During the development of Guitar Hero 3, Neversoft hoped to include a song by the legendary rock band Aerosmith. They chose the song "Same Old Song and Dance" and created a cover version. Aerosmith was, at the time, one of the bands the team thought they could not get a license from. Allegedly, the recording quality was poor, which led to Neversoft personally contacting Aerosmith guitarist Joe Perry.
Perry not only was accommodating to the team, but provided a master recording for the song for Guitar Hero 3. It was also a time of transition for the Guitar Hero franchise; Activision had recently done a poll on their 'holy grail' bands, a group of five rock bands that expressed strong interest in getting licensing for the franchise. Though producer Aaron Habibipour never mentioned the other bands, Aerosmith was one of the few with an established relationship that Activision decided to lean on for a new idea: a band-centric game.
The experiment with Guitar Hero Encore: Rock's the 80's, despite being somewhat unnecessary, provided ammunition for Activision to produce multiple Guitar Hero games a year. Through this, a pattern emerged as Guitar Hero entered in 2008: one new mainline game, and a side game. The desire for a single game based around one major rock band was already there, so the timing was right to pull the trigger on an Aerosmith-centric game.
It was also a sly business decision by Activision to secure a temporary licensing for Aerosmith. When Rock Band released in late 2007 to resounding success, Activision moved quickly on two major mandates; the first was that Guitar Hero would emulate the Rock Band formula with the next major game in the series, 2008's Guitar Hero: On Tour. The second move was to lock down certain music acts with temporary licenses to exclusive songs. With master recordings now considered the norm and covers of songs being less prominent, Activision hoped that a band-centric game would provide justification for content that would essentially be exclusive to their franchise. It was a savvy business move that would see several bands sign exclusive deals with Activision, and force MTV to do the same with the Rock Band series.
The first of these games would yield Guitar Hero: Aerosmith, which had heavy involvement with the band. Aerosmith was consulted for the entire game, from the song setlist down to motion capture of both Steven Tyler and Joe Perry for the band sequences. Perry would even record his own guitar battle for Aerosmith, allowing the player to do a rock battle in the vein of Guitar Hero 3.
The band was no stranger to video games, as anyone who remembers the weird arcade rails shooter Revolution X can attest. The band, for their part, were ecstatic to have a whole game dedicated to them, with Perry, Tyler, along with Brad Whitford and Tom Hamilton, would be made characters in the game. Whitford and Hamilton would be unlocked as guitarists for online or quickplay, but outside of one more unlockable, the game is handcrafted as a massive tribute to Aerosmith the band.
The game is a dramatized autobiography of Aerosmith's rise to fame, from 1970 to 2001, when they were inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. Neversoft purposefully avoided any of the band's conflicts over the years, instead highlighting key career moments of the band through musical setpieces and a rough chronological setlist. Most of the game has you play as Joe Perry himself, with a few deviations from the game's six venues, with the regular Guitar Hero cast available. You also get exclusive interviews with the band members as they talk about the venues and experiences from the 1970s onward, making the game a quasi-documentary experience.
So on paper, a lot is going into Aerosmith to make this a love letter to the band. Some problems do hold it back from being a solid gameplay experience, however. Six venues cut the number of songs that would be featured in the game, an incredibly low selection of 31 songs. One of the best moves Neversoft had was to bring in other acts inspired by Aerosmith, or who were inspired by the band, with the band selecting the acts and songs specifically for the game. This allowed for a little diversity for these "opening acts", with the likes of Cheap Trick, Joan Jett, Run-DMC and the Stone Temple Pilots getting some play in the game. This is also the last major Guitar Hero game to have cover songs, with four of the opening act bands being covered by Wavegroup or Steve Ouimette.
This helps pad out the setlist, but the star of the show is, of course, Aerosmith. This leads to the second problem with the game: if you are not a fan of Aerosmith, you likely won't like Guitar Hero: Aerosmith. A total of 18 songs are available in the main game, with another 11 as bonus unlockables, three of which are specifically written by Joe Perry and not credited to the band. This also includes the Joe Perry Guitar Battle, and a remix version of "Walk This Way" with guest vocalist Run-DMC.
Yes, outside of the members of Aerosmith, Run-DMC also appears as a playable character. Building on the structure of Guitar Hero 3, Neversoft and Activision believed authentic artists in the game would boost the franchise's popularity. It makes sense for a game like Aerosmith, but including Run-DMC as a playable character also muddies the presentation slightly, and feels frankly wasted as an extra unlockable in what is already a meager selection.
It's a solid selection, but there is no getting around how small it truly is. Aerosmith does a lot to showcase the band's history, from some behind-the-scenes video to members of the band even hand-picking the unlocks, but with everything Aerosmith-centric, variety is lacking in comparison to Guitar Hero 3. This also doesn't help that this is a game built on the bones of Guitar Hero 3, right down to the charts and UI being the same. This makes sense on a practical scale, as Aerosmith was developed in about a year, but when standing up to what is arguably the best game in the series, it's almost a non-comparison.
As stated, your enjoyment of a game like Aerosmith may boil down to your enjoyment of the band. At least in this department, there is definitely some merit. The guitar battle with Joe Perry is well charted, and the setlist selection, while small, features some pretty good choices from Aerosmith's discography. You get massive hits like "Sweet Emotion", "Back in the Saddle", "Walk This Way" and "Dream On", intermixed with lesser-known classics like "Toys in the Attic", "Mama Kim", and "Draw the Line." Even a few obscure songs like "Uncle Salty" make the cut. Perry and Tyler even did re-recordings of some of their earliest songs that lacked a master recording. This ensured that all songs from Aerosmith are sung by the band. The biggest standout has to be "The Train Kept-A-Rollin", which was one of the cover songs in the first Rock Band. Securing a master recording from the band in their own game was a genius move, and the difficulty and coverage of the chart is superb.
The music is what carries Guitar Hero: Aerosmith beyond hardcore fans of Aerosmith itself. It is certainly a stronger game in most cases than Rock's the 80's, but suffers from the same problems and limitations. One major issue that would haunt Activision later is that almost none of the songs from Aerosmith would be ported over to future Guitar Hero games, with only a few of them getting DLC or a re-release. That lack of accessibility is tied to licensing, of course, but with Rock Band setting up a model for weekly song releases with track packs, albums, or even singles, this limitation would, at the time, hurt the Guitar Hero franchise in the long term.
One unsung problem would be Activision's distribution model. Aerosmith would release it as both a standalone game and bundled with a wireless Aerosmith guitar for four different systems, allowing them to charge near full price for the game. This made eight versions of the game available for the late June release, flooding the market four months before the next Guitar Hero game, World Tour, came out in October. Activision would follow this pattern, often excessively so, with each subsequent Guitar Hero release, creating multiple bundles across four systems for each iteration of the game, and often charging premium in the process.
Ultimately, your enjoyment of Guitar Hero: Aerosmith depends on your enjoyment of the music, but the thin setlist and unlocks hamper it more than they should. Still, the Guitar Hero train was rolling, and while Guitar Hero: Aerosmith is often seen as a minor stop in the franchise's history, it is also a turning point for the franchise. Guitar Hero 3 was a massive success, but Guitar Hero: Aerosmith was a modest seller, enough for Activision to continue with this strategy for two more band-specific games within the next two years. It also spurred Activision to diversify beyond the band-specific games in attempts to be innovative for other consoles; the most notable being handhelds. Most importantly, Aerosmith is the last game in the series to be solely focused on guitar and bass playing, with Activision transitioning to compete more directly with their next game, World Tour, a direct response to Rock Band. Rhythm gaming would never be the same after this.