The Rise and Fall of Guitar Hero Series

Hey everyone! Before we begin this episode of Dead Rhythm Games, I'd just like to say thank you. I've gotten a lot of positive feedback on this series, and although it's taken me a lot longer to finish than I thought it would, we're finally here at the finish line. This was the last episode I had planned when I originally started the series, though I think there will be a few more in the future. But for now, if you've watched any of the other episodes or any of my other content, thank you, and I hope you'll enjoy this video. Guitar Hero was created via a partnership with Red Octane and Harmonix. Harmonix had experience in the rhythm game genre, having already created Frequency, Amplitude, and Karaoke Revolution. Meanwhile, Red Octane was interested in bringing a game with similar feel to Konami's Guitar Freaks to western markets. Guitar Freaks was created in 1999, predating Guitar Hero by almost six years, but was far less well known due to only being really prevalent in Japan. Guitar Hero itself is characterized by a scrolling highway representing that of the neck of a guitar. There are five lanes, each corresponding to a button on the plastic controller that is used to play the game, or a a regular controller if you're a psycho. When a note arrives at the corresponding button inside the hit window, you have to hold the button down and strum the strum bar. This creates gameplay vaguely replicating that of playing a guitar, though with some inaccuracy to reality of course. In addition, there are hammer-on notes and pull-off notes, often referred to as hopos. Hopos can be hit without strumming so long as you hit the previous note, allowing for fast segments of tapping buttons. Throughout the franchise's life, more note types would be added to diversify gameplay such as open notes and tap notes, but we'll touch on those later. The game spans four difficulties, easy, medium, hard, and expert, with each mode iterating on the previous difficulty and adding more complexity. The most distinguishing factor between the difficulties is the number of notes the charts use. Easy charts use only the green, red, and yellow frets, medium adds in the blue fret, and hard and expert add in the orange fret for the highest complexity. There are a monstrous amount of releases, so let's take a look. through the history of the Guitar Hero franchise starting right from the beginning. As a side note, most of the songs in Guitar Hero are well-known pieces of music that will likely lead to this video getting copyright striked or demonetized. As such, throughout this video I'll be using songs made by the customs community for Clone Hero. A huge shout out to these artists who you will hear throughout the video. I'll leave a list of all the artists in the description of the video below. They make some amazing music and you should definitely check out their charts and songs. songs. Now then, on with the video. The original Guitar Hero was released on November 7th, 2005 for the Playstation 2. The game was created by Harmonix and published by Red Octane. The story of how the first Guitar Hero game came to be depended on a bit of luck. Around this time, the first guitar hero Red Octane was looking to find a way to create guitar controllers to bring guitar freaks to North America. However, investors turned this idea down. Not to be dissuaded by their failure to secure interest in an investment to bring guitar freaks over to North America, Red Octane would then approach Harmonix with the idea for a game that was somewhat more original, while still allowing for the creation of the guitar peripheral that they were interested in making. Though the game would still be directly inspired by Guitar Freaks. This came on the back of Harmonix failing to pitch one of their other games, Frequency, to Microsoft. In the pitch meeting, Microsoft told Harmonix that no rhythm game would ever succeed without a controller peripheral. Heeding this advice, Harmonix decided to team up with Red Octane to create the original Guitar Hero. As such, when the game released, it was shipped with a Gibson SG guitar controller to allow for the desired guitar-like gameplay. Guitar Hero features covers of 30 licensed popular rock songs and 17 bonus songs that use the master recordings. Covers were chosen for the main setlist due to licensing. One of the major difficulties in creating a rhythm game is music licensing, especially in a game dependent on music in popular culture, often consisting of songs that are well-known. This leads to very high licensing costs, especially if you're a music lover. especially if using the master recording. However, getting the rights to create a cover is significantly cheaper and sometimes easier than getting the rights to use the master recording. As such, to create a higher quality setlist with more recognizable songs, covers were chosen instead of masters. This actually complemented the game quite well, as Guitar Hero's career mode follows a cover band on tour. In this way, the cover songs match the cover band and don't feel terribly out of place or cheap. The game's songlist featured many well-known songs, known hard rock and heavy metal artists such as Motorhead, Ozzy Osbourne, Blue Oyster Cult, Red Hot Chili Peppers, Black Sabbath, Queen, ZZ Top, Deep Purple, Megadeth, Judas Priest, and David Bowie to name a few. The main mode of the game is the career mode where the player's in-game band performs shows at fictional venues and completing songs unlocks them in other parts of the game. It also had a multiplayer mode where each player has parts of a chart that they would play alternating with their opponent. The original Guitar Hero was a surprising hit. I've spoken before about what I think it takes for a rhythm game to be popular for a mass market, those being a novel way to interact with the game, in this case the guitar controller, and a recognizable song list. Guitar Hero checked both of these boxes, and sure enough, it was a smash hit. The game was praised for both of those things, being noted as having a fantastic soundtrack and a great peripheral. It received several awards and would go on to not only kickstart Guitar Hero as a franchise, but also the rise in popularity of rhythm games in North America for quite a few years to come. Harmonix and Red Octane undoubtedly wanted to ride off the success, so work on a sequel would begin. Exactly one year later, on November 7th, 2006, Guitar Hero 2 was released on PS2, though it would also be released a bit later for Xbox 360 on April 3rd, 2007. The game was once again developed by Harmonix, and the game was shipped with a new Gibson SG controller on the PS2, and the iconic X-Floor guitar for Xbox 360. The game released with 64 songs, 40 licensed covers, and 24 bonus songs that used the master recordings. Interestingly, the Xbox 360 version had 10 extra songs and also had some DLC. Notable artists for Guitar Hero 2's soundtrack consisted of Avenged Sevenfold, Rolling Stones, My Chemical Romance, Nirvana, Lamb of God, Aerosmith, Foo Fighters, Motley Crue, Guns N' Roses, and more. They took the time to expand the game's feature set a bit in Guitar Hero 2. For starters, the encore song was added to a career mode, which was a bonus song that you got to play at the end of a venue when you were progressing through career mode on medium or higher. This would become a series staple feature and last for quite a while. They also fleshed out the multiplayer bringing the total number of modes from 1 up to 3. First up was Face Off which was the same mode from the first game, this time allowing players to play on different difficulties. This made playing the mode very accessible with all types of skill levels. Next was Pro Face Off which is sort of the true 1v1 mode. This mode has the two players playing on the same difficulty, but unlike in face-off mode, you play the full chart. Lastly was co-op mode, where one player would play the guitar track, and the other player would play either the bass guitar or the rhythm guitar track, depending on the song. These three modes gave the game significantly more multiplayer options, and in my opinion, helped bring the game up to more of a full experience. Adding further to that full experience was practice mode. Practice mode in Guitar Hero allows the player to practice individual sections of a song and slow them down, furthering the tools the game gave to the player to master all its hardest tracks. Guitar Hero 2 was extremely well received, even more so than Guitar Hero 1. Guitar Hero 2 helped to further solidify the franchise and to continue the increasing trend in popularity that rhythm games were starting to develop in North America. Not only that, but from Guitar Hero 2 we would actually see the franchise spawn its first spin-off title. Released on July 24th, 2007 was Guitar Hero Encore Rocks the 80s. This game went back to only releasing on PS2, and did not have a new guitar controller created for it. This game was still developed by Harmonix, although it was based off of the Guitar Hero 2 engine again, rather than having a new engine. As such, the game was almost exactly the same as Guitar Hero 2 feature-wise. It was marketed more as an expansion than a new entry in the series, though it still commanded a $50 price tag. The songlist consisted of just 30 songs, down from Guitar Hero 2's 64, and featured a songlist consisting of 80s music with names like Judas Priest, Billy Squire, Quiet Riot, Dio, and more. The game received lukewarm reception, citing the songlist and price tag. Critics felt that the game felt like a bit of a cash-in with the low amount of content and lack of differences in the game itself. This would be a bit of an indicator for things to come. Rocks the 80s would be the last Guitar Hero title that Harmonix would develop as a result of the Guitar Hero brand changing hands. In June of 2006, Rad Octane, who had published Guitar Hero up to this point, was acquired by Activision. Activision had also spent $100 million to acquire the rights to the Guitar Hero franchise. However, around the same time, Harmonix would be bought out by MTV Games, and no longer develop Guitar Hero. Activision gave the development duties to Neversoft, who had been developing the Tony Hawk games. With the series having changed hands, we wouldn't have to wait long to see what Neversoft would do with the Guitar Hero name. Released on October 27th, 2007 was Guitar Hero 3 Legends of Rock, coming out on PlayStation 2, PlayStation 3, Wii, and Xbox 360. The game had 73 songs at launch, 42 in the main setlist, 6 exclusive to the co-op career mode, and 25 bonus songs. Not all the songs in the setlist are covers anymore, signaling a shift away from that part of Guitar Hero's legacy. This was probably due to Activision having more money for music licensing, if I had to guess. Notable artists in the song list included Smashing Pumpkins, Beastie Boys, Slayer, Weezer, Kiss, and more. Career mode was improved again with the addition of a small storyline, and also boss battles using the game's new battle mode features. Battle mode was new to the multiplayer modes in Guitar Hero 3, allowing players to attack each other with power-ups that inflict negative effects on their opponent. The game also finally supported online multiplayer. This came with the prevalence of online gaming starting to pick up speed on consoles as the Xbox 360 and PS3 got further into