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Activision killed it by releasing too many too soon instead of going the Rock band route and releasing it as dlc. I still play it on my drum set with 1000+ songs
They released like 5 games in the span of a year plus the ds ones too. Aerosmith could have been added to world tour and so could most of the other band centric games added to warriors of rock or whatever. I’m glad they didn’t go dlc for everything because you can’t get older guitar hero dlc anymore cause the servers are long gone. If they did that they wouldn’t need to make live, it’s still a good game though it just doesn’t have enough songs without tv mode and uses completely different buttons which arguably are a lot worse.
They shouldn’t have had the solo games, too specific. Metallica was good (because I’m a fan) but even still, playing Turn the Page and not having it be the Metallica Garage Inc cover was lame and boring as hell, like 5 mins for ten notes at the end for the guitar
I preferred Rock Band because they created the Keyboard Controller. It was nice to play the piano pieces of a song on a "somewhat" actual piano instead of a guitar.
They run them into the ground and practically never come back to them even in the case of a successful new entry like Tony Hawks Pro Skater 1+2. THEY HAD SUCH A GOOD COMEBACK AND MOMENTUM GOING, and then they just let die. Crash had a solid comeback but it seems like they're letting that candle burn out too probably.
I feel like something should be said about Clone Hero. It’s a fan-made game using open source software to essentially copy Guitar Hero’s system. There is a HUGE community behind it creating custom tracks that anyone can download and import. It’s huge for those who yearn for a new Guitar Hero release
Yeah it's just too bad that the note charts are super half-assed for the sake of quantity tbh. Almost every time I play a song, there is something in there that is obviously off (like putting trills when they are obviously triplets or vice versa). In the early days the excuse was that they did it for free. Now I'm wondering what the excuse is now since they get commissions
@@TextureOfCouch It's not for the sake of quantity. It's because users are the ones that are making it and most people aren't skilled into making charts
@AdowTatep they are being commissioned and criticize charts too; that is what the whole "Facelift" packs are about despite the fact that those charts aren't really better. The main ones who are active in charting act like they know everything and refuse to make them any better. If there are commissions (there are now), then there needs to be standards in quality. After being so deep in the community for several years, I can definitely confirm the toxicity and sloppy work ethic; which is why I have been out of it for years but keeping up with the quality of the packs being released. From the arguments they themselves have presented to me, as well as the music theory and software knowledge they seem to possess, it is definitely a quantity thing.
I’m 60 and did not grow up with video games in the home so I never really got into them but I bought guitar hero for my daughter and tried it and I was hooked we had hours of fun playing she would play lead and I would play the bass lines. I have really fond memories of Guitar Hero
@@robokast Look at how fortnite has the "Festival Main Stage" mode which is basically guitar hero and was implemented/developed by harmonix, it has been a rather big addition to the game also in terms of monetization having many songs able to be purchased. The gamemode i believe now also supports various types of guitar controllers so I suppose you could see it as GH's last rendition.
It's such a shame it died out, guitar hero got me into guitar which I still play today. Rock band got me into drums, and I took drum lessons for a few years. Now that I have my own house I want to get a full acoustic kit and pick it back up
Literally my goals! I lived and still live in an apartment I never had a guitar but I had started to just listen to music and guitar hero 3 helped with so much as well as the Beatles rock band. Had a successful starving band that fell out now I just wanna get my career started to be able to afford a house and get a little studio in there teach myself to record and produce music and make my own music again.
Same here. Not only did it get me into playing bass but also it put me on to so much music when I was still developing my music tastes in elementary school.
The 2000s truly was the golden age of gaming, especially in the late years of that decade. From Halo to Call of Duty, Assassin’s Creed, Prince of Persia, Battlefield, Ghost Recon, Star Wars, Splinter Cell, Resident Evil, Gears of War, God of War, Mass Effect, Medal of Honor, Grand Theft Auto, and whatever else I’m not listing that others will get mad at me for. We had a few good years going straight into the 2010s but we could recognize the signs that the industry was starting to become more corporate, which meant less creative and customer friendly. But man, the 2000s was an amazing decade where the gaming world was just allowed to be creative and go crazy. There was even a good balance between campaign and online multiplayer. It was a time that you had to be there to experience what it was like.
Bro I would take a Time Machine to relive some of those moments especially the early years of WoW and at the time I was only a kid in elementary school so I did not experience everything that a fellow gamer did
I mostly miss the online community from back then. Everyone was just there to have fun. Whether it was in WoW, WC3, Halo 2 custom games, or even those goofy flash games. Now everything is immediately meta gamed by streamers and pushed competitively by professionals leading to everyone caring about their imaginary score and being toxic. Sure there's still plenty of good memeing but when gaming literally is peoples life it takes away a lot of the magic.
@@XxDotApRoxX69never heard it put so succinctly. Spot on. I don't game online anymore because of this. I was the best healer I'd ever seen in WoW. I was extremely good at halo. I don't know about either anymore, because I just don't participate. Haven't in over a decade It's not fun anymore.
I worked at GameStop growing up. It is more than just sales and finances, it’s real estate. The amount of space the guitar hero and rock band setups take in a closet and on a shelf is unreal. They take too much space in an otherwise small retail location.
Megadeth was and still is disgustingly hard to play on expert. I cannot believe they never released more songs on guitar hero series. They is plenty on rock band 4 but that game is much more precise and more difficult to play than guitar hero.
Underrated feature of rock band 3 was the ability to pay $5 and import all previous rock band base songs into the game. I had a RB3 with 1,2,3 and lego songs all in one game
I tried these games in 2022 and they're now some of my favorite games. Been playing for 2 years on keyboard all the way up to expert. This year I got a ps2 gibson. I also picked up a gh3 les paul this summer, and today received the world tour guitar. I love these games and the guitars. Next year I'm getting a real electric guitar. Guitar Hero is one of the best things that happened in gaming. And the fact that there's *actual* guitar controllers is just amazing.
Really enjoyed this video. Guitar Hero and Rock Band were great reasons for weekend parties at my place. Friends would form their own "bands" and compete over the course of a set list. The fact they lasted as long as they did as far as even a licensing stand point was amazing.
I was hooked on GH2&3 growing up. In HS a friend of a friend was having a party and at some point GH got turned on at the same time I was about to get picked up. Everyone was attempting Through The Fire and Flames on various difficulties and failing. I quickly hopped on played it on Hard and passed and literally had a mic drop moment where everyone was shocked in amazement and I put the controller down and walked out to my parents car lol. Such a small but cool moment for me way back when.
The ONLY good part about Guitar Hero Live was that in GHTV mode, you could watch the *OFFICIAL MUSIC VIDEO* of the song your playing in the background of your gameplay. (Instead of the cringey live action stuff you got in story mode) So basically GH+MTV, It was so cool
Honestly, one of my favourite parts of Clone Hero is when charters include the music video. I never owned GH Live, but I that that was a feature that should of been there since GHWT having the Tool visuals to their songs.
I second the other dude, please chill with the ADHD captioning that feels like jangling keys in my face so I don't get bored and click off. Otherwise I'm a big fan of the channel, sorry, don't mean it make my comment sound exclusively negative lol.
Rockband was soo underrated, having everyone being able to play an instrument was insane, guitarist, bassist, drummer, and singer (albeit usually not good) on a single track was wayy cool
One thing I will always appreciate that these games still have the power to do, is the ability to bring people together and have fun and show new music, and potentially change people’s music taste. It does suck that this genre of games died so fast due to oversaturation, but the community will always keep this game alive with its fan projects like World Tour Definitive Edition, Rock Band 3 Deluxe, YARG, Clone Hero, etc: And surprisingly GH videos still do well in 2024, meaning people haven’t forgotten about this game. I know people Are iffy about Fortnite Festival to, but hey, it brought a LOT of new players and those new players are checking out these older games and having a blast with it, which in my opinion is its goal
Yeah but the problem is the community for any rythm game can really kill any enjoyment for the games. Guitar hero's community is just a bunch of try hards that get all pissed off because you can't really hit lines or do free bird on expert. While the community for rock band 3 deluxe acutally doesn't get upset and has a no-fail mode that the community likes to keep on. It's a big difference that acutally allows newbies to really feel more at ease with going into expert if they just started. Like I love world tour definitive edition as a whole but i'd rather take the rock band community over guitar hero any day of the week.
Just came back to clone hero like 2 days ago and you make this video. Perfect timing. Low-key wish you referenced it in some way since its been a huge part of the guitar hero community for years.
