-yet-unverified world-record performance are zipping toward Guinness World Records in England.
Dylan blasted out an astronomical 1,019,682 points by playing “Mercyful Fate” by Metallica at an Everett Game Crazy store over Labor Day weekend. The standing record for that song is 1,009,000.
“This kid is absolutely insane to say the least,” said Drew McGillivray, the manager of Game Crazy in Everett. “I’ve never seen anyone perform like that.”
By insane, McGillivray means scary good. McGillivray has played “Guitar Hero” for several years and watched many others. No one he’s seen is Dylan’s equal.
If you haven’t heard of “Guitar Hero,” just ask anyone under the age of 30. The game’s rapidly expanding franchise allows anyone to play rock hits on a controller shaped like a guitar or other instruments.
Players rack up points by matching musical notes to colored fret buttons as they zoom across the screen. The game mimics some elements of playing a real guitar, including fast-fingering hammer-ons and pull-offs. The guitar includes a whammy bar to alter the pitch of notes.
Dylan prefers to play sitting down. His fingers fly over the frets and he regularly hits every note in a song that might have 3,000 notes.
“When I finally got to expert, I thought I might actually be good at this game,” Dylan said.
Being a master at “Guitar Hero” doesn’t necessarily make you the next Tim Reynolds. Dylan tried taking guitar lessons but didn’t care for it.
Before you knock Dylan’s talent, realize that it takes incredible eye-hand coordination, rhythm and even some muscle strength to excel at “Guitar Hero.”
“It takes a lot of muscle endurance to move fingers fast and accurately enough to hit notes at the right time,” McGillivray said.
It also doesn’t hurt to have focus and near-photographic recall. Dylan has a special knack for remembering numbers, dates and the like and that might give him an edge remembering the long strings of notes flying at him during game play.
It’s taken a lot of practice time and focus for Dylan to develop his talent. His dad, Jim, bought him his first “Guitar Hero” game two years ago. For months, he’s spent hours working his way through every version of “Guitar Hero” at the game store: That’s a total of about 500 songs.
Even when he’s not playing, his hand sometimes taps out rhythms.
The game has given Dylan a musical education in rock greats. The band names Cheap Trick and Rush slip off his tongue like that of a 45-year-old. His favorite song to play is Tom Petty’s “American Girl.”
Dylan is an honor roll student and a good kid, said his mom, Sallie. For those reasons, she doesn’t worry about him spending so much time playing a video game. Plus, this is one thing in his life he can do better than just about any other kid. When you’re not the star athlete, that matters.
Dylan insists he isn’t the best in the world. He’s just one of the few people who bothered to go through the bothersome Guinness process, which includes videotape, witness statements and oodles of paperwork.
However, his game console tracks top scores online. Again and again, he’s listed at the top or near the top of every song he tries.
And he has no plans of stopping anytime soon.
“When you’re good, why stop there?”