Remember how we all collectively lost our minds over Guitar Hero? Guitar Hero comes from a long list of rhythm games that span from titles like Amplitude and Dance, Dance Revolution, but regardless of the genre, Guitar Hero is easily in a class of its own, not necessarily due to innovative gameplay, but rather due to being at the right time with the right pairing.
When the first game in the series launched on the PS2 in 2005, it was effectively the work of two primary studios, developer Harmonix and first-time producer Red Octane. Harmonix was mostly a journeyman studio, founded in 1995 and entering the gaming space in 2001 with the minor successes of Frequency, Amplitude, and the Karaoke Revolution series. All of their work was primarily on the console market, bringing the mostly arcade-centric rhythm games in innovative ways.
A lot of their early games were also bound to the use of peripherals, especially the Karaoke Revolution games, which required a headset and microphone. This was novel at the time, but since they were often sold separately, it was a limited distribution that would see a slow crawl to success. Another game, EyeToy: AntiGrav, required the ill-fated EyeToy peripheral from Sony to play, and wasn't even a music game.
This is where Red Octane comes in. Originally founded in 1999 and starting one of the first online game rental services, Red Octane would then jump into making peripheral controllers for home consoles, notably dance mats and joysticks. They would then produce their own game, a port of the arcade game In The Groove, in 2005.
The founders of Red Octane were fans of a major rhythm game that was super popular at the time in Japan, known as Guitar Freaks. Though it was relatively unsuccessful in North America, Guitar Freaks served as the blueprint for what Guitar Hero would become, with a tabulation of guitar chords scrolling in front of the user, who had to press button combinations in time with the rhythm to score points.
Effectively, Red Octane pitched an idea for a guitar-based controller combined with a game on consoles that would play just like Guitar Freaks. They chose Harmonix, who loved the idea, mostly for their reputation on developing rhythm-based games, then raised close to $1.75 million in capital to fund the development and production of the game. Red Octane took it a step further by providing a new peripheral for play, a plastic-shaped controller that would come bundled with the game upon release.
The result, as they say, is history. The reason for the surprise success of Guitar Hero is definitely the tightness of its gameplay, and half of the reason for that is the guitar controller. Shaped like a Gibson guitar with 5 colored fret buttons, a strummer, and a whammy bar, the controller is what made the game. It was all about the feel of playing the songs on guitar, the facsimile of being a guitarist rocking out in a way that felt natural and, most importantly, easy to comprehend for anyone to play.
Playing is that easy: time your hits on the strummer and the appropriate fret button when it scrolls on screen in the right moment. Some notes you can play without strumming; just hitting the fret button would do, while other notes are prolonged with a tail, which allows you to use the whammy bar to jiggle for more points. This simple formula for the game's 30+ music tracks is a classic case of easy to learn, difficult to master, and for hardcore players, the goal was always mastering the note patterns.
What made the game a true challenge was always the difficulty. The game offers four difficulty levels, ranging from easy to expert. Easy and medium have fewer notes and use less of the fret colors; hard is a bit faster and uses the whole board, while expert is fast and requires quick reflexes to time correctly. To say the least, the goal of building yourself up to play most songs at expert level was the gameplay loop of Guitar Hero, especially for hardcore players. The fact that you can bump down to an easier difficulty on the fly, though, makes it perfect for casual play as well. Completing any song on Expert with a 5-star rating is a feat, but completing some of the end-game songs, designed to be the hardest songs with multiple note-tracks and hair-trigger timing, with 5 stars or more is a feeling of accomplishment that anyone who played Guitar Hero can appreciate.
The game features thirty licensed tracks and seventeen bonus songs. The bonus songs are mostly from indie bands that were part of the Harmonix development team. There are a few exceptions to this; most notably, Black Label Society providing "Fire it Up" as a bonus track, and the indie band Graveyard BBQ's "Cheat on the Church", which won a contest and was selected to be a bonus song. Overall, the bonus songs offer a nice mix of pop-rock, metal, and alternative that adds a bit of flavor to the game's mix.
Every other song, save the bonus tracks, is a cover song of rock hits by well-known bands like Blue Öyster Cult, Queen, Sum 41, and Ozzy Osbourne. Famously, an instrumental of Jimi Hendrix's "Spanish Castle Magic" was used, with new songs released around the production of the game. Bands like Franz Ferdinand, The Exies, and Burning Brides round out the setlist to add, at the time, a modern bit of rock and roll to the game.
By modern rhythm game standards, 47 songs in total, most of them being covers, would be terrible as a setlist. Considering that Guitar Hero was a first of its kind in this way, it is somewhat forgivable. Over time, song covers would be replaced with master versions, which would lead to a quagmire of issues by the year 2010. If I am being honest, the cover versions may be the best way to go, so long as they are of good quality, and outside of a few songs here and there, Guitar Hero was able to nail the cover versions thanks to the help of session musicians and the Wave Group.
Some of the tracks are spot-on awesome and staples of the Rock and Roll Genre, like "I Love Rock and Roll", "Crossroads," and "Godzilla". Others are kind of out there, with "Killer Queen" being a major example, as no singer is ever going to match Freddie Mercury. As mentioned, Jimi Hendrix's "Spanish Castle Magic" was an instrumental version, but it was good to include it in the first game, even if it is probably the most out-of-place song on the entire setlist.
There is an argument to be made that some of the band choices and representation for a band's songs were not ideal. True, some big names in rock and roll were left out, but the soundtrack has a great mix of easy and hard for most players, which should come first and foremost for the game side of things in this rhythm game. There is enough challenge to keep going back for more, so Harmonix provided a decent setlist on its first outing.
If there is one major letdown for the first Guitar Hero, it is multiplayer. The lack of a true co-op mode is a loss, and instead we get a weak versus mode where it's dueling sections of a given song against the other player. There is no real score building, no gimmick or anything. Also, a real practice mode would be really nice, especially for the final few songs in the game. You get a quickplay which acts like a replay of your favorite songs, but there is no way to isolate sections for future songs, making it a major hurdle to prep yourself for the harder parts of the setlist.
Guitar Hero is all about the music, but it does add a bit of character with its rock-style caricatures and visual goofiness. Strictly speaking, the game's graphics are kind of simple. The player models are cartoon homages to rock greats like Jimi Hendrix, Pete Townsend, Joan Jett, and Axl Rose, and are cool-looking and thankfully have great animation on stage. That being said, the crowds and your bandmates don't have as much fluid movement as you do, but if you're paying attention to the graphics...well, let's just say you might be missing the fret buttons a lot then. Lastly, the scrolling fret meter is given some artistic flair, with a visual fretboard that matches the character you pick in their chosen rock and roll expertise.
With great tracks, a nice collection of unlockables, and a decent (but flawed) multiplayer mode, Guitar Hero is a very strong game indeed, giving you high riffs of playability and tons of fun by yourself and with friends. Red Octane's gamble and Harmonix's know-how paid off, and this surprise success made waves for what is, in hindsight, a fad in the gaming industry, but it was a pretty powerful fad by bringing rhythm games to the mainstream.