It’s crazy Activision will shut down any fan made mods to do with old Call of Duty games but have let clone hero and other guitar hero mods to be updated to this day. If clone hero ever gets a cease and desist, I guess we’ll know a new guitar hero is coming.
Man I love clone hero!! It’s a expert players dream come true! Some really talented people made some great charts, had to drop over 100 bucks for a guitar and dongle but so worth it
@@ProdByAD21 Once they're about to release Guitar Hero 7 that's when they'll go after Clone Hero and GHWT:DE. They want to shut the competition down right before the game release so other people can't make a replacement in time and to make as much money as possible, until then it's not worth their time to keep chasing the mods and fan made games. I hope that makes sense.
I think a big piece missing in this video is the decline in peripheral quality and feel. The original GH3 guitar is still highly coveted to this day for its amazing tactile feedback of which was removed in latter iterations for cost cutting measures. It was the largest reason people preferred and bought GH over rockband. In fact most people i knew played rockband with the GH guitar.
It died the first time because they pumped out far tooooo many games. From 2005-2010 Harmonix/EA and Activision released GH, GH 2, GH Rocks The 80s, GH Aerosmith, GH World Tour, GH On Tour, GH On Tour Modern Hits, GH Smash Hits, GHMetallica, GH Van Halen, GH5, Band Hero, GH Warriors Of Rock, RB, RB 2, RB Green Day, Lego RB, Beatles RB, RB 3 and probably more. That's insane to believe people would buy this at a certain point. Second time, with Rock Band 4 and Guitar Hero Live, it died because both games were quite awful. In GH you just had on disc songs and everything else got streamed. You had to buy song tokens if you wanted to play a song or pay real money for it. Also, now you can't play any additional songs anymore, cause this mode got shut down. The song list on disc is also small, just atound 35 songs or so and most of them don't suit a game like this, like songs by Skrillex, Rihanna or Katy Perry. They also changed this games background to real videos in first person view. You can no longer customize your own character or band and those videos look like faked cringey hipster stuff which is really embarassing. Last nail in the coffin was that you had to buy upgrades to get a higher score, so worse players could have a higher score than you just cause you didn't earn that much cash already. RB4 was really poorly optimized. Freezes and stutters were common even after many updates. Also the graphics were not the best. The song list was a bit better then GH, especially with artists like Van Halen, Dream Theater, Ozzy Osbourne, Elvis Presley, Fleetwood Mac, Judas Priest,A7x and Aerosmith. Even though the character editor was there, it was severely lacking conpared to previous games. You could not change your body, so you could not be skinnier,smaller, larger or heavier, shoes would be locked to pants, arm accesories would be locked to shirts and jackets,etc. Those are in my opinion the reasons those games failed and they could have been easy to overcome.
At least the Rock Band games justified their existence each time. Rb 1 - 3 each built upon the last with 3 essentially being the closest thing to harmonix’s objective of getting people to embrace music via pro modes. Beatles was a celebration of one of the most influential Rock Bands of all time. Green Day and Lego were essentially a dlc pack but I didn’t need to buy peripheral and could just redeem the export. And while Rock Band 4 was poorly optimized on release, the rivals expansion made it a fun way to play the game on modern systems. The fact that support for the game only ends this year says a lot on how much effort Harmonix put into fixing Rock Band 4
@@spideygamer8896 I have all the mainline RB games, plus Lego + Beatles, and RB3 is the one I go back to every time. Mostly because of the Rock Band Network. While I have the PS3 version, so my available tracklist wasn't as vast as the XB360 version, there was still a fantastic collection of tracks made available. These could not be ported to RB4 due to "technical reasons", thus cutting me off from some of my favourite songs. RB4 also dropped keyboard support, which was a really stupid move. Sure, don't include a keyboard notechart for the new songs, fine, but at least let me use it as a guitar like I could in RB3. Is that too much to ask for? There was no excuse not to include basic support for it in RB4. As a final insult, when online support arrived, only 1 player in an online band could use a "legacy" instrument, thus preventing people who hadn't purchased the full RB4 pack (and why would they if they still had a working guitar from an earlier game?) from being able to play together online. The one person who I found who did have an actual RB4 guitar would suffer from frequent controller dropouts, while my archaic RB1 guitar (which had been with me since the PS2) still maintained a good connection to the PS4. When you add the previously mentioned lack of customisation options available, it really did feel like RB4 was rushed to try to beat Guitar Hero Live to market and now Harmonix is reduced to suckling on the teat of Fortnite to try to stay alive. Such a sad, sad fall from grace.
@@TigerTailsTV The lack of RBN support for rb4 is primarily a licensing issue, it’s why they had to relicense the songs down the line and whatnot. Yes it’s a crime “My Sword” by Tobey turner isnt available but it’s out of their control. Honestly it’s a miracle we still own most of our legacy dlc in the first place. I also understand why keyboard support was dropped… because no one bought the damn keyboard. I can get a new keyboard in box, new condition for the price of a broken guitar hero controller. There’s a reason only pro drums was carried over. The legacy instrument issue is an issue I never had cuz Xbox lol Yeah Rb4 sucked ass on release. But rivals genuinely made it good. There’s a reason for why the game only ended support this year. It wasn’t a massive success but it was enough to keep Harmonix afloat until Epic came along. It’s essentially a glorified rock band 2
Guitar Hero is not dead. It's still alive in hundreds of arcades from coast to coast, and there's always a long line for it whenever I go to one of the local arcades!
Guitar Hero/Rock Band, in my opinion, was the golden age of recreational gaming. Gamers and non gamers alike would come together to jam out and just have a good time. A lot of good memories playings these silly songs.
Also worth noting is that everyone ended up with closets full of Guitar Hero / Rock Band accessories. Cheap, plastic, fisher price looking toys. When the novelty of the series wore off it did sort of get embarrassing to have someone over and you've got a corner of the living room full of dusty drums and plastic guitars. Plus, the controllers always felt too loud to use. Again it was alright early on or on the occasions when you had friends over. But if you had a spouse or significant other in the house, you started to have to be mindful of when you could play the game. Can't beat away on plastic drums or loud clicky controllers when someone is trying to sleep in the next room over. In a way the games became more of a hassle to play than the fun you got out of it.
It's funny you say that when people are willing to basically pay an arm and a leg to get them from you (if they're working). I am not ashamed to have mine. I love growing up with this game series, so..
Completely agree - I was a waiter in the 2000s, and we had a good group of dudes that hung out after work, and me, one of the bartenders, and a pair of cooks played Rock Band regularly until sunrise for a long time. None of us had anything else important to do. I used to pack the whole kit up to take to parties, which was always a huge hit. But that was when parties were a regular part of life. Then we all stopped working together as we moved toward starting careers, I got married, and the equipment just started gathering dust in the corner of the living room. Like you said, it became vaguely embarrassing. I just sold it all off in a garage sale eventually, probably for far too little.
The noise is why I always favored the last Rock Band guitars. The buttons dont clack when you press em and the guitar looks nice. At first glance they look real since they dont have Giant red blue green buttons on them either. They stack neatly in a corner or behind a door, maybe worth hanging for "nerd display" The drums tho... There's no saving those 😂 big, bulky and Loud
I have a lot of fond memories around GH/RB... My top two being playing the Beatles variant with my (at the time) 60-something normally-not video game playing parents, and another being a birthday party we hosted for a friend who knew we had the game and just wanted to come over and play. We surprised everyone with matching "band tour shirts" we'd made displaying a photoshopped image of a slow loris (the b-girl's fav animal) holding a game guitar, and decorated our living room with flashing stage lights and a disco ball. Three adult couples rocked hard that night! It was legendary!
In my humble opinion, I think both Guitar Hero Live and Rock Band 4 came out a little too soon. Sure, it is nice to have a new Guitar Hero and Rock Band game on new next gen consoles, but most people like me who were too young to purchase DLC or brand new expensive hardware still missed out. I was 4 through 9 years old during 2005-2010 when Guitar Hero first boomed. I loved that game and played it a lot. And when GH Live and Rock Band 4 came out in 2015, I was still only 14 years old. And it wasn't until this year when Harmonix stopped releasing new DLC for Rock Band 4 was I finally able to purchase my first ever Rock Band DLC as a grown 23 year old adult. I think a lot of people who were too young to get the full experience with Guitar Hero and Rock Band in the late 2000's would totally buy new hardware and a brand new game these days. When PDP released their new Riffmaster guitar controller, it was sold out the minute pre-orders went live, compared to previous Rock Band 4 controllers released in 2015 and 2016 that sold just fine. So there is absolutely demand for a new Guitar Hero or Rock Band in 2024! Which is why I think the attempted Guitar Hero revival and Rock Band 4 in 2015 was a little too soon for most people who grew up with the original games.
