While the likes of Guitar Hero and Rock Band might be all the rage for console owners, such dexterity testing games might be a bit much for the pre-teen set. Plus, Rock Hero Guitar Band games don't really teach anything practical beyond color-coded timing and bad posture. The Fisher-Price I Can Play Guitar game system, on the other hand, is all about the learning while playing.

The self-contained, battery-powered device is both controller -- shaped like an undersized electric guitar -- and game system in one, jacking directly into any TV with an onboard slot for game cartridges, one of which is included (it's Smoke on the Water-marathon enabled), more sold separately for $10 - $15 a pop.

Even without a TV involved, the I Can Play Guitar controller can be played impromptu by itself with plastic rock 'n' roll (or avant-garde, more likely) emanating from its onboard speaker, which is pretty cool and fairly revealing of the user's budding musical potential.

Importantly, unlike PlayStation- and Xbox-based guitar heroics, the I-Can-Play-Guitar system is actually much more elaborately configured -- yet not at all daunting. With 6 foreshortened strings that sense strumming and picking, plus 30 colour-coded buttons filling up the bottom five frets where the majority of six-string guitar chords are played (there are a couple more lines of buttons running up the neck for faux soloing), this unit will actually teach genuine finger placement and the rudiments of rockin' out, with instructions cleverly disguised as an interactive game playing out on the TV screen (replete with cheesy electronica audio).

Other inputs include a whammy bar and a tempo adjuster, the latter of which allows for songs to be slowed to learning levels, sped up when ready-to-RAWK-dude.

Best of all, users can eventually take most of those finger positioning, picking and whamming techniques and apply them to a real guitar (which would be a thorny new learning experience nonetheless; actual strings and string tension are a whole different ball of wax).

The I Can Play Guitar is surprisingly durable, though typical respect for one's possessions is in order; you can't go all Townshend on the thing.

It's powered by 4 C batteries -- which are included, kindly enough -- and there is no AC power adapter option, which is probably for the best. Still, though the batteries will last for a good many hours of jam sessions, consider also snagging a rechargeable set of batteries as replacing those alkaline C-cells time and again, week after month, can get pricey.