their lifespans. The game also features a co-op career mode, but progresses the same way as the single player career does. Overall the game actually reviewed slightly worse than Guitar Hero 2, but sold extremely well. At the time it released it was one of the best selling video games in the United States ever. and Activision made the claim that it was the first video game to ever exceed $1 billion in sales. I'd make the argument that this game was the peak of Guitar Hero's popularity, with the phenomenon reaching critical mass around this time. The game also enjoyed some virality with the game making the rounds in schools and on early YouTube. Players like Guitar Hero Phenom and Chris4Life did a great job showcasing the high skill level that was possible in Guitar Hero's upper difficulty. Adding to this was the bonus song Through the Fire and Flames by Dragonforce. TTF AF's expert chart would become the iconic boss song of the whole franchise, with all sorts of players using it as a claim to skill when they could pass it, and top players racing to see who could full combo at first. Additionally, one thing I didn't mention is that the game actually got a PC release, being released on Windows and Mac in late 2007. While these ports of the game were a bit infamous for having bugs, They would kickstart the custom song scene in Guitar Hero that would lead far into the future. At this point, we've had four games in the span of about three years, if you count the spinoff as well. Not too bad. Remember how I said that Rocks the 80s was a sign of things to come? Well, I guess after GH3 sold gangbusters for Activision, they smelled blood in the water. So hold on to your hats, we are about to get absolutely buck wild. Welcome to the Activision era. What began was a complete onslaught of new games, spin-offs, and multi-platform releases. Activision was going all out. 2008 started off with the series' second spin-off title, Guitar Hero Aerosmith, released on June 27th, 2008. Guitar Hero Aerosmith used Guitar Hero 3's engine, and each member of Aerosmith was motion-captured to aid in recreating them in-game. Apparently the idea for Guitar Hero Aerosmith at the time was considered a no-brainer and fitting for the series, which to be fair, it is. Additionally, they also apparently managed to secure a license that would prevent the song's use in other rhythm games for a certain period of time after release. This was likely seen as a desirable outcome for Activision to prevent the competition from also acquiring these licenses, notably Harmonix who were now creating the competing Rock Band. That said, it remained to be seen whether the game would have enough new features and content to justify its near full price tag. The game featured 41 songs, far less than Guitar Hero 3, with 29 songs from Aerosmith and 11 from bands that Aerosmith was inspired by or toured with. Unfortunately, it seems that this effort, or lack thereof, wasn't enough, and the game received mixed reviews. It was credited for trying the idea of a band-specific game, but criticized for being largely the same as Guitar Hero 3, yet charging full price. Additionally, due to the nature of the game's song list, the difficulty curve was criticized as being lacking and making the career mode boring. In the end, this was further writing on the wall from critics voicing their distaste with Guitar Hero making spin-off titles at full price, and were starting to voice their concerns about market saturation even now. That said, after Aerosmith's middling performance, Neversoft would hit back with another well-received entry in the series. On October 26th, 2008, Neversoft and Activision would release Guitar Hero's fourth main entry, Guitar Hero World Tour. World Tour would serve as a much more significant entry to the Guitar Hero franchise, with a lot of gameplay and presentation updates. Two new note types were added to diversify gameplay. First are tap notes, which are a slightly transparent version of the regular notes. These can be played either by just pressing the frets on the guitar controller, or by sliding your hand on the lower touch section of the new guitar controllers released with World Tour, leading to the notes also sometimes being called slide or slider notes. The biggest difference between tap notes and hopos is that unlike hopos, if you miss a tap note you don't have to strum to start hitting notes again, you can simply resume hitting the next note. In addition to tap notes, open notes were also added. Open notes are a note represented by a long purple bar that spans across the whole highway, requiring that no frets are being pressed to be hit. These two notes really helped to spice the gameplay up and add more depth, and while the slider section of the game is a bit more complex, it's still a great way to get the game going. The game is also a great way to get the game going, and while the slider section of the game is a bit more complex, it's still the guitar was seen as generally imprecise, the notes themselves were a solid addition to gameplay. In addition to the two note types, the game also added support for drums and vocals. This was likely in response to Rock Band, which had just come out the previous year. The game featured 86 songs, and at this point in the series there were no more covers, having just been completely phased out. I guess Activision decided that they could eat most of the cost of just licensing the Masters now, so no more covers. covers. There was also DLC in the game as well, being a staple of the series at this point, as most new releases from here on got DLC. The game's song lists feature artists like System of a Down, Blink-182, Korn, Van Halen, Tool, Dream Theater, and more. The career mode was also modified. The mode was now broken up into gigs, where you play a setlist rather than one setlist per location. A banned career mode was also added, replacing the co-op career that was present before. before, though functionally the same. World Tour had a bit more in the field of customization options as well. Specifically, custom characters were able to be created, with this feature based on the Create a Skater mode from the Tony Hawk series. Players could even create their own songs with charts in the game's music studio, and the songs could be shared online with other players. It seems like in general after Aerosmith's relative lack of features and effort, Neversoft was out to prove that Guitar Hero still had life in it and that it could be continuing for a long time, and the reviews reflected that as well. The game reviewed generally positively and received favorably, although it did understandably suffer some comparisons to Rock Band. That said, the signs of saturation and genre fatigue were starting to show here. The game's initial sales were far lower, selling less than half in its first week of what Guitar Hero 3 did in the same period of time. But generally, the series was still received favorably at this point. In addition to Aerosmith and World Tour, not one, but two DS Guitar Hero games were released in 2008, barely six months apart. Guitar Hero on Tour was released on June 22nd, 2008. It was technically a spin-off of the main series, as it features altered gameplay to support the Nintendo DS. I'd wager a lot of you have seen this, but there was a Guitar Hero controller, Grip Purr, referral for the DS, with 4 frets and a guitar pick stylus. The DS game featured songs from Smash Mouth, Blink 182, Freeze Pop, Red Hot Chili Peppers, Maroon 5, and more. The game was decently feature complete for a DS version of Guitar Hero, with single player modes and local wifi capabilities for multiplayer. That said, despite the decent effort made by Vicarious Visions, critics still seemed to feel that the game was more of an experiment than a full new Guitar Hero game. The game was praised for the uniqueness of the gimmick and the ability to translate Guitar Hero to a portable system, but the controller grip itself was heavily criticized. Reports of the grip being difficult to hold, causing hand cramps, difficulty keeping the DS steady while playing, and of the grip just straight up falling out of the console while playing requiring a restart. Despite this, it seems Activision had deemed the game a success, and just six months later, Guitar Hero On Tour Decades was released. Despite critics noting that there was essentially no change in the gameplay and hardware, and that the game felt more like an expansion pack to the original On Tour, the game actually reviewed better than the original, with positives being that of a well-rounded tracklist, improved touch interface, and support for connectivity with the original version of On Tour. So that's four games in the span of one year. Needless to say, Activision had turned the dial up on Guitar Hero, and there was even more to come. If anything, Activision stepped on the gas pedal even harder in 2009. 2009 started off with the series second band-centric game Guitar Hero Metallica, released on March 29th, 2009. It was based on the Guitar Hero World Tour engine and had essentially the same game features as World Tour, similar to how Aerosmith had the same features as GH3. The main addition to gameplay was that of Expert Plus for drums. The main difference in this mo- The mode, other than increased difficulty, was that the game had support for double bass pedal, allowing for much higher bass pedal density. It was seen as a good addition for veteran players for fleshing out the difficulty. The game's song list consisted of 28 Metallica songs and 21 other songs that were picked by Metallica. Similar to Aerosmith, the band themselves were brought in to do motion capture for their likenesses. The game received generally favorable reviews, actually being the highest rated Never Stop Guitar Hero game to this point. It was seen as less of a cash-in than Aerosmith and Rock the 80s, being a bit more faithful to the band and its history, as well as just being a bit of a better game. Metallica's catalog of songs was more suited to creating a smooth difficulty curve, and the songs were more song choices were generally praised. The main criticism of the game actually came with the lack of DLC support, as well as the same pricing complaint that the other spinoff games received, that being less content and a reused engine for full price. It seems that the spinoff games were never really able to shake that criticism, most likely due to the reused engine and fast production time of the Guitar Hero games coming out around this time. I'm guessing to reviewers they really felt more like expansions even if they were good games. While Metallica started 2009 off strong for Guitar Hero, it would not last. While Metallica wasn't considered a cash-in, the next game wouldn't dodge the same criticism. On June 16th, 2009, Guitar Hero Smash Hits was released. Interestingly, this game was not developed by Neversoft, instead being developed by Beanox, who up to this point had made the, um, the Bee Movie game. Yeah, the Bee Movie game. The game features 48... songs with full band support, all from Guitar Hero 1, 2, 80s, 3, and Aerosmith. It does retain a few of the modern additions like Expert Post for Drums, but overall it's basically a repackaging and re-release of older Guitar Hero content. And well, let's just say it's not a super positive thing that this game gets abbreviated to Guitar Hero Shits. While the game reviewed somewhat