Exactly right I had every game as they came out and stopped at rock band 3. Rock band 3 was peak. Rock band 4 wasn’t really necessary at the time so I skipped it. I’ve now bought rock band 4 and have been having a blast with it.
Activision, specifically Bobby Kotick, killed the entire genre. After the first game was a huge hit he got moist over the idea of endlessly selling the same peripherals and crap yearly (or faster!) And flooding the market with overpriced plastic instruments and expecting gamers to buy them over and over eventually wore out its welcome. Kotick's greed is legendary, and he will happily run a franchise or in this case an entire genre into the ground if he thinks he can squeeze money out of it until it drops dead.
As one of the biggest refurbishers and modifiers of guitar hero equipment, guitar hero didn't die. It was simply abandoned due to market saturation. Guitar hero refused to move into a platform which Rock Band 3/4 did where you could have a single, general release, which continuous DLC content rather than pumping out disc based games. This in-turn created more a cost sink issue which included disc printing, advertising, new engine developments (in some cases) and server allocations. This hurt sales because very few people would head to gamestop to buy the new guitar hero game after already buying the previous half-dozen discs. Rock Band 3 and 4 pumped out enormous amounts of DLC which appealed to those who enjoyed the artist. Actitivison tried to capitalize on a rent-to-play idea with Guitar Hero Live TV which failed miserably due to poor marketing of Guitar Hero LIVE and the change in playstyle for guitars, plus no drums. If guitar hero were to make a comeback in the G/R/Y/B/O style with tonnes of DLC and legacy content support, it would be a huge seller.
@Taxevader-gk9ms I have a "real" guitar from Rock Band. 6 strings, pre-amp out plus a midi output (to be used with the string mute). It was the price of an entry level guitar, which it most certainly was.
Yeah... I think some of his info was off in this video. Like how he said people just had no clue of the background of these types of games; acting like us Guitar Hero kids didn't know Japan was flooded with these and DDR was huge here in the US.
@@NoOneReallySpecial He was also completely off about Karaoke Revolution's popularity and didn't even mention how Harmonix teamed up with Konami to make it. K-rev was huge in the US and was arguably the first mainstream music game there. It spawned tons of sequels and copycat IPs like Singstar. The vocal mechanics of Rock Band came from K-rev. He also completely missed the mark (or just intentionally trying to throw people off) on how Rock Band and locking most music behind DLC are what killed the genre, not too many GH sequels.
I think you’re vastly underestimating the power and influence of the film School of Rock on the generation of people playing guitar hero. Kids these days are influenced by hitting the gwiddy for the rizzler on tiktok
Your final line seems to cut abruptly, might want to fix that. Otherwise this was a lovely video. Quite weird seeing such a thought out view on something you lived through, but really good nonetheless
I was one of the recording artists and voiceover talents on FreQuency and Amplitude! What an amazing team and awesome group of people to work with! And what a story!
When I was young we lived pretty rural, so when someone in the family would go into a town you’d have a list of things to get. My mum once brought home Guitar Hero & I was so excited to play it only to find you were meant to have a guitar controller to play. However, because it was so far into town to buy the controller (plus we couldn’t afford it) I just learnt on the PlayStation controller. Which meant when we finally could afford the guitar, I hated playing with it because I was used to the harder modes. It was super helpful at parties though: only one guitar? Not a problem 😅
And the fact that it got people like me (raised in a family of rap, oldies, and country/pop lovers) into rock and metal and now I've been to over 500 concerts and seen some greats like Ozzy, Iron Maiden, Judas Priest, NIN, etc.
They REALLY need to re-release Rock Band 4 for current gen systems. The days of going into Gamestop and it being filled with dozens of instruments for $5 a pop are long gone. Buying a full copy of Rock Band 4 now is like $1300+.... it's crazy. Most of us have either broke or lost our instruments and even then most of them won't work on a PS5 anyway. The dongle alone to use on current gen is hundreds of $ if you can even find it. It'd be one thing if everyone was still on PS3s and 2s but everyone has now most likely upgraded to current gen and there's litterly NOTHING available to buy. There's still a huge demand for both a new game, and just being able to play our older ones at all. The fact there's not a single manufacturer making any instruments for current gen is crazy. You can find the discs for pennies, but they're unplayable without the instruments which just aren't available anymore, and all those old ones laying in ppls basements and garages won't work on new consoles anyway. I get now oversaturating the market with them, but there's just NOTHING. It litterly went from ppl not being able to give away extra instruments to now where you'll be paying well over $1000 just to play the games you already own on your PS5/Series X.
I loved Guitar Hero when it first came out but I didn’t enjoy the covers of songs but I dealt with it. Love Metallica so I was hyped when that game came out. I would play it all the time. But it died off… when DJ Hero came out my husband and I bought it. It was fun for a time and I loved the track mash ups but after a while it stopped but fun and the way to hit notes were hard for no reason… my husband sold it to her brother. But Rockband… will always be one of the greatest music games for me. All my fave rock songs I could either sing to, play drums or the guitar/bass… and I had alll the pieces. We use to have game nights at our new apartment together at the time.. it was a hit with everyone. Plus when I found a bar that I could go to and play on an actual stage,pick what I wanted to sing while others in the bar join the “band” and picked the instrument….great times for me for two years straight…Rockband introduced me to cool people that just wanted to rock out, drink a bit and have fun… It sucks that it all went away… I for one love rhythm games and I will never get sick of watching it.. right now I see on Tik Tok people playing a game called Clone Hero and I’m just enjoying watching others play.
Rock Band 3 was my first piano teacher. The first song I learned to play was "From Out Of Nowhere" by Faith No More. To this day, I can play the RB3 stem of that song from memory. Now, whenever I want to learn a song, I just use UA-cam tutorials and a real keyboard (and two hands), but it all started with RB3. RB3 taught me how to play melodies on the keyboard for real, and gave me the confidence to learn beyond that. I am sincerely grateful.
I loved the layout of the guitar hero game and the guitar that they developed for it better than rock band, but you couldn’t compete with the catalog that rock band eventually developed.
The reason why my Xbox 360 is still plugged in is because of guitar hero & rockband games. It’s still alive to me. The best part about having a rgh(hacked Xbox 360) is that I can go on internet archive and get every single dlc song for those games that aren’t available on the store anymore and put them on my console. My favorite part about the 360 versions of guitar hero after world tour is that you could play as your avatar. So I’m just there rocking out dressed as master chief 😂. Too bad activision ruins just about everything they touch.
If you want the quick answer, it was sales dropping to the point the brand had multiple variants out in 09 and still only sold half of what they did the year before
>"Had an incredibly weak setlist that could barely be considered rock" >shows Guitar Hero 5's setlist Yeah, I think I can see what went wrong here. You mixed up Guitar Hero 5 and Warriors of Rock. Warriors of Rock's setlist was HEAVILY rock and metal focused. Given you had to show footage of GH5's setlist scroll there, I have no idea how this mistake slipped through.
Dang, this video took me back. I used to LOVE Guitar Hero there for several years. It definitely had it's place. I actually still have a Wii/Wii Guitar/Guitar Hero game. This video makes me want to bust it out and knock the rust off. lol I just might. I've been thinking about getting the adapter and trying Clone Hero. May have to look into that as well.
The feels are real. Life in a small town, GH was pretty much all we had to do, when not adventuring outside, going on walks around town, "glitching" the soda machine to drop free sodas. I personally met maybe two people who could beat me, not that I played a lot with other people. I trained one of them. He ended up so much better than myself, it was a real "teacher becomes the student" story. He's gone now, along with literally every copy of the games I had, except GH1, and my red SG. I still play RB4 sometimes, but it just isn't the same. GH was a different time. It brought people together. Props to those of you who still have your equipment together. GH series will always hold a special place in my heart. RIP CmfR.
My boyfriend plays guitar hero for pc all the time - clone hero. Years ago, I bought a refurbished controller before I met him and he has put that thing to good use. One of the best purchases I ever bought and I thought I was so stupid for getting it lol. He loves it and it makes me happy when he sings along. It never died to him. He downloads new music and there is a small cult following that still produces tab sheets and content.
