THE MAKING OF GUITAR HERO
IN THE KNOW
PUBLISHER: REDOCTANE
DEVELOPER: HARMONIX
RELEASED: 2005
PLATFORM: PLAYSTATION 2
GENRE: RHYTHM ACTION
DEVELOPER HIGHLIGHTS
DANCE CENTRAL
SYSTEM: XBOX 360
YEAR: 2010
ROCK BAND (PICTURED)
SYSTEM: VARIOUS
YEAR: 2007
FREQUENCY
SYSTEM: PLAYSTATION 2
YEAR: 2001
I magine for a second that you’re part of one of the biggest rock bands on the planet and you receive a call from a little-known game developer asking to put your iconic song into a videogame played with a plastic toy guitar. Would you take that risk? This was the question posed by Harmonix in its pursuit of making the ultimate rock videogame: Guitar Hero. Released in November 2005 for the PS2 by Harmonix and RedOctane, it spawned a series of over 20 titles and expansions across multiple platforms in just five years.
The concept behind the game was simple yet hard to describe, so persuading bands to license their music was a tricky task. “We really wanted it to be a tour through all the genres of rock… to be true to the entire spectrum of rock music,” says