okay, the game was generally criticized for being a cash-in and displaying the issue with the the saturation of the music game market at the time of its release. Once again, it was a full price spinoff despite being a completely reused songlist. Having full band added was seen as a good move, but generally just felt like a way to justify the content being repackaged and re-released. Most of the reviews of the time said that it felt like these should have just been packaged up as DLC rather than demanding a full $60 price tag. The songs were switched to master recordings as well, which was praised as some of those original copies. covers haven't exactly aged super well. However, the songs received recharts, some of which were criticized for trivializing difficulty, as many of them added tap notes, which, while not inherently making a chart easier to score on or full combo, does significantly increase their ability to be cleared, which is obviously what most reviewers would be basing their thoughts on. Overall, shits would be seen as middling at best and as a bit of a cash grab. Activision would try to rebound from this by heading into the next mainline entry in the Guitar Hero franchise. Released on September 1st, 2009 was Guitar Hero 5. At this point in the franchise, full band is essentially a given now seeing as they had to compete with rock band. It had 85 songs in the base game, featuring artists like The Killers, Jimmy Eat World, Children of Bodom, Rammstein, Gorillaz, Duran Duran, Coldplay, and more, and had DLC as well, which was par for the course in the main releases. Guitar Hero 5 added new multiplayer modes, most notably Party Play which is a drop in drop out mode that starts from the main menu, getting you right into playing songs immediately. You can change difficulties and drop in and out at will, with the songs cycling randomly and continuously as you play. Honestly I think this is a great mode, especially for an actual party setting where you might have people coming and going from the game throughout the day. Career mode was updated to add challenges to each song to aid in adding replayability. Each challenge has a set of medals to get for completing the associated challenges, and I personally liked these a decent amount. The game was received pretty well, reviewing okay and selling a similar amount to Guitar Hero World Tour in its first week. The feature editions were received positively, despite the song list being a little lacking compared to other entries. However, industry analysts were starting to more publicly speculate on whether or not the entire market was becoming oversaturated due to too many releases in a short span, especially those that shipped with new controllers. The game also had a weird controversy, since they decided it would be a good idea to include Kurt Cobain as a playable character on all songs. They got in a bit of hot water with Cobain's estate and reviewers for adding him. So yeah, that was a weird thing that happened. At this point, we are coming to the end of 2009, so you'd think we're almost done with releases for this year. But- you would be wrong. Before we continue through 2009, I just wanna stop and briefly mention DJ Hero. DJ Hero is a Guitar Hero spinoff game using the Hero title, also releasing in 2009. While we aren't going to talk about DJ Hero much at all in this video, since it could basically have its own Dead Rhythm Games episode, it served to continue to clog up the plastic instrument music games market during Guitar Hero's all-out madness. So while DJ Hero has some of its own things going for it, it maybe wasn't the best time to release it. Speaking of spin-offs, up next is Guitar Hero 5's spin-off, Band Hero. Band Hero was released on November 3rd, 2009, and was based on Guitar Hero 5's engine. I don't want to spend too much time on it, but Band Hero also had a multi-platform release, and even a DS version with a drum kit peripheral. Functionally speaking, Band Hero was the same as Guitar Hero 5, with party mode, challenges on career mode, etc. The main difference for Band Hero is that the song choice was majority pop music and mainstream artists, with inclusions like Jesse McCartney, No Doubt, Jackson 5, Papa Roach, David Bowie, Pat Benatar, Taylor Swift, Maroon 5, Spice Girls, and more. more. Interestingly, the game had a feature that allowed you to import some of the songs from World Tour and Smash Hits for a small fee of 10 cents per song. These would be treated as DLC in the Band Hero catalog. This was done by entering a code that was included with the World Tour or Smash Hits instruction booklets. Interesting feature, but kind of nice to be able to merge all your content into one game. The game also had support for World Tour and Guitar Hero 5 DLC built into the game, but sadly all those DLC songs have been removed. have been delisted as of 2014, so there's no way to buy them anymore. The game received mixed reviews, although they were somewhat positive. If anything, the reviewers seemed confused as to who this game was marketed to. The game had a very wide selection of music, which sometimes has issues of being too broad and not appealing to any specific audience at all. In addition, since the song list was mostly pop, the difficulty curve of the game was pretty easy, though reviewers did mention that it seemed like each song had at least one somewhat difficult instrument. It did sell somewhat well and Activision actually had plans for a sequel to Band Hero, but due to declining market interests It was never produced. At this point We've had four Guitar Hero games jammed into a year and we're not even done yet. To finish off In 2009 we have Guitar Hero Van Halen, once again not produced by Neversoft, instead being made by Underground Development. Now Underground Development didn't make many games, but they were formerly known as Z-Axis. And do you want to know what Z-Axis made? BMX XXX. Yeah, that game. Guitar Hero Van Halen was released on December 22nd, 2009, and was interestingly based on World Tour's engine, not Guitar Hero 5. So it actually loses some features from Guitar Hero 5, like drop-in drop-out play, which is, uh... Not great. For a time, it was actually bundled as a free download that came with Guitar Hero 5, which is also really weird. This game was blasted pretty heavily by critics. It was far less feature-rich and less of a tribute to the band's history. than Metallica was, in addition to straight-up losing features that the game had in Guitar Hero 5. It used modern representations of the band members rather than classic ones, which is an interesting choice for a band whose popularity was generally highest in the 1970s and 80s. It also omits some of the former band members, adding to the issues of representing the band's history. Most critics seem to believe that not only was it not a good representation of Van Halen, but it also did nothing for the Guitar Hero franchise and thus sold quite poorly, less than 250,000 copies within the first half year it was released, not even cracking 100,000 in North America. It was even the lowest rated Guitar Hero game. At this point, market saturation of the genre was causing the series to become bloated and slow to a crawl, in addition to the sales dropping consistently over time due to general public tiredness with the music game genre. This is about the time where the plastic instruments game crash and music games crashing as a whole would start. in North America. Activision had helped facilitate the destruction of an entire genre by pumping out nine releases in the span of barely two years. With Rock Band and other games like Just Dance putting pressure on the market for music games, it wouldn't be long before producing them for a North American market would become completely unsustainable. 2010 would mark the end of the Guitar Hero era with just two more releases. The first was Guitar Hero Modern Hits on DS. I won't spend too much more time on the DS games, just because this one was largely similar to the last one. It reviewed pretty similarly to the last DS games, though was released at a bit of a bad time as the Nintendo DSi had just released, which did not have the Game Boy Advance port at the bottom, which was how the guitar controller peripheral attached. After Modern Hits, the original series will be rounded out in September of 2010 with Guitar Hero Warriors of Rock. For the last major release of the original Guitar Hero franchise, we have Guitar Hero Warriors of Rock. Released on September 24th, 2010, this would be the last five prick guitar hero game and development of the game returned to Neversoft for the final time. The game featured 93 songs with artists like Soundgarden, Slayer, Black Sabbath, Dragonforce, Megadeth, Anthrax, Foo Fighters, Styx, The Offspring, and more. The game was created by an in-house team at Activision after Activision dissolved Red Octane, bringing some of the old members of that team in for Warriors of Rock. Additionally, Neversoft's Guitar Hero division would be also shuttered after the completion of this game. It was originally planned to move production to a different team after closing Neversoft's Guitar Hero Division, but that never happened. Aside from the usual inclusions like Career Mode, called Quest Mode in this game, the main new feature of the game was that of Warrior characters unlocked by playing through Quest Mode, which had gameplay differences when using them, such as a character that could 6x the Star Power Multiplier rather than just doubling it. Warriors of Rock saw middling reviews overall. Reviewers noted that the game made a considerable effort to distance itself from Rock Band, but was described as a game that was more like a game of the past. described by reviewers as aimless and nothing more than a way to keep the series afloat. The game targeted series veterans more than casuals, both with its theming and also song choice and presentation, as such lacking the casual appeal that made the series so popular. The song choice in particular was noted by critics, with some saying that it felt like they just ran out of good songs to use that people knew. The sales of the game were below estimates in the first week, and the total collective sales of both Warriors of Rock and DJ Hero 2 were below the average. were under 1 million in 2010. This abysmal franchise performance led Activision to entirely stop development of Guitar Hero and any planned sequels. It seems Activision had finally realized the music game market in North America was drying up and 5-fret Guitar Hero would be shelved. The series would go dormant for five years until 2015. Five years later, on October 20th, 2015, Guitar Hero Live was released. This was an attempted reboot of the series that involved reworking the gameplay and presentation to be more modern. Remember DJ Hero, the spin-off I mentioned earlier? Well, this game was made by those people. 