I never played GH or RB back in their day but I remember how guitar controllers and boxsets were overflowing thrift stores and Walmarts even well into the GHLive days. The Rock Band series also did better because they just focused on the music and even taught players how to play real instruments with RB3's Pro Mode, which helped please the "stop playing with plastic, get a real guitar!" crowd. On top of oversaturating the market during a recession, Neversoft's GH games also had gimmicks like powerups and avatars of real musicians like Kurt Cobain and Hendrix, which kinda took away from the more grounded feel of Harmonix's games and even got them into legal trouble. That's not to say RB was immune to this (hello Lego Rock Band), but I feel those games are just much more fun and enjoyable.
Thanks for re-inspiring me to emulate these "standardized, low grade" console games from the time. I would know, I grew up with the Famicom (NES in the US)
I gotta say, GHWOR got way too much hate, and critics had no idea what they were talking about. The game, the songs, the feel, the reactive controller, it was definitely a step up gameplay wise from 4, and id even argue 5. Having the DLCs removed is what ruined it for me, because this game was the pinnacle of why i became a musician to begin with. Long story short: what destroyed GH6 wasnt the game, it was the corporate crap behind and around it that ruined it. I stand by that statement, and have for over a decade.
i remember being 7 or 8 when my family was exposed to rock band. my parents, my sister, and i were so hooked and ended up buying as many guitar hero/rock band games as we could. to this day, i think the first rock band might be one of the best games ive ever played. (rock band also introduced us to coheed and cambria, which is still my favorite band to this day)
You didn't even mention once in this video that Activision also did make the Nintendo DS entry "Guitar Hero: On Tour" which offered a truncated yet still true-to-form experience that ALSO had some interesting additions to make use of the DS hardware. But the same issue kicked in where they made tow more entries that were effectively just music expansion packs.
Guitar Hero World Tour and the Metallica games were absolute standouts for me. Every Thursday night some mates would come over for beer and pizza, play those games, and roll around laughing. The weakness you pointed out was actually a strength, everyone had to be on it to progress. The drums in particular were tough but enormous fun. Good times. Sad that the franchise died.
I loved these games and spent more money than I would like to admit on them. First tried it at Wal Mart when part 2 came out on PS2. I was hooked instantly. Turned on my best friend at the time to it and we had some of the best times playing couch co op. Broke the bank trying to get into Rock Band with a tricked out drum setup and extra instruments. I get why it failed... they oversaturated the genre. Still, some of the best times gaming was with the plastic guitar games. Great video! TY algorithm strikes again!
I will give GH Live this. The POV camera does make it feel more like you're actually performing the song and not just watching a character play it. Also, the way they seamlessly transition from showing the audience to showing your bandmates reactions to your playing ability all in one shot is rather impressive. But yeah... that's probably the only good thing I can say about that game. The two rows of three buttons were an earnest effort to make the game feel even more realistic, but it's clearly not GH anymore. Also, I believe Rocksmith had already come out and was a huge success at this point, and that's a game that actually teaches you how to play classic songs on a real guitar or bass. You can't get more real than that, so when GH Live came out, it was almost an absolute mockery of what had already been established. Despite this, if GH Live was its own game and didn't have GH in the title, it probably would've done a little better. Not a lot, but a little.
The fact that most people didnt know about the underground aspect of guitar hero is so ironic considering how most bands start out and end up, and then end up falling off in one way or another
I remember seeing the peripherals at thrift stores en masse, in like the late 2000s. Now, all gone. I bet they're selling on eBay for bank now :D Too bad, I bet my kid would have loved this.
I didn’t know Epic games purchased Harmonix in 2021… they were actually the best studio to purchase because of their history in the music game industry. Great video!
I started played guitar hero from number 2 as a teenager. Im 30 now and play here in there when i have a chance. i was able to 2nd hand buy a GH5 guitar and dongle, and buy a RB4 guitar and drumset(from goodwill for $25 in 2021. DEAL OF THE CENTURY). I love the feel of the GH guitars more and i wish they would come back so we can have an updated version of those guitars. I hate playing on the RB guitars cause the buttons and strum bar dont feel as responsive. Its crazy tho how RB4 is still going and being updated today but GH just gave up after that failed attempt at GH live. They probably could make a decent comeback if they advertise on TikTok and create some buzz and keep it somewhat reasonably priced
I wouldn't be surprised if there is something in the works given how FN: Festival is pretty popular. If they were to do a GHL TV with the 5 frets and didn't have the bs monetization it would do extremely well.
The most underrated of all these games was DJ Hero, I had it as a kid but I didn't really get it. Years later when I'd broadened my music appreciation beyond classic rock I dug it out of the basement but sadly the turntable had stopped working. I'd love to give it a shot again at some point.
Thanks to Factor75 for sponsoring today's video. Use my link to get 50% off your first Factor box and 20% off your next month of orders! strms.net/factor75_robokast
at 3:50 your use of the word _inspiration_ is very interesting.
That factor transition was actually super good
Definitely a dogshit meal service..
spam ad, how desperate are you?
@@Venzynt free videos have a cost
Activision killed it by releasing too many too soon instead of going the Rock band route and releasing it as dlc. I still play it on my drum set with 1000+ songs
They released like 5 games in the span of a year plus the ds ones too. Aerosmith could have been added to world tour and so could most of the other band centric games added to warriors of rock or whatever. I’m glad they didn’t go dlc for everything because you can’t get older guitar hero dlc anymore cause the servers are long gone. If they did that they wouldn’t need to make live, it’s still a good game though it just doesn’t have enough songs without tv mode and uses completely different buttons which arguably are a lot worse.
They shouldn’t have had the solo games, too specific. Metallica was good (because I’m a fan) but even still, playing Turn the Page and not having it be the Metallica Garage Inc cover was lame and boring as hell, like 5 mins for ten notes at the end for the guitar
@@monkeyman3194omg agreed about Garage Inc!!
Fred_Die Nailed it. The big publishers usually do that.
I preferred Rock Band because they created the Keyboard Controller. It was nice to play the piano pieces of a song on a "somewhat" actual piano instead of a guitar.
I hate that Activision just runs all their series into the ground. They got really lucky with CoD never dying
Now cod is just a money printing machine. To me, the series lost its soul a long time ago.
The cod spirit is dead. What is released year after year now is soulless crap. (I still play tho)
They run them into the ground and practically never come back to them even in the case of a successful new entry like Tony Hawks Pro Skater 1+2.
THEY HAD SUCH A GOOD COMEBACK AND MOMENTUM GOING, and then they just let die. Crash had a solid comeback but it seems like they're letting that candle burn out too probably.
@@Goatznhz real question, why do you keep playing it?
@@oddloop78 it can still be a bit fun with some friends. But I guess it’s just a bad habit at this point.
I feel like something should be said about Clone Hero. It’s a fan-made game using open source software to essentially copy Guitar Hero’s system. There is a HUGE community behind it creating custom tracks that anyone can download and import. It’s huge for those who yearn for a new Guitar Hero release
It's awesome and made me buy the new riff master guitar so I can relive my youth lol.
Yeah it's just too bad that the note charts are super half-assed for the sake of quantity tbh. Almost every time I play a song, there is something in there that is obviously off (like putting trills when they are obviously triplets or vice versa). In the early days the excuse was that they did it for free. Now I'm wondering what the excuse is now since they get commissions
@@uknowwho214how does it working with Clonehero? 😮
@@TextureOfCouch It's not for the sake of quantity. It's because users are the ones that are making it and most people aren't skilled into making charts
@AdowTatep they are being commissioned and criticize charts too; that is what the whole "Facelift" packs are about despite the fact that those charts aren't really better. The main ones who are active in charting act like they know everything and refuse to make them any better. If there are commissions (there are now), then there needs to be standards in quality. After being so deep in the community for several years, I can definitely confirm the toxicity and sloppy work ethic; which is why I have been out of it for years but keeping up with the quality of the packs being released.
From the arguments they themselves have presented to me, as well as the music theory and software knowledge they seem to possess, it is definitely a quantity thing.
I’m 60 and did not grow up with video games in the home so I never really got into them but I bought guitar hero for my daughter and tried it and I was hooked we had hours of fun playing she would play lead and I would play the bass lines. I have really fond memories of Guitar Hero
God bless you that sounds amazing
You're too old for the internet; Get off, you're slowing the rest of us down.
@@kaydog890edge lord shit ain’t cool anymore
That’s exactly what it’s for.
@@kaydog890 ok little puppy
Big plastic guitar shaped controllers and paying high prices for licensed music does not equate to profitability.
It worked for a bit, but definitely isn’t sustainable.
