Guitar Hero (video game)

2005 music rhythm video game

Guitar Hero is a 2005 rhythm game developed by Harmonix and published by RedOctane for the PlayStation 2. It is the first installment in the Guitar Hero series. Guitar Hero was released in November 2005 in North America, April 2006 in Europe and June 2006 in Australia. The game's development was a result of collaboration between RedOctane and Harmonix to bring a Guitar Freaks like game to United States. The game features a guitar shaped controller (resembling a miniature Gibson SG) that the player uses to simulate playing rock music. The gameplay is similar to GuitarFreaks, in that the player presses buttons on the guitar controller in time with musical notes that scroll on the game screen. The game features covers of 30 popular rock songs spanning five decades of rock, from the 1960s up through 2005, in addition to bonus tracks. Guitar Hero became a surprise hit, earning critical acclaim and winning many awards from major video game publications, and is considered one of the most influential games of its decade. The game's success launched the Guitar Hero franchise, which has earned more than $2 billion in sales, spawning several sequels, expansions, and other game related products.

The gameplay is similar to other music and rhythm video games, in that the player must press buttons on a game controller in time with scrolling notes on the game screen to complete a song. A player using the standard controller simply presses the buttons that correspond with the displayed notes as outlined in the game's manual. The player is awarded points for correctly hitting notes, chords and sustains. The player can also increase a score multiplier by playing a series of consecutive notes successfully. A "Rock Meter" tracks the player's performance based on success or failure of hitting notes, and if the meter drops too low the song will prematurely end in failure for the player. The player can also earn "Star Power" by playing a series of glowing notes perfectly and using the whammy bar during sustains. Once the Star Power meter is filled at least halfway, Star Power can then be activated by briefly tilting the guitar controller vertically, or by pressing a specific button on a standard controller. Activating Star Power will double the scoring multiplier and makes it easier to increase the Rock Meter by playing correct notes. Thus, players can strategically use Star Power to play through difficult sections of a song they might have otherwise failed. RedOctane was making dance pads for games like Dance Dance Revolution for home consoles and also operated an online video rental service similar to Netflix. RedOctane's Kai and Charles Huang recognized the popularity of GuitarFreaks in Japan through their rental service, and planned to create guitar controllers to bring the game to North America. Greg Fischbach, one of the founders of Acclaim Entertainment, noted, regretfully several years later, they had passed on Guitar Hero, questioning "Who's going to buy a peripheral like that?" The Huangs approached Harmonix, who had previously made music video games such as Frequency, Amplitude and Karaoke Revolution about making a guitar based video game for those controllers. With a budget of about one million dollars (which Kay noted was "pretty tiny for a video game"), the two companies worked together to develop Guitar Hero. Kay noted that "No one had any notions about it being a massive success; we all just thought it would be fun to do." The team quickly recognized that "the controller really was the kind of magic sauce for what we wanted to do". The idea of using the whammy bar to boost Star Power, in addition to altering the pitch of sustained notes was only realized about a month before the completion of the game. "Gem tracks", the pattern of notes for a song, were developed by a team in Harmonix, taking usually a day to develop the tracks for one song. At the onset of development, the team did not have any idea of what songs would be present in the final game. Kay noted that "We wanted 30 or 40 songs for the game and put a hundred on our wish list." Marcus Henderson of the band Drist provided many of the lead guitar tracks for the covers. WaveGroup Sound also went to efforts to try to recreate effects for some songs. In the case of Black Sabbaths "Iron Man", the team learned that the vocal effects were created by having Ozzy Osbourne sing from behind a metal fan. The team sought out the same model of fan through Craigslist to generate the same effect in the game's cover. Additionally, a "Be a Guitar Hero" contest was held allowing bands to submit their own song to be included in the game. The winning song was "Cheat on the Church" by Graveyard BBQ. Black Label Societys song, "Fire it Up", was included two weeks before the game was completed at the request of Zakk Wylde. The appearance of Star Power was made to resemble electricity, both to reflect the use of the electric guitar as well to conceptually demonstrate the excitement of the performance and the virtual audience. Guitar Hero was initially released to retail stores in a bundle that packaged the game disc and a Gibson SG guitar controller, priced at $69.99. Since its release, stand alone copies of the games and the guitar controller have been released, including both RedOctane and third party controllers from TAC and Nyko. MadCatz, another controller company that has produced guitar controllers, was set to initially be part of the game's development, creating a version of the game for the Xbox, but had to pull out due to a lawsuit by Konami; MadCatz's Darrel Richardson stated they had to pay $300,000 to get out of their contract with RedOctane.