5 fret as we knew it was completely removed, and with it came a new 6 fret style of gameplay and new guitars to boot. The new guitar featured two rows of 3 frets rather than one row of 5, and the gameplay visually was reduced to 3 frets with each lane showing the notes for the top row, the bottom row, and the top row. and both rows. This meant that all new guitars were manufactured just for this release. Some have said the Guitar Hero Live controllers were cheaply made and broke easily, but more or less they were serviceable for the new playstyle. The game's concept itself was also changed. To fit the live live name, the gameplay was redesigned to be centered around live performances in the game's live mode. The main feature for this was background videos of you on stage in a first-person view performing with a non-descriptive band, featuring an audience whose reactions would dine- dynamically adjust to how well you play the song. Play well and the audience will be jamming along, play poorly, and you get some of the most painful awkward staring you've ever experienced from a virtual crowd. Live mode was also Guitar Hero Live's career mode, having the players progress through different venues, playing different stages with different set lists. This new live presentation style helped cement Guitar Hero's move away from being cartoony and becoming more realistic. The other mode of Guitar Hero Live was Guitar Hero TV. or GHTV for short. GHTV was a mode that honestly functioned very similar to Guitar Hero 5's drop in drop out quick play. The presentation of the mode was that of channels that you'd select that played different types of music. These would automatically play through different tracks a la MTV's music video cycle that they used to do on live television. You could also spend earned or bought credits to play specific songs from Guitar Hero TV's lineup. The mode featured asynchronous leaderboard. as the mode wasn't actually true multiplayer, and new songs would be regularly added in premium shows. These could be accessed by a few different means, and then a week later, the songs would be added to the normal set list. If you include the GHTV set list, the game boasted a whopping 484 songs, which is a ridiculous amount, especially for a new gameplay style. Unfortunately, Guitar Hero TV's servers have been since shut down, which reduced the game's song list by over 90%. 90%, down to just the single player mode's 42 songs. This actually led to a class action lawsuit against Activision for removing a majority of the game's content. Guitar Hero Live reviewed somewhat well, but sold poorly. It was praised for taking a risk and trying to refresh the gameplay, but the live video aspect of the game was criticized for feeling cheesy and not being used well. The weirdest part of the live video of the cover band for me is that they decided to still use studio recording. despite being able to see the not real band performing the real song. This would have been the perfect excuse to bring cover band song versions back. It would have fit the game. The main song list lineup was criticized for picking pop songs that aren't interesting to play on guitar, and the game dropped the other instruments, so this was a more notable complaint this time around. GHTV received some praise for evoking feelings of old school MTV, but was criticized for lacking control over what you're playing, and for not having a practice mode of any kind for songs that were on that part of the game. Guitar Hero Live did not meet Activision's sales targets, despite outselling Guitar Hero 5 and Warriors of Rock. Kind of makes you wonder what their sales goals even were. As a result of the game's internal failure, 50 employees were laid off and Guitar Hero has not been seen since. For most people, the writing on the wall was clear for why this game died. Hell, even Activision and the reviewers probably knew before it happened. The main reason for the death of Guitar Hero was oversaturation of the music game market in North America, for which Activision themselves were partially responsible. Activision, over the course of the franchise's life, was consistently criticized for oversaturating the market with music games. Spin-offs that didn't do much to innovate, and tons of releases in a two-year span wore the market down over time, leading to an overall decrease in interest in North America. People just got tired of it. A game concept that's inherently novel probably didn't do too well when suddenly it wasn't novel anymore. Aside from issues of demand, and oversupply was actually something that was a big problem. sometimes an issue as well due to limitations of retail store space. Stores can only hold so many big plastic instrument boxes, so retail stores weren't exactly enjoying Activision shitting out a billion games either. There were some other games at the time like Rock Band that were taking a slower paced model of release, handling large amounts of DLC and backwards compatible content, but Guitar Hero did not do this. They went full tilt releasing game after game to rake in as much money as they could off the franchise. Sales 50% year-over-year from 2008 to 2009, and sales basically stalled out from there and slowly died, and with it, Guitar Hero. But unlike our other games, Guitar Hero doesn't end here. Pretty much all the other games I've covered on this series have died and become nearly impossible or actually impossible to play, forgotten to time never to be played again by most people. But Guitar Hero is not that. Through the dedicated community for Guitar Hero 3 on PC, modding communities kept Guitar Hero alive in underground spheres of custom song charting. People continued to get better, and the community persevered to keep on playing the game. Now, 12 years after the death of 5th fret guitar hero, the community has been able to completely flourish and develop a new dedicated player base of hardcore and casual fans playing custom charts, all thanks to community effort. The amount of projects in the 5th fret and rock band community are honestly absurd, so here's as many of them as I could find. A big thanks to Fripp for spot checking this list for me to make sure I didn't miss anything obvious. Fripp is also a totally sick player, so if you ever want to see what high level guitar players he's got, Guitar Hero looks like in the year 2022, definitely give his stream a follow. We'll start off with Clone Hero. Clone Hero has become the gold standard for modern Guitar Hero, featuring a more modernized engine built in Unity, performance optimizations to allow for it to be run on many different setups and devices, and loads of custom songs. The community of charters for Clone Hero is vast and produce mountains of quality content every year. Multiple set lists of song counts far surpassing that of any of the other games. the official games released every year, with chart quality matching and often exceeding official charts. It is no overstatement to say that you could easily pick up Clone Hero and play for years and not finish all the content. There is so much of it out there for you to play. Clone Hero is constantly being updated with new features, like the recently added multiplayer lobbies and additional stat tracking for things like ghosted inputs. It even supports features that allow for innovative new ways to play Guitar Hero, like mod charts, which have seen some viral popularity online due to their quality and often completely insane concepts. I would highly recommend checking out Clone Hero. The game will eventually transition to being called Strike Line in an effort to distance themselves from the Hero brand, and from what we can tell for now, the future looks bright for Clone Hero. Even Clone Hero itself has had a Thor fan project in the form of ScoreSpy Clone Hero. This is a client that just released as recently as during the writing of this video. ScoreSpy was a project to create an online leaderboard for Clone Hero that would support score screenshots as a method of score submission. Since then, it has evolved into a fully separate functional client with a launcher. ScoreSpy CH allows for song downloading via the chorus extension in the launcher, integration with ScoreSpy's online leaderboards including an in-game leaderboard display, a note count display, added animations and note streak pop-ups, a simplified menu, and more. It adds a ton of additional features on top of Clone Heroes already existing great features, and is a super awesome new way to play Five Threat. Moving away from fully custom engines, a lot of the older games have seen fan made updates to make their res- respective games more modernized for people who want a way to go back and play the classic 5 fret games with some quality of life updates. First is Guitar Hero 2 Deluxe. Guitar Hero 2 Deluxe makes an effort to modernize Guitar Hero 2 by adding some of the other series features into the the game, and also some additional content. You have things like a note streak pop-up, an immediate jump to practice mode, and even script libraries provided for modding the game. The biggest content additions Guitar Hero 2 Deluxe has seen are including the Rocks the 80s setlist, some of the Guitar Hero 1 setlist, and a bunch of new content to Guitar Hero 2. Apparently they almost filled the disc space up doing this. And on top of all that, these maniacs found a way to add drum support to Guitar Hero 2. Guitar Hero 2 Deluxe has a available on their website, which I've linked below. It's a great way to rediscover one of the fan favorite entries in the Guitar Hero franchise. Lastly, though not Guitar Hero, I figured it would also make sense to mention Rock Band 2 Deluxe. Rock Band 2 Deluxe is made in a similar vein to Guitar Hero 2 Deluxe, but, well, for Rock Band. Though a lot of the updates are quality of life for drums, Guitar did get some adjustments too, like no strum limit, a no flames modifier, and more ported content from other Rock Band games. It has 1080p support for if you're running a BP PC on an emulator, a black venue for improving frame rate, and more. Definitely a great way to experience Rock Band 2 again with some updated features. The Guitar Hero community has gone beyond 5 fret projects as well. Just recently, there was a project by a fan to restore the Guitar Hero TV server so that all content could be accessed again. I don't know much about it right now, but it seems the future may be bright even for the 6 fret community. And projects have extended outside of software too. Guitar controllers are an issue these days. due to aging hardware and lack of new official controllers. So a few members of the community have taken it upon themselves to build new guitars and retrofit old ones with arduinos and mechanical switches in the frets and strum bar. Both Katana Mods and 760 Creations do small drops of these guitars, so keep an eye out for them if you want to nab a Guitar Hero controller full of modernized hardware. While we have to add Guitar Hero to our list of dead rhythm games, the Guitar Hero community is more alive than ever. custom songs, fan patches for old engines, modernized guitars, and more. There really never has been a better time to get into Guitar Hero. Thank you all so much for watching. While this is the last episode of Dead Rhythm Games that I had planned, the series will probably see a few more entries in the future. So I hope you'll all stick around for the future of the channel where I'll cover more rhythm games and beyond. And thank you all for being patient waiting for videos. I do still do this in my free time, although I would like to take it more seriously in the future. So if you enjoyed the video, consider checking out my Patreon below. It would mean a lot to me. Check out my Twitter and my Twitch to keep up with me outside of my videos, and if you like this video, don't forget to like and subscribe. Thanks everyone so much for watching, and I'll see you guys next time.

