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BY MARTHA MARRAZZA

In print | Published February 8, 2007

Alex Lerner ’09 is a Guitar Hero.

While millions of teenage wannabe-musicians spend hours playing around with their guitars, picking out melodies from radio tracks and working out chord progressions, Lerner has been clocking hours on a guitar console that’s part of Activision’s “Guitar Hero II” video game.

Last Saturday, Lerner (accompanied by his father and a few adoring Swatties), trekked to King of Prussia Mall for a regional Guitar Hero II competition sponsored by Gamestop/EB Games. The winner of the in-store competition was promised a t-shirt, a poster, glory and possibly a chance to advance to the next level of competition.

To play Guitar Hero II, each person straps on a miniature plastic guitar that has five colored keys in the place of strings. The video screen flashes different color sequences that correspond to rock or heavy-metal songs, and the player presses down the keys and strums in time to the music.

“It’s funny because if, hour for hour, I played real guitar as much as Guitar Hero, I’d be really good,” Lerner said. “The thing is, I’m so interested in playing Guitar Hero because I can just turn it on and play with Eddie Van Halen. But with a real guitar, you have to practice chords and progressions. I would just get bored and stop playing.”

According to Lerner, Gamestop and EB Games stores all over the country hosted promotional Guitar Hero tournaments on Feb. 3. “The biggest one was in Manhattan,” he said. “I went to King of Prussia because I thought it would be a bigger competition and have better prizes than at some of the more local stores.”

Lerner’s dad made the trip down from New York just to see his son compete. Alex’s brother, Andrew, is also a Guitar Hero aficionado and was competing in another competition on the same day. Alex’s father deadpanned that his dream was for the two brothers to battle their way to the top and eventually play each other in a final showdown to decide the national Guitar Hero champion. For the Lerners, Guitar Hero is a family affair.

For as long as he can remember, Lerner said he has played air guitar when he listens to music. But Lerner’s love for the Guitar Hero video game actually started when he and his brother encountered Guitar Freaks, a British precursor of the game, while on vacation in London. After buying Guitar Hero II on a whim before winter break last year, Lerner said he and his brother have been hooked ever since.

After running through the huge mall to get to the competition by the 2:00 p.m. start time, Lerner and his supporters found that the line of worthy competitors they envisioned hadn’t yet materialized. Lerner and a few other gamers in their late teens and early twenties played around with the Guitar Hero consul to warm up their fingers as they waited for more participants. As it edged toward 2:30 p.m., Julian Thomas ’10 impulsively decided to register. Without further ado, the competition began with only Lerner, Thomas and two other contestants registered.

A store employee made a bracket of the players and selected songs ranging from Megadeth’s “Hangar 18” to Guns N’ Roses’ “Sweet Child O’ Mine.” A crowd assembled around the contestants as they strummed and sweated through the elimination rounds. Although Thomas and a contestant from the University of the Arts held their own, Lerner was clearly the best player, thrashing the three other competitors by thousands of points and even raising the guitar above his head and playing licks with only his left hand at times. Lerner won the Guitar Hero contest handily, but the managers were vague about the next level of competition.

Lerner said he was grateful that his friends and his father supported him at the tournament.

“He [my dad] always wants to be very supportive of me, but I haven’t given him very many opportunities,” Lerner said. “I don’t really like school or sports. This is almost the first thing that I’ve been a participant in. This is the first thing he can show up to and really root for me. It’s kind of like if I was in a recital or something. I think it’s great and I totally appreciate it.”

Mark Mai ‘09 was among those who went to King of Prussia to support Lerner. “Alex Lerner is my guitar hero,” Mai said. "The one player that was there to actually compete seemed pretty decent and pretty good. It’s just that Alex was superb and clearly superior. No doubt, Alex thrashed the competition. I mean, by the end, the guy didn’t even compete in the last round of the competition because he knew he couldn’t come close to Alex’s score."

Mai said he couldn’t even dream of competing with Lerner. “Alex’s abilities are daunting, to say the very least. As a spectator, it’s a little scary how good he is. He scored something like 480,000 points on a nine-minute song,” Mai said. “I’m not gonna lie. If I ever played, I’d never come close to that score.”

Thomas, a last-minute entrant, praised Lerner’s playing as well. When asked about Lerner’s performance, Thomas shot back with, “Is that even a question? Seeing as King of Prussia is the second biggest mall in the United States, I thought it was a huge stage for Alex to go out and rock the competition,” he said.

Despite researching the tournament online and scoping out the store a day before the competition, Lerner felt the competition was a bit of a disappointment. “I was definitely disappointed. I expected more,” he said. “I called around to a lot of places before deciding on the King of Prussia competition. The manager said he expected the number of entrants to be in the teens, but that was not the case.”

The small turnout and disorganized nature of the competition didn’t diminish Lerner’s dream of working in stores like EB Games in the future, though. “I wouldn’t mind, even 30 years from now, working at a video game store. These guys just come in to work and can play video games all day,” Lerner said. “Maybe everyone at Swarthmore is on the wrong path. You think you can work at EB Games with a major in physics from Swarthmore? How about a video games major? I idolize the position of their employees.”

Instead of basking in his victory as the Guitar Hero contest champion, Lerner said he actually wants to cut back on playing Guitar Hero II. “I’m actually trying to play less,” he said. “Over break I played like six hours a day and I got really good. Now that I’m at school, I’m hoping I’ll leave my dorm [Mary Lyon] more often. Maybe that’s my guitar goal — put it in the trash and go find some friends. I mean … just kidding.”

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