"Saxophone Colossus for PS 3" anyone?

This sounds like a saxophone version of "Guitar Hero" - a game made for the Sony Playstation line. I'm not sure that it's available in the U.K. so I'll explain (as it's gained popularity here in the States since Guitar Hero II came out). You play the guitarist in a band and have a plastic controller molded to look like an electric guitar. It has four or five buttons on the neck, a lever near the belly where one would normally strum strings, and a whammy bar. You attempt to "play" songs that become progressively more challenging as you build up to the "big gig". The music (at least in Guitar Hero I) is mostly Classic Rock.

The action is similar to one of those dance video games where the different colored symbols scroll up and the player is supposed to step on the color or shape corresponding to the one on the screen and in-sync with the music.

In this case, the screen looks like a guitar fretboard and different colored circles make their way up the fretboard. The player then presses the colored button corresponding to the colored circle on the screen and presses the lever to simulate a strum of that string.

Rumor has it that the company that created "Guitar Hero" also created the dance video games and owns a patent on this format. Be aware of that as you move forward with your idea.

My advice is to make the sax out of plastic. Cardboard is flimsy. "Dumb it down" to four or five buttons that can be pressed independently (not sequentially like a real sax). If you want to get fancy, add a rudimentary breath switch to sense when the player is blowing into the mouthpiece. Use "recognizable" songs/tunes instead of tunes by the classic sax players. Think pop and rock.

My reasoning is this: you want the game to be challenging yet easy enough for anyone to pick up and play. "Guitar Hero"'s guitar plays nothing like a real guitar but is easy enough for anyone to pick up and play out of the box. They use popular songs that most teens and adults have heard or know by heart whether they're musicians or not. Think in these terms: how many "gamers" would love to play a game that portrays them as a saxophone star? Probably quite a few with the right marketing techniques. Now how many sax players play video games? Probably quite a few but not nearly as many as the previous group. Cater to the masses - not to the minorities.

- Mike