Guitar Hero was created via a partnership with Red Octane and Harmonix. Harmonix had experience in the rhythm game genre, having already created Frequency, Amplitude, and Karaoke Revolution. Meanwhile, Red Octane was interested in bringing a game with similar feel to Konami's Guitar Freaks to western markets. Guitar Freaks was created in 1999, predating Guitar Hero by almost six years, but was far less well known due to only being really prevalent in Japan. Guitar Hero itself is characterized by a scrolling highway representing that of the neck of a guitar.

There are five lanes, each corresponding to a button on the plastic controller that is used to play the game, or a a regular controller if you're a psycho. When a note arrives at the corresponding button inside the hit window, you have to hold the button down and strum the strum bar. This creates gameplay vaguely replicating that of playing a guitar, though with some inaccuracy to reality of course. In addition, there are hammer-on notes and pull-off notes, often referred to as hopos.

Hopos can be hit without strumming so long as you hit the previous note, allowing for fast segments of tapping buttons. Throughout the franchise's life, more note types would be added to diversify gameplay such as open notes and tap notes, but we'll touch on those later. The game spans four difficulties, easy, medium, hard, and expert, with each mode iterating on the previous difficulty and adding more complexity. The most distinguishing factor between the difficulties is the number of notes the charts use. Easy charts use only the green, red, and yellow frets, medium adds in the blue fret, and hard and expert add in the orange fret for the highest complexity.

There are a monstrous amount of releases, so let's take a look. through the history of the Guitar Hero franchise starting right from the beginning. As a side note, most of the songs in Guitar Hero are well-known pieces of music that will likely lead to this video getting copyright striked or demonetized. As such, throughout this video I'll be using songs made by the customs community for Clone Hero. A huge shout out to these artists who you will hear throughout the video.

I'll leave a list of all the artists in the description of the video below. They make some amazing music and you should definitely check out their charts and songs. songs.

Now then, on with the video. The original Guitar Hero was released on November 7th, 2005 for the Playstation 2. The game was created by Harmonix and published by Red Octane. The story of how the first Guitar Hero game came to be depended on a bit of luck.

Around this time, the first guitar hero Red Octane was looking to find a way to create guitar controllers to bring guitar freaks to North America. However, investors turned this idea down. Not to be dissuaded by their failure to secure interest in an investment to bring guitar freaks over to North America, Red Octane would then approach Harmonix with the idea for a game that was somewhat more original, while still allowing for the creation of the guitar peripheral that they were interested in making. Though the game would still be directly inspired by Guitar Freaks.

This came on the back of Harmonix failing to pitch one of their other games, Frequency, to Microsoft. In the pitch meeting, Microsoft told Harmonix that no rhythm game would ever succeed without a controller peripheral. Heeding this advice, Harmonix decided to team up with Red Octane to create the original Guitar Hero.

As such, when the game released, it was shipped with a Gibson SG guitar controller to allow for the desired guitar-like gameplay. Guitar Hero features covers of 30 licensed popular rock songs and 17 bonus songs that use the master recordings. Covers were chosen for the main setlist due to licensing.

One of the major difficulties in creating a rhythm game is music licensing, especially in a game dependent on music in popular culture, often consisting of songs that are well-known. This leads to very high licensing costs, especially if you're a music lover. especially if using the master recording.

However, getting the rights to create a cover is significantly cheaper and sometimes easier than getting the rights to use the master recording. As such, to create a higher quality setlist with more recognizable songs, covers were chosen instead of masters. This actually complemented the game quite well, as Guitar Hero's career mode follows a cover band on tour. In this way, the cover songs match the cover band and don't feel terribly out of place or cheap. The game's songlist featured many well-known songs, known hard rock and heavy metal artists such as Motorhead, Ozzy Osbourne, Blue Oyster Cult, Red Hot Chili Peppers, Black Sabbath, Queen, ZZ Top, Deep Purple, Megadeth, Judas Priest, and David Bowie to name a few.

The main mode of the game is the career mode where the player's in-game band performs shows at fictional venues and completing songs unlocks them in other parts of the game. It also had a multiplayer mode where each player has parts of a chart that they would play alternating with their opponent. The original Guitar Hero was a surprising hit. I've spoken before about what I think it takes for a rhythm game to be popular for a mass market, those being a novel way to interact with the game, in this case the guitar controller, and a recognizable song list. Guitar Hero checked both of these boxes, and sure enough, it was a smash hit.

The game was praised for both of those things, being noted as having a fantastic soundtrack and a great peripheral. It received several awards and would go on to not only kickstart Guitar Hero as a franchise, but also the rise in popularity of rhythm games in North America for quite a few years to come. Harmonix and Red Octane undoubtedly wanted to ride off the success, so work on a sequel would begin. Exactly one year later, on November 7th, 2006, Guitar Hero 2 was released on PS2, though it would also be released a bit later for Xbox 360 on April 3rd, 2007. The game was once again developed by Harmonix, and the game was shipped with a new Gibson SG controller on the PS2, and the iconic X-Floor guitar for Xbox 360. The game released with 64 songs, 40 licensed covers, and 24 bonus songs that used the master recordings.

Interestingly, the Xbox 360 version had 10 extra songs and also had some DLC. Notable artists for Guitar Hero 2's soundtrack consisted of Avenged Sevenfold, Rolling Stones, My Chemical Romance, Nirvana, Lamb of God, Aerosmith, Foo Fighters, Motley Crue, Guns N' Roses, and more. They took the time to expand the game's feature set a bit in Guitar Hero 2. For starters, the encore song was added to a career mode, which was a bonus song that you got to play at the end of a venue when you were progressing through career mode on medium or higher.

This would become a series staple feature and last for quite a while. They also fleshed out the multiplayer bringing the total number of modes from 1 up to 3. First up was Face Off which was the same mode from the first game, this time allowing players to play on different difficulties. This made playing the mode very accessible with all types of skill levels.

Next was Pro Face Off which is sort of the true 1v1 mode. This mode has the two players playing on the same difficulty, but unlike in face-off mode, you play the full chart. Lastly was co-op mode, where one player would play the guitar track, and the other player would play either the bass guitar or the rhythm guitar track, depending on the song. These three modes gave the game significantly more multiplayer options, and in my opinion, helped bring the game up to more of a full experience. Adding further to that full experience was practice mode.

Practice mode in Guitar Hero allows the player to practice individual sections of a song and slow them down, furthering the tools the game gave to the player to master all its hardest tracks. Guitar Hero 2 was extremely well received, even more so than Guitar Hero 1. Guitar Hero 2 helped to further solidify the franchise and to continue the increasing trend in popularity that rhythm games were starting to develop in North America. Not only that, but from Guitar Hero 2 we would actually see the franchise spawn its first spin-off title. Released on July 24th, 2007 was Guitar Hero Encore Rocks the 80s.

This game went back to only releasing on PS2, and did not have a new guitar controller created for it. This game was still developed by Harmonix, although it was based off of the Guitar Hero 2 engine again, rather than having a new engine. As such, the game was almost exactly the same as Guitar Hero 2 feature-wise. It was marketed more as an expansion than a new entry in the series, though it still commanded a $50 price tag.

The songlist consisted of just 30 songs, down from Guitar Hero 2's 64, and featured a songlist consisting of 80s music with names like Judas Priest, Billy Squire, Quiet Riot, Dio, and more. The game received lukewarm reception, citing the songlist and price tag. Critics felt that the game felt like a bit of a cash-in with the low amount of content and lack of differences in the game itself.

This would be a bit of an indicator for things to come. Rocks the 80s would be the last Guitar Hero title that Harmonix would develop as a result of the Guitar Hero brand changing hands. In June of 2006, Rad Octane, who had published Guitar Hero up to this point, was acquired by Activision.

Activision had also spent $100 million to acquire the rights to the Guitar Hero franchise. However, around the same time, Harmonix would be bought out by MTV Games, and no longer develop Guitar Hero. Activision gave the development duties to Neversoft, who had been developing the Tony Hawk games.

With the series having changed hands, we wouldn't have to wait long to see what Neversoft would do with the Guitar Hero name. Released on October 27th, 2007 was Guitar Hero 3 Legends of Rock, coming out on PlayStation 2, PlayStation 3, Wii, and Xbox 360. The game had 73 songs at launch, 42 in the main setlist, 6 exclusive to the co-op career mode, and 25 bonus songs. Not all the songs in the setlist are covers anymore, signaling a shift away from that part of Guitar Hero's legacy.

This was probably due to Activision having more money for music licensing, if I had to guess. Notable artists in the song list included Smashing Pumpkins, Beastie Boys, Slayer, Weezer, Kiss, and more. Career mode was improved again with the addition of a small storyline, and also boss battles using the game's new battle mode features.

Battle mode was new to the multiplayer modes in Guitar Hero 3, allowing players to attack each other with power-ups that inflict negative effects on their opponent. The game also finally supported online multiplayer. This came with the prevalence of online gaming starting to pick up speed on consoles as the Xbox 360 and PS3 got further into their lifespans. The game also features a co-op career mode, but progresses the same way as the single player career does.

