Scratch: The Ultimate DJ – any rival for DJ Hero?

Its looks like DJ Hero may already have a rival on its hands! This video is a short promo for the new game Scratch:The Ultimate DJ, you will have to watch it and see what you make of it all but our first two thoughts were – cool looking response to the scratching but lame graphics, although any gamer can forgive spectrum graphics if the gameplay is right.

Thoughts?

DJ Hero Turntable Mod -Vinyl cover

As we mentioned in the forums, one of the first things we thought when we played DJ Hero was that firstly there are no physical markings on the crossfader so you can tell where on the crossfader you are without looking. We figured we would either scratch the plastic casing to provide a center line that our fingers could find, like Guitar Hero does with the yellow fret button, where it is slightly raised in the middle.

The other thing we thought could be improved was the surface of the turntable, it seemed very slippy and we thought this made scratching harder than it needed to be (yeah I know if we were better Djs we wouldn’t need any of this but we are uncoordinated idiots who can barely press coloured button in the right order so every little helps eh!)

With this in mind we have performed our first test modification on the turntable, adding a black (boring colour but will do for the prototype!) vinyl coating to the surface of the turntable and also creating a surround for the crossfader which includes the raised bit at the center point.

We have done this mod as a bit of a trial run, we wanted to see what people thought of the playability of the game with these changes.

First Impressions

Lets look at the crossfader area first, the vinyl covering does not interfere with your ability to play the game and with the addition of the raised sections it does make it easier to find the middle point if you loose it, this is most useful when your euphoria is coming to an end and you need to be ready to start crossfading for yourself once more. Rather than having to take your eyes off the screen to confirm that you are in the middle of the crossfader you can now feel both the ‘click’ of the crossfader as it returns to its center point but also you can use your fingers to find out where that center point is before you move the fader back.

We have found this to be really useful and people playing the game for the first time appreciate it the most, experienced players will probably not benefit too much from this, but its addition will not make the game any harder either.

The turntable covering was designed to give more grip on the surface of the deck while playing, this is supposed to help while scratching and when using rewind, and for the most part it does very well! It feel great having a more tactile surface to rest your hand on while mixing and it does stop the turntable ‘getting away’ from you at the end of a long section of scratches. the only slight worry is how sweaty your hands will have the vinyl surface if you are playing it for hours on end. We have not found it a  problem but we are testing in the middle of a British winter, someone in Australia in the summer may have a different opinion!

Verdict

We like this first attempt at this mod and will be keeping it on for the time being. It deserves a long term test to find out what type of coating would be best, how sweaty the turntable gets, if the vinyl starts to peel and gets annoying, all these things need to be investigated. In short though, this does improve the easy of playing DJ Hero for novices, experts will as always find their own way around any problems – that is what makes them experts!

Oh the other thing is – how cool would this look with some custom graphics on the vinyl? You could have anything!

We welcome your comments, what do you think about this mod should we carry on with it or is it a terrible idea that needs to be binned and forgotten about? What graphics would you choose to go on your decks? Send us your pictures and we will display the best, we may even have one made up for the winner if it is good enough! Do you have any ideas for other mods you would like us to test?

————UPDATE————

We have now found a company doing these custom vinyl skins, where you can design literally anything you want, that we are happy to recommend have a look at our article on how to create your own custom DJ Hero Vinyl Skins

Inside the DJ Hero Controller

After we managed to put the game down for  a second the next priority for us at DJ Hero Repair was to take the turntable and mixer apart and see what was inside! We are still gathering information about all the parts but we thought we would bring you these early pictures so you can see what is inside and what to look out for when taking yours apart.

This is, for the moment anyway, just a quick gallery of images (click on any to start the gallery), in time we will be bringing you instructional guides on how to take the controller apart, what to watch out for etc.

One quick thing I will add is that it is not difficult to take the controller apart, it has no hidden screws, no tamperproof seals anywhere, but you do need to be careful of pulling any of the wires. You can see in the pictures that all the wiring only has the minimum amount of slack, and when you first open it the wiring is taped down meaning you cannot move the casing very far without accidentally pulling on the wires. Our advice? Slow and steady and you’ll be fine!

Comments on any of the pictures are welcomed so get involved!

Contact Us

If you do want to get in touch with us you have a number of options; You can email us here [inline] [/inline] (please note due to high demand support questions will only be answered through the forums) You can call us on 0800 072 3870 (UK Freephone, calls will cost considerably more from outside the UK You can get in touch with us via the forums (all requests for support should be directed here first)

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DJ Hero Forum up and running moderators needed!

We have got our forums up and running! Hurray! Currently we are sharing the forums with our sister site Guitar Hero Repair, but there is plenty of room for all the DJ chat you could wish for. We want to hear you opinions, tips and tricks, problems, solutions, hell we may even listen if you tell us what you had for dinner but what we need most of all are some super clued up moderators who want to come and help egt the forums going, answering peoples questions and generally being DJ knights in shining armour for the masses! Anyone who want to come and join and see what is going on is welcome, head over to the DJ Hero Forum and get involved, if you want to be a mod with all the kudos that brings then post a  few interesting things and we will consider you, any help in maintaining these forums will be paid back to those who give it the most!

High score video on Expert – kids got skills!

Why do we play computer games, is it to stimulate us? Maybe. Is it for fun? Hopefully! Is it a lot about bragging rights with your mates - definitely! Some of the top scorers on Xbox love are now starting to post videos of these amazing mixes, showing their hands in a little video insert so you can all appreciate how good they are, now bow down before your masters!