@@robokast Look at how fortnite has the "Festival Main Stage" mode which is basically guitar hero and was implemented/developed by harmonix, it has been a rather big addition to the game also in terms of monetization having many songs able to be purchased. The gamemode i believe now also supports various types of guitar controllers so I suppose you could see it as GH's last rendition.
@@OfficialTygo festival songs are more expensive than GH & RB DLC and yet they’re making a killing off of it
Did you watch the video?
@@isaachd1656 Yes
It's such a shame it died out, guitar hero got me into guitar which I still play today. Rock band got me into drums, and I took drum lessons for a few years. Now that I have my own house I want to get a full acoustic kit and pick it back up
Get it bro. At least get an e kit.
Never let the music die.
Literally my goals! I lived and still live in an apartment I never had a guitar but I had started to just listen to music and guitar hero 3 helped with so much as well as the Beatles rock band. Had a successful starving band that fell out now I just wanna get my career started to be able to afford a house and get a little studio in there teach myself to record and produce music and make my own music again.
@@FreddyD177well when you're ready to teach yourself how to record and mix, keep my channel in mind
Same here. Not only did it get me into playing bass but also it put me on to so much music when I was still developing my music tastes in elementary school.
W
Grew up with Guitar Hero, never knew the story and that Harmonix were the ones behind both franchises. Nice video!
Thank you! Glad you enjoyed it :)
The whole world is coke and Pepsi, bro.
The 2000s truly was the golden age of gaming, especially in the late years of that decade.
From Halo to Call of Duty, Assassin’s Creed, Prince of Persia, Battlefield, Ghost Recon, Star Wars, Splinter Cell, Resident Evil, Gears of War, God of War, Mass Effect, Medal of Honor, Grand Theft Auto, and whatever else I’m not listing that others will get mad at me for.
We had a few good years going straight into the 2010s but we could recognize the signs that the industry was starting to become more corporate, which meant less creative and customer friendly.
But man, the 2000s was an amazing decade where the gaming world was just allowed to be creative and go crazy. There was even a good balance between campaign and online multiplayer. It was a time that you had to be there to experience what it was like.
Bro I would take a Time Machine to relive some of those moments especially the early years of WoW and at the time I was only a kid in elementary school so I did not experience everything that a fellow gamer did
World of Warcraft
Indeed miss it , it hit so good then
I mostly miss the online community from back then. Everyone was just there to have fun. Whether it was in WoW, WC3, Halo 2 custom games, or even those goofy flash games. Now everything is immediately meta gamed by streamers and pushed competitively by professionals leading to everyone caring about their imaginary score and being toxic. Sure there's still plenty of good memeing but when gaming literally is peoples life it takes away a lot of the magic.
@@XxDotApRoxX69never heard it put so succinctly. Spot on. I don't game online anymore because of this. I was the best healer I'd ever seen in WoW. I was extremely good at halo. I don't know about either anymore, because I just don't participate. Haven't in over a decade It's not fun anymore.
I worked at GameStop growing up. It is more than just sales and finances, it’s real estate. The amount of space the guitar hero and rock band setups take in a closet and on a shelf is unreal. They take too much space in an otherwise small retail location.
Warriors of Rock was very unappreciated. It is still my favorite Guitar Hero game, followed by GH: Metallica.
We have the same taste 😉
Agreed. I thought it had a really good setlist
Agreed 1000%
Megadeth was and still is disgustingly hard to play on expert. I cannot believe they never released more songs on guitar hero series. They is plenty on rock band 4 but that game is much more precise and more difficult to play than guitar hero.
Hell even Aerosmith was an underrated game, good setlist choices and great animations with the band. The later GH games got way too much hate
The master recordings are, well, obviously, the best, but the covers were so good that they gave the early Guitar Hero a charm of its own.
Before I watch this: They got greedy is my prediction.
Edit: I had no clue Guitar Hero 5 and 6 existed.
This whole time I thought Warriors of Rock WAS GH 5
5 had some bangers but warriors of rock was a nice send off. I don't count guitar hero live or whatever that Xbox one shit was called lol
Sad because Warriors of Rock is still the best !
@@Crimsongz oh I fully agree, especially with that story mode where you get to play songs with power ups was the most fun I’ve had in a GH game
Don't forget LEGO Rock Band, Green Day Rock Band and Guitar Hero Smash Hits (which is guitar hero 1, 2, 80's and 3) all on one disc.
Underrated feature of rock band 3 was the ability to pay $5 and import all previous rock band base songs into the game. I had a RB3 with 1,2,3 and lego songs all in one game
You had to pay?
@@blahquinnyblah the music is licensed they have to make SOME money to keep it running
@@mariesyvian8187 No I'm just saying I didn't have to.
"Things were good. Then Activision showed up"
If i got a dollar for everytime that happened, well, actually I'd have a lot of money
WOW says hello.
I remember Guitar Hero parties in high school. So much fun!!!
I tried these games in 2022 and they're now some of my favorite games. Been playing for 2 years on keyboard all the way up to expert. This year I got a ps2 gibson. I also picked up a gh3 les paul this summer, and today received the world tour guitar. I love these games and the guitars. Next year I'm getting a real electric guitar. Guitar Hero is one of the best things that happened in gaming. And the fact that there's *actual* guitar controllers is just amazing.
Awww, it's nice your mom is getting you a real guitar next year.
Really enjoyed this video. Guitar Hero and Rock Band were great reasons for weekend parties at my place. Friends would form their own "bands" and compete over the course of a set list. The fact they lasted as long as they did as far as even a licensing stand point was amazing.
I was hooked on GH2&3 growing up. In HS a friend of a friend was having a party and at some point GH got turned on at the same time I was about to get picked up. Everyone was attempting Through The Fire and Flames on various difficulties and failing. I quickly hopped on played it on Hard and passed and literally had a mic drop moment where everyone was shocked in amazement and I put the controller down and walked out to my parents car lol. Such a small but cool moment for me way back when.
WOW! Almost 20 years later, I still have all the games and all my controllers. I'll never part with them. People still love playing them.
Same ! Thanks to the PS3 emulator you can enhance the visual fidelity and it looks incredible still in 2024 ! 💪🏿
The ONLY good part about Guitar Hero Live was that in GHTV mode, you could watch the *OFFICIAL MUSIC VIDEO* of the song your playing in the background of your gameplay. (Instead of the cringey live action stuff you got in story mode) So basically GH+MTV, It was so cool
Hey when you’re me and a child and you’re parents surprise you with GH Live it works pretty well(I never even played GHTV before it shut down)
Honestly, one of my favourite parts of Clone Hero is when charters include the music video. I never owned GH Live, but I that that was a feature that should of been there since GHWT having the Tool visuals to their songs.
I second the other dude, please chill with the ADHD captioning that feels like jangling keys in my face so I don't get bored and click off. Otherwise I'm a big fan of the channel, sorry, don't mean it make my comment sound exclusively negative lol.
Thanks for the feedback, will definitely reduce the captioning in future videos.
Rockband was soo underrated, having everyone being able to play an instrument was insane, guitarist, bassist, drummer, and singer (albeit usually not good) on a single track was wayy cool
One thing I will always appreciate that these games still have the power to do, is the ability to bring people together and have fun and show new music, and potentially change people’s music taste. It does suck that this genre of games died so fast due to oversaturation, but the community will always keep this game alive with its fan projects like World Tour Definitive Edition, Rock Band 3 Deluxe, YARG, Clone Hero, etc: And surprisingly GH videos still do well in 2024, meaning people haven’t forgotten about this game. I know people
Are iffy about Fortnite Festival to, but hey, it brought a LOT of new players and those new players are checking out these older games and having a blast with it, which in my opinion is its goal
Yeah but the problem is the community for any rythm game can really kill any enjoyment for the games. Guitar hero's community is just a bunch of try hards that get all pissed off because you can't really hit lines or do free bird on expert. While the community for rock band 3 deluxe acutally doesn't get upset and has a no-fail mode that the community likes to keep on. It's a big difference that acutally allows newbies to really feel more at ease with going into expert if they just started. Like I love world tour definitive edition as a whole but i'd rather take the rock band community over guitar hero any day of the week.
Just came back to clone hero like 2 days ago and you make this video. Perfect timing. Low-key wish you referenced it in some way since its been a huge part of the guitar hero community for years.
It’s crazy Activision will shut down any fan made mods to do with old Call of Duty games but have let clone hero and other guitar hero mods to be updated to this day. If clone hero ever gets a cease and desist, I guess we’ll know a new guitar hero is coming.