Overall the game actually reviewed slightly worse than Guitar Hero 2, but sold extremely well. At the time it released it was one of the best selling video games in the United States ever. and Activision made the claim that it was the first video game to ever exceed $1 billion in sales.

I'd make the argument that this game was the peak of Guitar Hero's popularity, with the phenomenon reaching critical mass around this time. The game also enjoyed some virality with the game making the rounds in schools and on early YouTube. Players like Guitar Hero Phenom and Chris4Life did a great job showcasing the high skill level that was possible in Guitar Hero's upper difficulty.

Adding to this was the bonus song Through the Fire and Flames by Dragonforce. TTF AF's expert chart would become the iconic boss song of the whole franchise, with all sorts of players using it as a claim to skill when they could pass it, and top players racing to see who could full combo at first. Additionally, one thing I didn't mention is that the game actually got a PC release, being released on Windows and Mac in late 2007. While these ports of the game were a bit infamous for having bugs, They would kickstart the custom song scene in Guitar Hero that would lead far into the future. At this point, we've had four games in the span of about three years, if you count the spinoff as well.

Not too bad. Remember how I said that Rocks the 80s was a sign of things to come? Well, I guess after GH3 sold gangbusters for Activision, they smelled blood in the water. So hold on to your hats, we are about to get absolutely buck wild. Welcome to the Activision era.

What began was a complete onslaught of new games, spin-offs, and multi-platform releases. Activision was going all out. 2008 started off with the series' second spin-off title, Guitar Hero Aerosmith, released on June 27th, 2008. Guitar Hero Aerosmith used Guitar Hero 3's engine, and each member of Aerosmith was motion-captured to aid in recreating them in-game.

Apparently the idea for Guitar Hero Aerosmith at the time was considered a no-brainer and fitting for the series, which to be fair, it is. Additionally, they also apparently managed to secure a license that would prevent the song's use in other rhythm games for a certain period of time after release. This was likely seen as a desirable outcome for Activision to prevent the competition from also acquiring these licenses, notably Harmonix who were now creating the competing Rock Band.

That said, it remained to be seen whether the game would have enough new features and content to justify its near full price tag. The game featured 41 songs, far less than Guitar Hero 3, with 29 songs from Aerosmith and 11 from bands that Aerosmith was inspired by or toured with. Unfortunately, it seems that this effort, or lack thereof, wasn't enough, and the game received mixed reviews. It was credited for trying the idea of a band-specific game, but criticized for being largely the same as Guitar Hero 3, yet charging full price.

Additionally, due to the nature of the game's song list, the difficulty curve was criticized as being lacking and making the career mode boring. In the end, this was further writing on the wall from critics voicing their distaste with Guitar Hero making spin-off titles at full price, and were starting to voice their concerns about market saturation even now. That said, after Aerosmith's middling performance, Neversoft would hit back with another well-received entry in the series.

On October 26th, 2008, Neversoft and Activision would release Guitar Hero's fourth main entry, Guitar Hero World Tour. World Tour would serve as a much more significant entry to the Guitar Hero franchise, with a lot of gameplay and presentation updates. Two new note types were added to diversify gameplay.

First are tap notes, which are a slightly transparent version of the regular notes. These can be played either by just pressing the frets on the guitar controller, or by sliding your hand on the lower touch section of the new guitar controllers released with World Tour, leading to the notes also sometimes being called slide or slider notes. The biggest difference between tap notes and hopos is that unlike hopos, if you miss a tap note you don't have to strum to start hitting notes again, you can simply resume hitting the next note.

In addition to tap notes, open notes were also added. Open notes are a note represented by a long purple bar that spans across the whole highway, requiring that no frets are being pressed to be hit. These two notes really helped to spice the gameplay up and add more depth, and while the slider section of the game is a bit more complex, it's still a great way to get the game going.

The game is also a great way to get the game going, and while the slider section of the game is a bit more complex, it's still the guitar was seen as generally imprecise, the notes themselves were a solid addition to gameplay. In addition to the two note types, the game also added support for drums and vocals. This was likely in response to Rock Band, which had just come out the previous year. The game featured 86 songs, and at this point in the series there were no more covers, having just been completely phased out.

I guess Activision decided that they could eat most of the cost of just licensing the Masters now, so no more covers. covers. There was also DLC in the game as well, being a staple of the series at this point, as most new releases from here on got DLC. The game's song lists feature artists like System of a Down, Blink-182, Korn, Van Halen, Tool, Dream Theater, and more. The career mode was also modified.

The mode was now broken up into gigs, where you play a setlist rather than one setlist per location. A banned career mode was also added, replacing the co-op career that was present before. before, though functionally the same. World Tour had a bit more in the field of customization options as well.

Specifically, custom characters were able to be created, with this feature based on the Create a Skater mode from the Tony Hawk series. Players could even create their own songs with charts in the game's music studio, and the songs could be shared online with other players. It seems like in general after Aerosmith's relative lack of features and effort, Neversoft was out to prove that Guitar Hero still had life in it and that it could be continuing for a long time, and the reviews reflected that as well. The game reviewed generally positively and received favorably, although it did understandably suffer some comparisons to Rock Band. That said, the signs of saturation and genre fatigue were starting to show here.

The game's initial sales were far lower, selling less than half in its first week of what Guitar Hero 3 did in the same period of time. But generally, the series was still received favorably at this point. In addition to Aerosmith and World Tour, not one, but two DS Guitar Hero games were released in 2008, barely six months apart.

Guitar Hero on Tour was released on June 22nd, 2008. It was technically a spin-off of the main series, as it features altered gameplay to support the Nintendo DS. I'd wager a lot of you have seen this, but there was a Guitar Hero controller, Grip Purr, referral for the DS, with 4 frets and a guitar pick stylus. The DS game featured songs from Smash Mouth, Blink 182, Freeze Pop, Red Hot Chili Peppers, Maroon 5, and more. The game was decently feature complete for a DS version of Guitar Hero, with single player modes and local wifi capabilities for multiplayer. That said, despite the decent effort made by Vicarious Visions, critics still seemed to feel that the game was more of an experiment than a full new Guitar Hero game.

The game was praised for the uniqueness of the gimmick and the ability to translate Guitar Hero to a portable system, but the controller grip itself was heavily criticized. Reports of the grip being difficult to hold, causing hand cramps, difficulty keeping the DS steady while playing, and of the grip just straight up falling out of the console while playing requiring a restart. Despite this, it seems Activision had deemed the game a success, and just six months later, Guitar Hero On Tour Decades was released.

Despite critics noting that there was essentially no change in the gameplay and hardware, and that the game felt more like an expansion pack to the original On Tour, the game actually reviewed better than the original, with positives being that of a well-rounded tracklist, improved touch interface, and support for connectivity with the original version of On Tour. So that's four games in the span of one year. Needless to say, Activision had turned the dial up on Guitar Hero, and there was even more to come.

If anything, Activision stepped on the gas pedal even harder in 2009. 2009 started off with the series second band-centric game Guitar Hero Metallica, released on March 29th, 2009. It was based on the Guitar Hero World Tour engine and had essentially the same game features as World Tour, similar to how Aerosmith had the same features as GH3. The main addition to gameplay was that of Expert Plus for drums. The main difference in this mo- The mode, other than increased difficulty, was that the game had support for double bass pedal, allowing for much higher bass pedal density.

It was seen as a good addition for veteran players for fleshing out the difficulty. The game's song list consisted of 28 Metallica songs and 21 other songs that were picked by Metallica. Similar to Aerosmith, the band themselves were brought in to do motion capture for their likenesses.

The game received generally favorable reviews, actually being the highest rated Never Stop Guitar Hero game to this point. It was seen as less of a cash-in than Aerosmith and Rock the 80s, being a bit more faithful to the band and its history, as well as just being a bit of a better game. Metallica's catalog of songs was more suited to creating a smooth difficulty curve, and the songs were more song choices were generally praised. The main criticism of the game actually came with the lack of DLC support, as well as the same pricing complaint that the other spinoff games received, that being less content and a reused engine for full price. It seems that the spinoff games were never really able to shake that criticism, most likely due to the reused engine and fast production time of the Guitar Hero games coming out around this time.

I'm guessing to reviewers they really felt more like expansions even if they were good games. While Metallica started 2009 off strong for Guitar Hero, it would not last. While Metallica wasn't considered a cash-in, the next game wouldn't dodge the same criticism.

On June 16th, 2009, Guitar Hero Smash Hits was released. Interestingly, this game was not developed by Neversoft, instead being developed by Beanox, who up to this point had made the, um, the Bee Movie game. Yeah, the Bee Movie game.

The game features 48... songs with full band support, all from Guitar Hero 1, 2, 80s, 3, and Aerosmith. It does retain a few of the modern additions like Expert Post for Drums, but overall it's basically a repackaging and re-release of older Guitar Hero content.

