Guitar Hero, popular electronic game series developed and released by American companies RedOctane, Harmonix Music Systems, and Activision (now Activision Blizzard) in 2005. Utilizing a controller modeled after a guitar, Guitar Hero allows users to play an expansive collection of popular rock-and-roll songs by pressing buttons on their controller to match commands displayed on the screen. Scores are determined by a player’s accuracy and by the level of difficulty. Upon its release, Guitar Hero helped to popularize the new genre of “rhythm games” (so called because players interact with the game by rhythmically responding to onscreen musical cues).
Guitar Hero was originally inspired by the lesser-known arcade game GuitarFreaks. Guitar Hero II was released in 2006, followed in 2007 by Guitar Hero III: Legends of Rock and Guitar Hero Encore: Rocks the 80s. These releases added to the franchise’s musical library and included an array of controllers modeled after the famous Gibson electric guitars. Guitar Hero: World Tour, released in 2008, emulated the competing music game Rock Band by packaging a drum kit and microphone with the guitar.
Guitar Hero quickly became a cultural icon. An episode of the animated television show South Park was created in homage to the game’s immense popularity, and Guinness World Records recognized the game’s highest-scoring players. Guitar Hero surfaced in the video for the hit song “Touch My Body” by Mariah Carey, and rock group Aerosmith extended its hit library to Activision and received its own game, Guitar Hero: Aerosmith (2008).
This multimedia saturation represented the high-water mark for the franchise. Immediately afterward Guitar Hero (and console-based music simulations as a whole) began a steady decline. Sales of later titles dropped, primarily because existing players had already bought the expensive hardware needed to play the game but also because not enough new players were adopting the game to sustain its previous momentum. Two heavy metal bands, Metallica and Van Halen, headlined Guitar Hero expansions in 2009, but Guitar Hero 5, released that same year, saw disappointing sales. The latter title was criticized by the surviving members of Nirvana for its depiction of Kurt Cobain, as the game allowed players to pair the late grunge rocker’s onscreen avatar with unlikely and comical music selections. Guitar Hero 6: Warriors of Rock was released in 2010 and posted the worst first-month sales in franchise history. By then, many fans of rhythm games had migrated to touchpad devices such as the iPhone. Citing declining revenues, Activision Blizzard ceased development of Guitar Hero in February 2011.