Man I love clone hero!! It’s a expert players dream come true! Some really talented people made some great charts, had to drop over 100 bucks for a guitar and dongle but so worth it
@@ProdByAD21 Once they're about to release Guitar Hero 7 that's when they'll go after Clone Hero and GHWT:DE. They want to shut the competition down right before the game release so other people can't make a replacement in time and to make as much money as possible, until then it's not worth their time to keep chasing the mods and fan made games. I hope that makes sense.
@@ProdByAD21it’s because cod is profitable and guitar hero is not
19:03 talks about warriors of rock
Shows the setlist of gh5
It feels like he completely mixed them up there. WoR was very guitar dominant
@@levia2805 It was also i believe the 2nd best selling game after GH3
Guitar hero was way ahead of it’s time. 🎸
It was the over saturation man. SSOOOO MUCH. But let me tell you, having one of these now and setting it up for a drinking night is a beautiful thing.
I think a big piece missing in this video is the decline in peripheral quality and feel. The original GH3 guitar is still highly coveted to this day for its amazing tactile feedback of which was removed in latter iterations for cost cutting measures. It was the largest reason people preferred and bought GH over rockband. In fact most people i knew played rockband with the GH guitar.
Rockband 4 would have been a really good game if they didn't have madcats make the controller
It died the first time because they pumped out far tooooo many games. From 2005-2010 Harmonix/EA and Activision released GH, GH 2, GH Rocks The 80s, GH Aerosmith, GH World Tour, GH On Tour, GH On Tour Modern Hits, GH Smash Hits, GHMetallica, GH Van Halen, GH5, Band Hero, GH Warriors Of Rock, RB, RB 2, RB Green Day, Lego RB, Beatles RB, RB 3 and probably more. That's insane to believe people would buy this at a certain point.
Second time, with Rock Band 4 and Guitar Hero Live, it died because both games were quite awful. In GH you just had on disc songs and everything else got streamed. You had to buy song tokens if you wanted to play a song or pay real money for it.
Also, now you can't play any additional songs anymore, cause this mode got shut down. The song list on disc is also small, just atound 35 songs or so and most of them don't suit a game like this, like songs by Skrillex, Rihanna or Katy Perry.
They also changed this games background to real videos in first person view. You can no longer customize your own character or band and those videos look like faked cringey hipster stuff which is really embarassing. Last nail in the coffin was that you had to buy upgrades to get a higher score, so worse players could have a higher score than you just cause you didn't earn that much cash already.
RB4 was really poorly optimized. Freezes and stutters were common even after many updates. Also the graphics were not the best.
The song list was a bit better then GH, especially with artists like Van Halen, Dream Theater, Ozzy Osbourne, Elvis Presley, Fleetwood Mac, Judas Priest,A7x and Aerosmith.
Even though the character editor was there, it was severely lacking conpared to previous games. You could not change your body, so you could not be skinnier,smaller, larger or heavier,
shoes would be locked to pants, arm accesories would be locked to shirts and jackets,etc.
Those are in my opinion the reasons those games failed and they could have been easy to overcome.
At least the Rock Band games justified their existence each time. Rb 1 - 3 each built upon the last with 3 essentially being the closest thing to harmonix’s objective of getting people to embrace music via pro modes. Beatles was a celebration of one of the most influential Rock Bands of all time. Green Day and Lego were essentially a dlc pack but I didn’t need to buy peripheral and could just redeem the export. And while Rock Band 4 was poorly optimized on release, the rivals expansion made it a fun way to play the game on modern systems. The fact that support for the game only ends this year says a lot on how much effort Harmonix put into fixing Rock Band 4
@@spideygamer8896 I have all the mainline RB games, plus Lego + Beatles, and RB3 is the one I go back to every time. Mostly because of the Rock Band Network. While I have the PS3 version, so my available tracklist wasn't as vast as the XB360 version, there was still a fantastic collection of tracks made available. These could not be ported to RB4 due to "technical reasons", thus cutting me off from some of my favourite songs.
RB4 also dropped keyboard support, which was a really stupid move. Sure, don't include a keyboard notechart for the new songs, fine, but at least let me use it as a guitar like I could in RB3. Is that too much to ask for? There was no excuse not to include basic support for it in RB4.
As a final insult, when online support arrived, only 1 player in an online band could use a "legacy" instrument, thus preventing people who hadn't purchased the full RB4 pack (and why would they if they still had a working guitar from an earlier game?) from being able to play together online. The one person who I found who did have an actual RB4 guitar would suffer from frequent controller dropouts, while my archaic RB1 guitar (which had been with me since the PS2) still maintained a good connection to the PS4.
When you add the previously mentioned lack of customisation options available, it really did feel like RB4 was rushed to try to beat Guitar Hero Live to market and now Harmonix is reduced to suckling on the teat of Fortnite to try to stay alive. Such a sad, sad fall from grace.
@@TigerTailsTV The lack of RBN support for rb4 is primarily a licensing issue, it’s why they had to relicense the songs down the line and whatnot. Yes it’s a crime “My Sword” by Tobey turner isnt available but it’s out of their control. Honestly it’s a miracle we still own most of our legacy dlc in the first place.
I also understand why keyboard support was dropped… because no one bought the damn keyboard. I can get a new keyboard in box, new condition for the price of a broken guitar hero controller. There’s a reason only pro drums was carried over.
The legacy instrument issue is an issue I never had cuz Xbox lol
Yeah Rb4 sucked ass on release. But rivals genuinely made it good. There’s a reason for why the game only ended support this year. It wasn’t a massive success but it was enough to keep Harmonix afloat until Epic came along. It’s essentially a glorified rock band 2
Guitar Hero is not dead. It's still alive in hundreds of arcades from coast to coast, and there's always a long line for it whenever I go to one of the local arcades!
still love playing guitar hero today and i’m glad clone hero and even fortnite revived guitar rhythm games
Guitar Hero/Rock Band, in my opinion, was the golden age of recreational gaming. Gamers and non gamers alike would come together to jam out and just have a good time. A lot of good memories playings these silly songs.
0:46 bad star power activation, smh
Warriors of Rock is still the best of them all.
For real😤
Also worth noting is that everyone ended up with closets full of Guitar Hero / Rock Band accessories. Cheap, plastic, fisher price looking toys. When the novelty of the series wore off it did sort of get embarrassing to have someone over and you've got a corner of the living room full of dusty drums and plastic guitars.
Plus, the controllers always felt too loud to use. Again it was alright early on or on the occasions when you had friends over. But if you had a spouse or significant other in the house, you started to have to be mindful of when you could play the game. Can't beat away on plastic drums or loud clicky controllers when someone is trying to sleep in the next room over.
In a way the games became more of a hassle to play than the fun you got out of it.
It's funny you say that when people are willing to basically pay an arm and a leg to get them from you (if they're working). I am not ashamed to have mine. I love growing up with this game series, so..
Completely agree - I was a waiter in the 2000s, and we had a good group of dudes that hung out after work, and me, one of the bartenders, and a pair of cooks played Rock Band regularly until sunrise for a long time. None of us had anything else important to do. I used to pack the whole kit up to take to parties, which was always a huge hit. But that was when parties were a regular part of life.
Then we all stopped working together as we moved toward starting careers, I got married, and the equipment just started gathering dust in the corner of the living room. Like you said, it became vaguely embarrassing. I just sold it all off in a garage sale eventually, probably for far too little.
The noise is why I always favored the last Rock Band guitars. The buttons dont clack when you press em and the guitar looks nice.
At first glance they look real since they dont have Giant red blue green buttons on them either.
They stack neatly in a corner or behind a door, maybe worth hanging for "nerd display"
The drums tho... There's no saving those 😂 big, bulky and Loud
I have a lot of fond memories around GH/RB... My top two being playing the Beatles variant with my (at the time) 60-something normally-not video game playing parents, and another being a birthday party we hosted for a friend who knew we had the game and just wanted to come over and play. We surprised everyone with matching "band tour shirts" we'd made displaying a photoshopped image of a slow loris (the b-girl's fav animal) holding a game guitar, and decorated our living room with flashing stage lights and a disco ball. Three adult couples rocked hard that night! It was legendary!