And well, let's just say it's not a super positive thing that this game gets abbreviated to Guitar Hero Shits. While the game reviewed somewhat okay, the game was generally criticized for being a cash-in and displaying the issue with the the saturation of the music game market at the time of its release. Once again, it was a full price spinoff despite being a completely reused songlist. Having full band added was seen as a good move, but generally just felt like a way to justify the content being repackaged and re-released.

Most of the reviews of the time said that it felt like these should have just been packaged up as DLC rather than demanding a full $60 price tag. The songs were switched to master recordings as well, which was praised as some of those original copies. covers haven't exactly aged super well.

However, the songs received recharts, some of which were criticized for trivializing difficulty, as many of them added tap notes, which, while not inherently making a chart easier to score on or full combo, does significantly increase their ability to be cleared, which is obviously what most reviewers would be basing their thoughts on. Overall, shits would be seen as middling at best and as a bit of a cash grab. Activision would try to rebound from this by heading into the next mainline entry in the Guitar Hero franchise. Released on September 1st, 2009 was Guitar Hero 5. At this point in the franchise, full band is essentially a given now seeing as they had to compete with rock band.

It had 85 songs in the base game, featuring artists like The Killers, Jimmy Eat World, Children of Bodom, Rammstein, Gorillaz, Duran Duran, Coldplay, and more, and had DLC as well, which was par for the course in the main releases. Guitar Hero 5 added new multiplayer modes, most notably Party Play which is a drop in drop out mode that starts from the main menu, getting you right into playing songs immediately. You can change difficulties and drop in and out at will, with the songs cycling randomly and continuously as you play. Honestly I think this is a great mode, especially for an actual party setting where you might have people coming and going from the game throughout the day. Career mode was updated to add challenges to each song to aid in adding replayability.

Each challenge has a set of medals to get for completing the associated challenges, and I personally liked these a decent amount. The game was received pretty well, reviewing okay and selling a similar amount to Guitar Hero World Tour in its first week. The feature editions were received positively, despite the song list being a little lacking compared to other entries.

However, industry analysts were starting to more publicly speculate on whether or not the entire market was becoming oversaturated due to too many releases in a short span, especially those that shipped with new controllers. The game also had a weird controversy, since they decided it would be a good idea to include Kurt Cobain as a playable character on all songs. They got in a bit of hot water with Cobain's estate and reviewers for adding him.

So yeah, that was a weird thing that happened. At this point, we are coming to the end of 2009, so you'd think we're almost done with releases for this year. But- you would be wrong.

Before we continue through 2009, I just wanna stop and briefly mention DJ Hero. DJ Hero is a Guitar Hero spinoff game using the Hero title, also releasing in 2009. While we aren't going to talk about DJ Hero much at all in this video, since it could basically have its own Dead Rhythm Games episode, it served to continue to clog up the plastic instrument music games market during Guitar Hero's all-out madness. So while DJ Hero has some of its own things going for it, it maybe wasn't the best time to release it.

Speaking of spin-offs, up next is Guitar Hero 5's spin-off, Band Hero. Band Hero was released on November 3rd, 2009, and was based on Guitar Hero 5's engine. I don't want to spend too much time on it, but Band Hero also had a multi-platform release, and even a DS version with a drum kit peripheral.

Functionally speaking, Band Hero was the same as Guitar Hero 5, with party mode, challenges on career mode, etc. The main difference for Band Hero is that the song choice was majority pop music and mainstream artists, with inclusions like Jesse McCartney, No Doubt, Jackson 5, Papa Roach, David Bowie, Pat Benatar, Taylor Swift, Maroon 5, Spice Girls, and more. more.

Interestingly, the game had a feature that allowed you to import some of the songs from World Tour and Smash Hits for a small fee of 10 cents per song. These would be treated as DLC in the Band Hero catalog. This was done by entering a code that was included with the World Tour or Smash Hits instruction booklets. Interesting feature, but kind of nice to be able to merge all your content into one game. The game also had support for World Tour and Guitar Hero 5 DLC built into the game, but sadly all those DLC songs have been removed.

have been delisted as of 2014, so there's no way to buy them anymore. The game received mixed reviews, although they were somewhat positive. If anything, the reviewers seemed confused as to who this game was marketed to.

The game had a very wide selection of music, which sometimes has issues of being too broad and not appealing to any specific audience at all. In addition, since the song list was mostly pop, the difficulty curve of the game was pretty easy, though reviewers did mention that it seemed like each song had at least one somewhat difficult instrument. It did sell somewhat well and Activision actually had plans for a sequel to Band Hero, but due to declining market interests It was never produced.

At this point We've had four Guitar Hero games jammed into a year and we're not even done yet. To finish off In 2009 we have Guitar Hero Van Halen, once again not produced by Neversoft, instead being made by Underground Development. Now Underground Development didn't make many games, but they were formerly known as Z-Axis.

And do you want to know what Z-Axis made? BMX XXX. Yeah, that game.

Guitar Hero Van Halen was released on December 22nd, 2009, and was interestingly based on World Tour's engine, not Guitar Hero 5. So it actually loses some features from Guitar Hero 5, like drop-in drop-out play, which is, uh... Not great. For a time, it was actually bundled as a free download that came with Guitar Hero 5, which is also really weird. This game was blasted pretty heavily by critics.

It was far less feature-rich and less of a tribute to the band's history. than Metallica was, in addition to straight-up losing features that the game had in Guitar Hero 5. It used modern representations of the band members rather than classic ones, which is an interesting choice for a band whose popularity was generally highest in the 1970s and 80s. It also omits some of the former band members, adding to the issues of representing the band's history. Most critics seem to believe that not only was it not a good representation of Van Halen, but it also did nothing for the Guitar Hero franchise and thus sold quite poorly, less than 250,000 copies within the first half year it was released, not even cracking 100,000 in North America.

It was even the lowest rated Guitar Hero game. At this point, market saturation of the genre was causing the series to become bloated and slow to a crawl, in addition to the sales dropping consistently over time due to general public tiredness with the music game genre. This is about the time where the plastic instruments game crash and music games crashing as a whole would start.

in North America. Activision had helped facilitate the destruction of an entire genre by pumping out nine releases in the span of barely two years. With Rock Band and other games like Just Dance putting pressure on the market for music games, it wouldn't be long before producing them for a North American market would become completely unsustainable. 2010 would mark the end of the Guitar Hero era with just two more releases. The first was Guitar Hero Modern Hits on DS.

I won't spend too much more time on the DS games, just because this one was largely similar to the last one. It reviewed pretty similarly to the last DS games, though was released at a bit of a bad time as the Nintendo DSi had just released, which did not have the Game Boy Advance port at the bottom, which was how the guitar controller peripheral attached. After Modern Hits, the original series will be rounded out in September of 2010 with Guitar Hero Warriors of Rock.

For the last major release of the original Guitar Hero franchise, we have Guitar Hero Warriors of Rock. Released on September 24th, 2010, this would be the last five prick guitar hero game and development of the game returned to Neversoft for the final time. The game featured 93 songs with artists like Soundgarden, Slayer, Black Sabbath, Dragonforce, Megadeth, Anthrax, Foo Fighters, Styx, The Offspring, and more. The game was created by an in-house team at Activision after Activision dissolved Red Octane, bringing some of the old members of that team in for Warriors of Rock.

Additionally, Neversoft's Guitar Hero division would be also shuttered after the completion of this game. It was originally planned to move production to a different team after closing Neversoft's Guitar Hero Division, but that never happened. Aside from the usual inclusions like Career Mode, called Quest Mode in this game, the main new feature of the game was that of Warrior characters unlocked by playing through Quest Mode, which had gameplay differences when using them, such as a character that could 6x the Star Power Multiplier rather than just doubling it. Warriors of Rock saw middling reviews overall. Reviewers noted that the game made a considerable effort to distance itself from Rock Band, but was described as a game that was more like a game of the past.

described by reviewers as aimless and nothing more than a way to keep the series afloat. The game targeted series veterans more than casuals, both with its theming and also song choice and presentation, as such lacking the casual appeal that made the series so popular. The song choice in particular was noted by critics, with some saying that it felt like they just ran out of good songs to use that people knew. The sales of the game were below estimates in the first week, and the total collective sales of both Warriors of Rock and DJ Hero 2 were below the average.

were under 1 million in 2010. This abysmal franchise performance led Activision to entirely stop development of Guitar Hero and any planned sequels. It seems Activision had finally realized the music game market in North America was drying up and 5-fret Guitar Hero would be shelved. The series would go dormant for five years until 2015. Five years later, on October 20th, 2015, Guitar Hero Live was released. This was an attempted reboot of the series that involved reworking the gameplay and presentation to be more modern.

Remember DJ Hero, the spin-off I mentioned earlier? Well, this game was made by those people. 5 fret as we knew it was completely removed, and with it came a new 6 fret style of gameplay and new guitars to boot.

The new guitar featured two rows of 3 frets rather than one row of 5, and the gameplay visually was reduced to 3 frets with each lane showing the notes for the top row, the bottom row, and the top row. and both rows. This meant that all new guitars were manufactured just for this release.

