Guitar Hero & Rock Band Retrospective

You're absolutely right about Rock Band drums being able to translate into real drumming. I literally used that game to learn real drums and ended up taking lessons once I realized how good I was getting at Rock Band

There was that dude in his dorm room that nailed Through the Fire & Flames, but i can’t help my incredulity. It requires too much of a commitment, and 7 other hands.

It neeeeeeeds to come back Rock Band actually got me started on drums in a pretty accurate way. And that led me into other instruments, discovering my favorite bands, and eventually writing and recording music.

Growing up my siblings and I had Guitar Hero 3, Rock Band 2, and Lego Rock Band (all Wii versions), and we played all of them constantly. Last year one of my brothers and I moved out of my parents’ house, and we took all the old Wii stuff with us. We decided to most of the games and peripherals and split the money. After over a decade of devouring space in the basement, all the Guitar Hero and Rock Band controllers are just gone, and I find something sad about that. This video reminded me how much I love those games.

Dude...this was a RUSH of nostalgia for me. I adore these games, all of them. I spent 1000s of hours mastering every instrument, straining my voice wailing every song. Destroyed so many Rock Band drum sets and using the Penny Mod trick to attempt to revive them whenever I could. So many nights with friends, so many tournaments competing, and so many deeply fond memories. I could talk about these games forever, and love occasionally picking up one of my plastic weapons and shredding for hours. One of my favourite past times was making a band with my two friends, and playing Expert Bass while also singing with a Mic stand. For me I think my top 3 are Warriors of Rock > Rock Band 3 > Guitar Hero 3. Some incredible DLC was in GH3, including the Top Gun theme, the Halo 2 Mjolnir mix, and I AM MURLOC! Speaking of, you mentioned Pandora looked like she was ripped straight out of Warcraft. You can actually unlock Arthas Menethil, The Lich King, as a playable a character. AND he uses his Frostmourne as a Guitar. A rare Activision W. Thank you for doing such a great job at honouring both of these series. I saw that a premium version of the Guitars was being made, the Riffmaster and I cannot WAIT to get my hands on it and relive these games once again. It's crazy how the Drums, Keyboard AND Mic all truly do teach you have to be a musician. I've always loved music, and especially classic rock, but I think these games really made me appreciate the craftsmanship behind creating and mastering it. Tremendous job dude, very well done. Also RUSH is the best.

My first impression given the difficulty you play was that this would be a recap from a more casual player's perspective that would miss fine details or struggle to present the aura that was present at the time, but my judgements were quickly put in check. You completely nailed the entirety of it in a unique way nobody else has accomplished so far, especially with presenting the monstrous reach it had to all ages and gifting accurate anecdotes in a way that even someone who had never been connected to the genre can empathise with. All the feelings of the magical revolution when Harmonix struck gold, to the worldwide electricity in the air as it peaked and the overwhelming saturation leading to the downfall were captured by you flawlessly.

Dude, I remember when Warriors of Rock first came out, they had a stage set up where you can play the game in front of thousands of people. It was me on Guitar and two other people on Bass and Drums. We played Bleed it Out by Linkin Park on Expert and the crowd was going wild because we were able to carry a continuous combo throughout the entire song. Good times.

I'm glad you agree with the sentiment of "what if full albums could be used as a narrative in future Guitar Hero games." I would like that too. Or at least songs that are 15 or more minutes in length. cough Tarkus. I would really like to see Tarkus have its own event in Guitar Hero.

This has to be the best video on the GH / RB series. You perfectly captured the spirit, the message, the flaws, and the good PERFECTLY! You put it in an easily understandable retrospective video, and I salute you for it. And your own story at the end made this game and video more impactful. I discovered so many new bands and music genres all because of this series. I discovered Pleymo, Filter, Dragonforce, Flyleaf, Lamb Of God, as well as a growing appreciation for NIN, KoRn, Rush, and Smash Mouth! I truly appreciate this video. I hope this video can help people explore other music genres and play this game or even take rhythm games further by making new concepts! Thank you for showing the power of music and gaming to light. You deserve so much more attention!

You don't even know how much I needed a proper retrospective video on GH & RB like that. Thank you so much for making it.

In December of 2008, my parents surprised my brother and me with Guitar Hero World Tour. That game was played in our house almost every day for years. Sometimes one of us, sometimes all of us. There’s not a video game I have more fond memories of playing with my family, it was one of very few games my parents ever played. Guitar Hero single-handedly taught my brother and me how to play drums well enough to eventually get our own drum kit. I eventually taught myself guitar too. Playing music has remained a favorite pastime for myself and my brother to this day, and I’m certain we’re not the only people who had this same experience. No other game has had a greater ripple effect into my future than this game did.

Beatles Rock Band is solidly in my top 5 games of all time. My brother and I have got together and play the whole thing in one session multiple times over the years. Its a true work of art that you can tell is just dripping with love from every pixel, and has left a massive impact on me and my family.

Man, that rush story got to me hard 😭 I found out about Guitar Hero through a local tech con called Digital Life Expo. I played it, sucked, but I understood what it was going for. Then, months later, there was a demo setup at Best Buy across two TVs. My friend and I just kept taking turns, and we probably stayed there for 3 hours. Then we spent the rest of the day jumping from store to store to find Guitar Hero. We ended up finding it back uptown, and the rest was history.

For a 34-year old boomer with no talent, discipline and no will to learn real guitar like me. GH and RB were perfect. Had so much fun. Glad to see its spirit lives on with Fortnite Festival. Yeah it's been nerfed af but it's good to see Zoomers or whatever discovering old music and playing their own gen's music

I grew up with Atari 2600, and stopped gaming after SNES. Guitar Hero brought me back to gaming in the PS2 era. A have huge respect and the fondest memories from this franchise

Rush is fucking amazing. Lifeson also guest starred in TPB, so they're legit just legends.

This just threw me through a loop. I used to play Guitar Hero AND Rock Band with my family when I was younger. For Rock Band we straight up had a full band going at one point with someone on the mic, someone on the drums, and someone on the guitar. Those were fun days.

An engaging opening as always, diving in now. Glad to see a new retrospective, and looking forward to the next!

Guitar Hero was something of my childhood ever since I first got that Xbox 360 copy of GH2. Holding the Xplorer guitar for the first time has been such a positive memory of childhood since forever and I still to this day remember how much it hurt when I played the guitar wrong for so long that I got a full blister on my thumb from purely SLIDING the strum-bar. Yet I wanted to just keep playing but all that time waiting for it to heal was so tantalizing! This video has motivated me to revisit all the past games as well, this video was awesome and it was lovely to see another person's perspective on the entire series of these games and remind me of the positive things of my childhood. Thank you.

Babe wake up, a new Liam Triforce Retrospective dropped.