In my humble opinion, I think both Guitar Hero Live and Rock Band 4 came out a little too soon. Sure, it is nice to have a new Guitar Hero and Rock Band game on new next gen consoles, but most people like me who were too young to purchase DLC or brand new expensive hardware still missed out. I was 4 through 9 years old during 2005-2010 when Guitar Hero first boomed. I loved that game and played it a lot. And when GH Live and Rock Band 4 came out in 2015, I was still only 14 years old. And it wasn't until this year when Harmonix stopped releasing new DLC for Rock Band 4 was I finally able to purchase my first ever Rock Band DLC as a grown 23 year old adult. I think a lot of people who were too young to get the full experience with Guitar Hero and Rock Band in the late 2000's would totally buy new hardware and a brand new game these days. When PDP released their new Riffmaster guitar controller, it was sold out the minute pre-orders went live, compared to previous Rock Band 4 controllers released in 2015 and 2016 that sold just fine. So there is absolutely demand for a new Guitar Hero or Rock Band in 2024! Which is why I think the attempted Guitar Hero revival and Rock Band 4 in 2015 was a little too soon for most people who grew up with the original games.
Exactly right I had every game as they came out and stopped at rock band 3. Rock band 3 was peak. Rock band 4 wasn’t really necessary at the time so I skipped it. I’ve now bought rock band 4 and have been having a blast with it.
Activision, specifically Bobby Kotick, killed the entire genre. After the first game was a huge hit he got moist over the idea of endlessly selling the same peripherals and crap yearly (or faster!) And flooding the market with overpriced plastic instruments and expecting gamers to buy them over and over eventually wore out its welcome. Kotick's greed is legendary, and he will happily run a franchise or in this case an entire genre into the ground if he thinks he can squeeze money out of it until it drops dead.
Who remembers the South Park episode
Guitar Queero, LMAO!
I member
Congratulations you are
Can you play Buckethead on expert mode?
"He can play Guitar Hero II, acoustically"
As one of the biggest refurbishers and modifiers of guitar hero equipment, guitar hero didn't die. It was simply abandoned due to market saturation. Guitar hero refused to move into a platform which Rock Band 3/4 did where you could have a single, general release, which continuous DLC content rather than pumping out disc based games. This in-turn created more a cost sink issue which included disc printing, advertising, new engine developments (in some cases) and server allocations. This hurt sales because very few people would head to gamestop to buy the new guitar hero game after already buying the previous half-dozen discs. Rock Band 3 and 4 pumped out enormous amounts of DLC which appealed to those who enjoyed the artist.
Actitivison tried to capitalize on a rent-to-play idea with Guitar Hero Live TV which failed miserably due to poor marketing of Guitar Hero LIVE and the change in playstyle for guitars, plus no drums.
If guitar hero were to make a comeback in the G/R/Y/B/O style with tonnes of DLC and legacy content support, it would be a huge seller.
The one problem with Guitar Hero is that some of the controllers were so expensive you could buy a real guitar
Seriously might as well actually learn how to play the songs😂
@@goatmartino you should also see how expensive some of those rocksmith 2014 controllers are. Some people will pay 20,000 dollars for one
@Taxevader-gk9ms I have a "real" guitar from Rock Band. 6 strings, pre-amp out plus a midi output (to be used with the string mute). It was the price of an entry level guitar, which it most certainly was.
“Dance games just weren’t that popular in the West.”
What? Every arcade had at least three or four DDR units back in the day.
Yeah... I think some of his info was off in this video. Like how he said people just had no clue of the background of these types of games; acting like us Guitar Hero kids didn't know Japan was flooded with these and DDR was huge here in the US.
@@NoOneReallySpecial He was also completely off about Karaoke Revolution's popularity and didn't even mention how Harmonix teamed up with Konami to make it. K-rev was huge in the US and was arguably the first mainstream music game there. It spawned tons of sequels and copycat IPs like Singstar. The vocal mechanics of Rock Band came from K-rev.
He also completely missed the mark (or just intentionally trying to throw people off) on how Rock Band and locking most music behind DLC are what killed the genre, not too many GH sequels.
I think you’re vastly underestimating the power and influence of the film School of Rock on the generation of people playing guitar hero. Kids these days are influenced by hitting the gwiddy for the rizzler on tiktok
Warriors of Rock was actually my favorite in the series. Mainly because of the inclusion of 2112 and how it introduced me to Rush
Your final line seems to cut abruptly, might want to fix that. Otherwise this was a lovely video. Quite weird seeing such a thought out view on something you lived through, but really good nonetheless
Dude that was a smooth transition into your factor sponsor spot. Truly skillful I didnt see it coming.
Great documentary. I remember the Guitar Hero (and Rock Band) crave of the mid 00s. Activision milked Rock Band to death.
Thanks for making this video. Brought back some old memories. Fun times!
I was one of the recording artists and voiceover talents on FreQuency and Amplitude! What an amazing team and awesome group of people to work with! And what a story!
Guitar hero will always be my favorite rhythm game.
When I was young we lived pretty rural, so when someone in the family would go into a town you’d have a list of things to get. My mum once brought home Guitar Hero & I was so excited to play it only to find you were meant to have a guitar controller to play. However, because it was so far into town to buy the controller (plus we couldn’t afford it) I just learnt on the PlayStation controller. Which meant when we finally could afford the guitar, I hated playing with it because I was used to the harder modes. It was super helpful at parties though: only one guitar? Not a problem 😅
*_Maybe the real Guitar Heroes are all the friends we made along the way_*
And the fact that it got people like me (raised in a family of rap, oldies, and country/pop lovers) into rock and metal and now I've been to over 500 concerts and seen some greats like Ozzy, Iron Maiden, Judas Priest, NIN, etc.
Guitar Hero will always hold a special place in my heart. A Guitar Hero party was the first and only party I was ever invited to my whole life.
They REALLY need to re-release Rock Band 4 for current gen systems. The days of going into Gamestop and it being filled with dozens of instruments for $5 a pop are long gone. Buying a full copy of Rock Band 4 now is like $1300+.... it's crazy. Most of us have either broke or lost our instruments and even then most of them won't work on a PS5 anyway. The dongle alone to use on current gen is hundreds of $ if you can even find it. It'd be one thing if everyone was still on PS3s and 2s but everyone has now most likely upgraded to current gen and there's litterly NOTHING available to buy. There's still a huge demand for both a new game, and just being able to play our older ones at all. The fact there's not a single manufacturer making any instruments for current gen is crazy. You can find the discs for pennies, but they're unplayable without the instruments which just aren't available anymore, and all those old ones laying in ppls basements and garages won't work on new consoles anyway. I get now oversaturating the market with them, but there's just NOTHING. It litterly went from ppl not being able to give away extra instruments to now where you'll be paying well over $1000 just to play the games you already own on your PS5/Series X.
I loved Guitar Hero when it first came out but I didn’t enjoy the covers of songs but I dealt with it. Love Metallica so I was hyped when that game came out. I would play it all the time. But it died off… when DJ Hero came out my husband and I bought it. It was fun for a time and I loved the track mash ups but after a while it stopped but fun and the way to hit notes were hard for no reason… my husband sold it to her brother.
But Rockband… will always be one of the greatest music games for me. All my fave rock songs I could either sing to, play drums or the guitar/bass… and I had alll the pieces. We use to have game nights at our new apartment together at the time.. it was a hit with everyone. Plus when I found a bar that I could go to and play on an actual stage,pick what I wanted to sing while others in the bar join the “band” and picked the instrument….great times for me for two years straight…Rockband introduced me to cool people that just wanted to rock out, drink a bit and have fun…
It sucks that it all went away… I for one love rhythm games and I will never get sick of watching it.. right now I see on Tik Tok people playing a game called Clone Hero and I’m just enjoying watching others play.
I remember during my christmas breaks from school I stayed up all night playing GH
Lesson learned, too much of something will diminish the value of that something
Rock Band 3 was my first piano teacher. The first song I learned to play was "From Out Of Nowhere" by Faith No More. To this day, I can play the RB3 stem of that song from memory. Now, whenever I want to learn a song, I just use UA-cam tutorials and a real keyboard (and two hands), but it all started with RB3. RB3 taught me how to play melodies on the keyboard for real, and gave me the confidence to learn beyond that. I am sincerely grateful.
No mention of the arcade release of GH? They have seen a massive resurgence as of late, selling second hand for nearly their retail price in 2009.
I never understood why the arcade version had such a heavy guitar. Was it just so it could stand up to wear and tear better?
GH 2 will always be the best. I could probably still play the first half of Sweet Child of Mine without looking..i played that game soooooo much
It died as soon as Rock Band came out 😂😂…but GH1&2 sure paved the way, so many fun memories 💯
I loved the layout of the guitar hero game and the guitar that they developed for it better than rock band, but you couldn’t compete with the catalog that rock band eventually developed.
