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It has been two decades since the legendary game debuted in North America, providing everyday gamers the opportunity to become rock legends. Not in reality, though you'd be hard-pressed telling that someone who has mastered Free Bird’s four-minute instrumental break in front of a packed crowd of friends.

Created by the developers, the game gave players a guitar-shaped controller to match coloured notes moving along the display in time with a song. Every sequence corresponded to specific notes, creating the sensation of a genuine live show.

Harmonix had already experimented in the music genre prior to teaming up with the publisher, later purchased by the gaming giant in 2006. Collaboratively, they established the foundations for a surprising massively profitable series that had a remarkable impact on numerous musicians featured, introducing classic groups to a new generation of younger players.

Michael Dornbrook, former COO of Harmonix, remembers the early financial challenges in securing the songs – despite the fact initial releases primarily featured cover versions.

“We rerecorded every song since the cost was so high,” he explains. “Even with the necessary permissions by themselves, it was nearly impossible. We couldn’t get acts such as legendary groups – the publisher had virtually no money, and our team was fairly certain the project would flop. But once the game became a hit, album purchases and radio play were going up, all artists desired to be in.”

He continues: “Among the amazing things was the number of mothers and fathers reached out expressing gratitude for introducing their children to the music they adored. It evolved into an intergenerational phenomenon.”

Timeless Music Gains a New Audience

Irish group one featured act had their track on the 2008 game Guitar Hero World Tour. Guitarist Paul Mahon remembers the way the game revived older hits back into vogue: “The game provided a bigger, new demographic. Typically this had been seen as outdated material, but then once it got included in the game young people were finding it, suddenly it was cool. This validated the genre, and got rid of the ‘dad rock’ label. It provided our catalog renewed popularity.”

In 2008, the Answer’s first record was still not available in the US, meaning the game was a key medium for exposure for the group during their US tour supporting AC/DC. “The roadies were playing Never Too Late on the tour bus, and some of them knew us from Guitar Hero,” Mahon says.

Major Band Spin-offs Enduring Influence

Rock’s biggest acts soon took advantage of the series’ popularity, including bands like Aerosmith, Metallica and Van Halen starring in specialized game editions centered around each band’s catalogue and associated stories, imagery and legendary status. For example, Guitar Hero: Aerosmith, reportedly to have made the group greater revenue than any of their studio albums. It moved well over 500,000 units upon release, and sales of their songs rose of up to 40% at a time when the music business was already collapsing.

Guitar Hero continues to inspire nimble-fingered fanaticism within the community. Earlier this year, an online personality achieved an impressive attempt featuring the challenging track – a notoriously difficult power-metal song popularized through the game – using a fan-made version, a freeware game with similar mechanics but an array of personalization features. This track is difficult even in the hardest setting, let alone performed at double speed while hitting every one of its near 4,000 notes. They claimed it took nine months to accomplish.

“The game is a fun, fantasy thing. Just as with Call of Duty, it doesn't imply you ought to pick up a real gun and enlist,” notes DragonForce guitarist Herman Li.

The band had already wrapped up a profitable run when their hit was featured on Guitar Hero III, yet he explains it made them widely recognized. “I recall the record label informing us that we were records were moving like crazy,” he shares. “It exploded on the subsequent tour, and we were playing right ahead of the headliners on the Mayhem festival.”

Indeed, the band's visibility from Guitar Hero proved so vast that it threatened to overshadow everything else the band has done. Last year, the track featured in promotional material for Despicable Me 4. “In the past I felt otherwise, but I’ve made peace with it,” Li says. “If you only hear a single track, that's fine – everyone’s got their own musical journey and I'm pleased we’ve been part of people’s lives”.

Enduring Impact from the Iconic Controller

Top-tier marketing, whether it’s for automobiles, apparel or games, extends beyond mere transactions – it evokes a desire. Was the game able to tap into that? “That’s exactly what we were trying to create,” Dornbrook says. “The excitement of performing as a music icon on the stage. Since the beginning, the creators felt that there’s an instinctive human desire to make music, and they wanted to leverage innovation to enable everyone to do it”.

The majority of Guitar Hero games were released in just a half-decade between 2005 and 2010, featuring derivative titles such as DJ Hero, including a turntable controller, and Band Hero. Subsequently, the publisher’s interest on peripherals waned, aside from a short-lived revival in 2015.

Games like the fan project and newer releases have kept the community alive, with expectations of something from the original publisher on the way. A new studio has entered work on its debut music game. Original co-founders are both involved in advisory roles. Are gamers ready to embrace another game in the spirit of Guitar Hero?

“Our team believed such titles might become similar to sports games where you can update every year,” he remarks. “There’s so much new music that it could be evergreen, so I’ve always been optimistic. There’s no reason why it can’t persist for future fans.”