Some have said the Guitar Hero Live controllers were cheaply made and broke easily, but more or less they were serviceable for the new playstyle. The game's concept itself was also changed. To fit the live live name, the gameplay was redesigned to be centered around live performances in the game's live mode.

The main feature for this was background videos of you on stage in a first-person view performing with a non-descriptive band, featuring an audience whose reactions would dine- dynamically adjust to how well you play the song. Play well and the audience will be jamming along, play poorly, and you get some of the most painful awkward staring you've ever experienced from a virtual crowd. Live mode was also Guitar Hero Live's career mode, having the players progress through different venues, playing different stages with different set lists.

This new live presentation style helped cement Guitar Hero's move away from being cartoony and becoming more realistic. The other mode of Guitar Hero Live was Guitar Hero TV. or GHTV for short. GHTV was a mode that honestly functioned very similar to Guitar Hero 5's drop in drop out quick play.

The presentation of the mode was that of channels that you'd select that played different types of music. These would automatically play through different tracks a la MTV's music video cycle that they used to do on live television. You could also spend earned or bought credits to play specific songs from Guitar Hero TV's lineup. The mode featured asynchronous leaderboard. as the mode wasn't actually true multiplayer, and new songs would be regularly added in premium shows.

These could be accessed by a few different means, and then a week later, the songs would be added to the normal set list. If you include the GHTV set list, the game boasted a whopping 484 songs, which is a ridiculous amount, especially for a new gameplay style. Unfortunately, Guitar Hero TV's servers have been since shut down, which reduced the game's song list by over 90%. 90%, down to just the single player mode's 42 songs.

This actually led to a class action lawsuit against Activision for removing a majority of the game's content. Guitar Hero Live reviewed somewhat well, but sold poorly. It was praised for taking a risk and trying to refresh the gameplay, but the live video aspect of the game was criticized for feeling cheesy and not being used well.

The weirdest part of the live video of the cover band for me is that they decided to still use studio recording. despite being able to see the not real band performing the real song. This would have been the perfect excuse to bring cover band song versions back.

It would have fit the game. The main song list lineup was criticized for picking pop songs that aren't interesting to play on guitar, and the game dropped the other instruments, so this was a more notable complaint this time around. GHTV received some praise for evoking feelings of old school MTV, but was criticized for lacking control over what you're playing, and for not having a practice mode of any kind for songs that were on that part of the game. Guitar Hero Live did not meet Activision's sales targets, despite outselling Guitar Hero 5 and Warriors of Rock. Kind of makes you wonder what their sales goals even were.

As a result of the game's internal failure, 50 employees were laid off and Guitar Hero has not been seen since. For most people, the writing on the wall was clear for why this game died. Hell, even Activision and the reviewers probably knew before it happened. The main reason for the death of Guitar Hero was oversaturation of the music game market in North America, for which Activision themselves were partially responsible. Activision, over the course of the franchise's life, was consistently criticized for oversaturating the market with music games.

Spin-offs that didn't do much to innovate, and tons of releases in a two-year span wore the market down over time, leading to an overall decrease in interest in North America. People just got tired of it. A game concept that's inherently novel probably didn't do too well when suddenly it wasn't novel anymore.

Aside from issues of demand, and oversupply was actually something that was a big problem. sometimes an issue as well due to limitations of retail store space. Stores can only hold so many big plastic instrument boxes, so retail stores weren't exactly enjoying Activision shitting out a billion games either.

There were some other games at the time like Rock Band that were taking a slower paced model of release, handling large amounts of DLC and backwards compatible content, but Guitar Hero did not do this. They went full tilt releasing game after game to rake in as much money as they could off the franchise. Sales 50% year-over-year from 2008 to 2009, and sales basically stalled out from there and slowly died, and with it, Guitar Hero.

But unlike our other games, Guitar Hero doesn't end here. Pretty much all the other games I've covered on this series have died and become nearly impossible or actually impossible to play, forgotten to time never to be played again by most people. But Guitar Hero is not that.

Through the dedicated community for Guitar Hero 3 on PC, modding communities kept Guitar Hero alive in underground spheres of custom song charting. People continued to get better, and the community persevered to keep on playing the game. Now, 12 years after the death of 5th fret guitar hero, the community has been able to completely flourish and develop a new dedicated player base of hardcore and casual fans playing custom charts, all thanks to community effort.

The amount of projects in the 5th fret and rock band community are honestly absurd, so here's as many of them as I could find. A big thanks to Fripp for spot checking this list for me to make sure I didn't miss anything obvious. Fripp is also a totally sick player, so if you ever want to see what high level guitar players he's got, Guitar Hero looks like in the year 2022, definitely give his stream a follow. We'll start off with Clone Hero. Clone Hero has become the gold standard for modern Guitar Hero, featuring a more modernized engine built in Unity, performance optimizations to allow for it to be run on many different setups and devices, and loads of custom songs.

The community of charters for Clone Hero is vast and produce mountains of quality content every year. Multiple set lists of song counts far surpassing that of any of the other games. the official games released every year, with chart quality matching and often exceeding official charts.

It is no overstatement to say that you could easily pick up Clone Hero and play for years and not finish all the content. There is so much of it out there for you to play. Clone Hero is constantly being updated with new features, like the recently added multiplayer lobbies and additional stat tracking for things like ghosted inputs. It even supports features that allow for innovative new ways to play Guitar Hero, like mod charts, which have seen some viral popularity online due to their quality and often completely insane concepts. I would highly recommend checking out Clone Hero.

The game will eventually transition to being called Strike Line in an effort to distance themselves from the Hero brand, and from what we can tell for now, the future looks bright for Clone Hero. Even Clone Hero itself has had a Thor fan project in the form of ScoreSpy Clone Hero. This is a client that just released as recently as during the writing of this video. ScoreSpy was a project to create an online leaderboard for Clone Hero that would support score screenshots as a method of score submission. Since then, it has evolved into a fully separate functional client with a launcher.

ScoreSpy CH allows for song downloading via the chorus extension in the launcher, integration with ScoreSpy's online leaderboards including an in-game leaderboard display, a note count display, added animations and note streak pop-ups, a simplified menu, and more. It adds a ton of additional features on top of Clone Heroes already existing great features, and is a super awesome new way to play Five Threat. Moving away from fully custom engines, a lot of the older games have seen fan made updates to make their res- respective games more modernized for people who want a way to go back and play the classic 5 fret games with some quality of life updates.

First is Guitar Hero 2 Deluxe. Guitar Hero 2 Deluxe makes an effort to modernize Guitar Hero 2 by adding some of the other series features into the the game, and also some additional content. You have things like a note streak pop-up, an immediate jump to practice mode, and even script libraries provided for modding the game.

The biggest content additions Guitar Hero 2 Deluxe has seen are including the Rocks the 80s setlist, some of the Guitar Hero 1 setlist, and a bunch of new content to Guitar Hero 2. Apparently they almost filled the disc space up doing this. And on top of all that, these maniacs found a way to add drum support to Guitar Hero 2. Guitar Hero 2 Deluxe has a available on their website, which I've linked below. It's a great way to rediscover one of the fan favorite entries in the Guitar Hero franchise. Lastly, though not Guitar Hero, I figured it would also make sense to mention Rock Band 2 Deluxe.

Rock Band 2 Deluxe is made in a similar vein to Guitar Hero 2 Deluxe, but, well, for Rock Band. Though a lot of the updates are quality of life for drums, Guitar did get some adjustments too, like no strum limit, a no flames modifier, and more ported content from other Rock Band games. It has 1080p support for if you're running a BP PC on an emulator, a black venue for improving frame rate, and more.

Definitely a great way to experience Rock Band 2 again with some updated features. The Guitar Hero community has gone beyond 5 fret projects as well. Just recently, there was a project by a fan to restore the Guitar Hero TV server so that all content could be accessed again.

I don't know much about it right now, but it seems the future may be bright even for the 6 fret community. And projects have extended outside of software too. Guitar controllers are an issue these days. due to aging hardware and lack of new official controllers. So a few members of the community have taken it upon themselves to build new guitars and retrofit old ones with arduinos and mechanical switches in the frets and strum bar.

Both Katana Mods and 760 Creations do small drops of these guitars, so keep an eye out for them if you want to nab a Guitar Hero controller full of modernized hardware. While we have to add Guitar Hero to our list of dead rhythm games, the Guitar Hero community is more alive than ever. custom songs, fan patches for old engines, modernized guitars, and more.

There really never has been a better time to get into Guitar Hero. Thank you all so much for watching. While this is the last episode of Dead Rhythm Games that I had planned, the series will probably see a few more entries in the future.

So I hope you'll all stick around for the future of the channel where I'll cover more rhythm games and beyond. And thank you all for being patient waiting for videos. I do still do this in my free time, although I would like to take it more seriously in the future.

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Thanks everyone so much for watching, and I'll see you guys next time.

Transcript for:The Rise and Fall of Guitar Hero Series

Transcript for:
The Rise and Fall of Guitar Hero Series