Rock band and GH were huge during their time and a lot of kids got into music bc of them
The reason why my Xbox 360 is still plugged in is because of guitar hero & rockband games. It’s still alive to me. The best part about having a rgh(hacked Xbox 360) is that I can go on internet archive and get every single dlc song for those games that aren’t available on the store anymore and put them on my console. My favorite part about the 360 versions of guitar hero after world tour is that you could play as your avatar. So I’m just there rocking out dressed as master chief 😂. Too bad activision ruins just about everything they touch.
Two words: Clone Hero. It’s free, infinite songs, and way better.
That's 9 words after the misclaim of "two words".
If you want the quick answer, it was sales dropping to the point the brand had multiple variants out in 09 and still only sold half of what they did the year before
Whoever makes the arcade version of GH3 for arcades should make arcade versions of the other GH games as well.
who remembers the ds ports of guitar hero?
I played it on the ds lite, it was pretty fun but wrecked my ds touchscreen from vigorous stylus strumming
@@ForceMoto yikes, my touch screen for the ds lite works fine for me.
Don't forget about the iOS version
@@Metalhead_Coaster_Fan never played that version before.
@ It was pretty good, sad it got discontinued though. Same with the iOS version of Rock Band.
I will still play guitar hero if available to me
Well that was a dramatic end
Guitar hero 3 got me into metal
>"Had an incredibly weak setlist that could barely be considered rock"
>shows Guitar Hero 5's setlist
Yeah, I think I can see what went wrong here. You mixed up Guitar Hero 5 and Warriors of Rock. Warriors of Rock's setlist was HEAVILY rock and metal focused. Given you had to show footage of GH5's setlist scroll there, I have no idea how this mistake slipped through.
Dang, this video took me back. I used to LOVE Guitar Hero there for several years. It definitely had it's place. I actually still have a Wii/Wii Guitar/Guitar Hero game. This video makes me want to bust it out and knock the rust off. lol I just might. I've been thinking about getting the adapter and trying Clone Hero. May have to look into that as well.
The feels are real. Life in a small town, GH was pretty much all we had to do, when not adventuring outside, going on walks around town, "glitching" the soda machine to drop free sodas. I personally met maybe two people who could beat me, not that I played a lot with other people. I trained one of them. He ended up so much better than myself, it was a real "teacher becomes the student" story. He's gone now, along with literally every copy of the games I had, except GH1, and my red SG. I still play RB4 sometimes, but it just isn't the same. GH was a different time. It brought people together. Props to those of you who still have your equipment together. GH series will always hold a special place in my heart. RIP CmfR.
My boyfriend plays guitar hero for pc all the time - clone hero. Years ago, I bought a refurbished controller before I met him and he has put that thing to good use. One of the best purchases I ever bought and I thought I was so stupid for getting it lol. He loves it and it makes me happy when he sings along. It never died to him. He downloads new music and there is a small cult following that still produces tab sheets and content.
I loved it when Guitar Hero came out with the Metallica series.And I like that you can play rock band instruments on guitar hero the later series
I never played GH or RB back in their day but I remember how guitar controllers and boxsets were overflowing thrift stores and Walmarts even well into the GHLive days. The Rock Band series also did better because they just focused on the music and even taught players how to play real instruments with RB3's Pro Mode, which helped please the "stop playing with plastic, get a real guitar!" crowd. On top of oversaturating the market during a recession, Neversoft's GH games also had gimmicks like powerups and avatars of real musicians like Kurt Cobain and Hendrix, which kinda took away from the more grounded feel of Harmonix's games and even got them into legal trouble.
That's not to say RB was immune to this (hello Lego Rock Band), but I feel those games are just much more fun and enjoyable.
Thanks for re-inspiring me to emulate these "standardized, low grade" console games from the time. I would know, I grew up with the Famicom (NES in the US)
I worked at Harmonix during the rise from Guitar Hero to the Fantasia days. Some truly talented people worked there.
I gotta say, GHWOR got way too much hate, and critics had no idea what they were talking about. The game, the songs, the feel, the reactive controller, it was definitely a step up gameplay wise from 4, and id even argue 5. Having the DLCs removed is what ruined it for me, because this game was the pinnacle of why i became a musician to begin with. Long story short: what destroyed GH6 wasnt the game, it was the corporate crap behind and around it that ruined it. I stand by that statement, and have for over a decade.
RIP Neversoft
You gave me some of the best years in gaming.
i remember being 7 or 8 when my family was exposed to rock band. my parents, my sister, and i were so hooked and ended up buying as many guitar hero/rock band games as we could. to this day, i think the first rock band might be one of the best games ive ever played. (rock band also introduced us to coheed and cambria, which is still my favorite band to this day)
Not to be pedantic, but I would hardly call DJ Hero a Guitar Hero title considering it used a completely different and separate peripheral
If they’d release Guitar Hero remastered I’d totally buy them. I miss GH.
You didn't even mention once in this video that Activision also did make the Nintendo DS entry "Guitar Hero: On Tour" which offered a truncated yet still true-to-form experience that ALSO had some interesting additions to make use of the DS hardware. But the same issue kicked in where they made tow more entries that were effectively just music expansion packs.
I played 1-2-3-4-aerosmith-vanhalen and 3 was my fav, never knew people disliked it that much XD
Guitar Hero World Tour and the Metallica games were absolute standouts for me. Every Thursday night some mates would come over for beer and pizza, play those games, and roll around laughing. The weakness you pointed out was actually a strength, everyone had to be on it to progress. The drums in particular were tough but enormous fun. Good times. Sad that the franchise died.
Did anybody else keep trying to air play the notes in the video, only to be cut off by a banner/logo covering the screen
3 is so popular and perfect that you can still find arcade console versions of it in some arcades to this day, its at my local Round 1
I loved these games and spent more money than I would like to admit on them. First tried it at Wal Mart when part 2 came out on PS2. I was hooked instantly. Turned on my best friend at the time to it and we had some of the best times playing couch co op. Broke the bank trying to get into Rock Band with a tricked out drum setup and extra instruments. I get why it failed... they oversaturated the genre. Still, some of the best times gaming was with the plastic guitar games. Great video! TY algorithm strikes again!
Excellent video! As a die hard guitar hero fan, thank you for this
I will give GH Live this. The POV camera does make it feel more like you're actually performing the song and not just watching a character play it. Also, the way they seamlessly transition from showing the audience to showing your bandmates reactions to your playing ability all in one shot is rather impressive.
But yeah... that's probably the only good thing I can say about that game. The two rows of three buttons were an earnest effort to make the game feel even more realistic, but it's clearly not GH anymore.
Also, I believe Rocksmith had already come out and was a huge success at this point, and that's a game that actually teaches you how to play classic songs on a real guitar or bass. You can't get more real than that, so when GH Live came out, it was almost an absolute mockery of what had already been established.
Despite this, if GH Live was its own game and didn't have GH in the title, it probably would've done a little better. Not a lot, but a little.
The fact that most people didnt know about the underground aspect of guitar hero is so ironic considering how most bands start out and end up, and then end up falling off in one way or another
I remember seeing the peripherals at thrift stores en masse, in like the late 2000s. Now, all gone. I bet they're selling on eBay for bank now :D Too bad, I bet my kid would have loved this.
I didn’t know Epic games purchased Harmonix in 2021… they were actually the best studio to purchase because of their history in the music game industry. Great video!
I started played guitar hero from number 2 as a teenager. Im 30 now and play here in there when i have a chance. i was able to 2nd hand buy a GH5 guitar and dongle, and buy a RB4 guitar and drumset(from goodwill for $25 in 2021. DEAL OF THE CENTURY). I love the feel of the GH guitars more and i wish they would come back so we can have an updated version of those guitars. I hate playing on the RB guitars cause the buttons and strum bar dont feel as responsive. Its crazy tho how RB4 is still going and being updated today but GH just gave up after that failed attempt at GH live. They probably could make a decent comeback if they advertise on TikTok and create some buzz and keep it somewhat reasonably priced
I wouldn't be surprised if there is something in the works given how FN: Festival is pretty popular. If they were to do a GHL TV with the 5 frets and didn't have the bs monetization it would do extremely well.
It's also worth mentioning that rock music in general isn't nearly as popular in the mainstream as it was in the 00s.
The most underrated of all these games was DJ Hero, I had it as a kid but I didn't really get it. Years later when I'd broadened my music appreciation beyond classic rock I dug it out of the basement but sadly the turntable had stopped working. I'd love to give it a shot again at some point.