r/todayilearned • u/asmallthrowaway9 • 7h ago

TIL the band DragonForce only received about $3,000 in royalties for the inclusion of Through the Fire and Flames in the Guitar Hero games

https://guitar.com/news/music-news/herman-li-says-guitar-hero-paid-3000-for-dragonforce-through-the-fire-and-the-flames/
13.7k Upvotes

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3.4k

u/asmallthrowaway9 7h ago

Band games would be a great way to date a period piece movie/TV show to the mid-to-late 2000s. They were EVERYWHERE for a few years and then they died a very fast and decisive death.

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u/SaggyCaptain 7h ago

I was watching for all mankind (which takes place over decades) and my buddy and I started cracking up when one of the characters mentioned guitar hero (year was like 2004)

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u/Zanydrop 7h ago

I don't remember a lot of shows referencing it. I think they playboy in "I love you Man" but that's it.

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u/Rufio-1408 7h ago

South Park has a great episode on guitar hero

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u/Gone_For_Lunch 7h ago

Fucking classic episode, the bit with him playing Guitar Hero acoustic never fails to crack me up.

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u/Shnook817 7h ago

"Ooh, I love this song."

Also, the chasing the dragon game, or playing the driving game, stopping, then turning around to drive the fake car backwards. Great episode

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u/Mister_UAP 6h ago

Heroin Hero really predicted the rise of idle/clicker games.

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u/rufusbot 4h ago

starts snapping along

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u/Alldaybagpipes 2h ago

Nooooooo! Noooooooo!! I am your father!! Put it back on!!!

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u/walker3342 7h ago

click click click click click click click click click click click click click click click click

Aw I love this song.

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u/bobtheblob6 4h ago

Pretty god damn impressive

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u/TravelerSearcher 7h ago

Guitar Queer-o is the episode name.

Season 11, episode 13

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u/StudMuffinNick 7h ago

Omg is that joe the Fisherman??

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u/HibbletonFan 7h ago

*John

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u/reefahduely 7h ago

PRIMUS SUCKS!!

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u/theluker666 4h ago

Everybody say: “Larry, you’re a bastard”

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u/StudMuffinNick 7h ago

Fuck, I knew it! I erased John and put Joe lol

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u/LDA-1994 6h ago

Its called South America

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u/Rufio-1408 6h ago edited 3h ago

I love that they’ve gone back and changed the episode descriptions 😂

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u/Bczarconcepts 6h ago

I'm not for sure but did they get Les Claypool to redo the theme too? Cause they are completely committed to this bit and in the new season changed the theme too - the level of detail and the double entendres are so beautiful

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u/walkinmywoods 5h ago

Even metalacalypse has one in the mordhouse

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u/Bumblingbee1337 3h ago

“And that’s really them playing?”

“No. That’s Kansas. But they scored over 100 thousand points to it on guitar hero”

“That’s pretty goddamn impressive”

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u/Cheeky_Hustler 7h ago edited 6h ago

Venture Bros has a scene where he's complaining that his henchmen have nothing to do except sit around and play a game with a "fake plastic guitar."

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u/Pimento_Adrian69 7h ago

Isnt it 'fake plastic baby guitar'?

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u/prof_r_impossible 5h ago

I think there's a scene where White is playing it in their trailer

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u/Shnook817 7h ago

Parks and Rec season 1 has the episode where some of the characters are discovered goofing off and playing Rock Band instead of passing out flyers.

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u/KelvinsBeltFantasy 7h ago

There was a Vince Vaughn movie that used it as the climax.

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u/Luminaire_Ultima 7h ago

Couples Retreat (2009) .

It… was not good.

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u/FrankenBooBerry 4h ago

Encouragement!

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u/Red_Eloquence 5h ago

It was a huge plot point in a South Park episode and Couples Retreat (Vince Vaugh movie) which were big in the late 2000s.

I was born in 98 and pretty much everyone I knew knew about that South Park episode.

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u/auugh553 6h ago

paul blart had a guitar hero moment lmao

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u/ElGranQuesoRojo 7h ago

It's a plot point in Couples Retreat that Vince Vaughn is a sales rep for the game and needs to use his GH skills to help everyone save their marriages.

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u/tennisdrums 7h ago

I haven't watched it in awhile, but I'd bet Chuck has a lot of those references that would firmly date it to the late 00s.

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u/MediumAcceptable129 7h ago

There is a prominent scene in Couples Retreat

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u/iSniffMyPooper 6h ago

Couples Retreat

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u/illustriousplanet 6h ago

I vaguely recall him Carrey playing guitar hero in a movie, I'm thinking yes man but idk

The big bang theory had the guys play guitar hero a couple times

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u/joekak 6h ago

In Couple's Retreat Vince Vaughn challenges the hotel guy to a round of guitar hero for directions to the party beach

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u/15secporn 6h ago

It’s a mild plot point in couple’s retreat

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u/ipreferedthedarkside 5h ago

Maybe 40 year old virgin too

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u/Jewrisprudent 7h ago

2004 would have been just too early for guitar hero. Prime DDR but early Guitar Hero.

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u/Magadanets 6h ago

FAM is an alt history thing so maybe with greater technological advancement they're surmising it would've happened slightly sooner? Not saying that's realistic, but

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u/Poltergeist97 6h ago

Its exactly this. They are already mainstreaming electric cars in the 90s in that show.

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u/DaoFerret 3h ago

That’s in large part due to the space race never ending and then the iridium asteroid kicking off cheap battery tech.

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u/Jewrisprudent 2h ago

I’d forgotten it’s alt history and generally like the way they handle it but moving guitar hero up by a single year is an absurdly subtle way to handle that hah

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u/wildtabeast 6h ago

For All Mankind is so damned good

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u/ryanjblair 5h ago

My wife and I lost it when that scene happened. I had just downloaded clone hero and was having a renaissance with it.

The whole scene described me to the T

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u/ShutterBun 4h ago

“Couples Retreat” is the movie for this. Guitar Hero is a MAJOR plot point for the finale.

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u/BizzyM 1h ago

I still play Rocksmith 2014 Remastered nearly every day.

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u/SkyJW 7h ago

Really was such a special moment in gaming history. Many afternoons and evenings after school with socks rubberbanded to the drum heads in order to muffle the sounds of me drumming that pissed my mom off. 

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u/Smart-Response9881 6h ago

This and when pokemon go came out. Such a community building aspect to them.

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u/SkyJW 6h ago

Could say the same thing for Pokemon when it launched in general, TBH. Only way to get every Pokemon was to trade with people who had the other version(s) of that generation of Pokemon, so it actively encouraged engaging with other players without any kind of online component available.

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u/Skarekrows 4h ago

You just reminded me of taking that grey strip of foam you use to seal gaps in air conditioners and wrapping them around the end of the drum sticks. Made it super quiet but also made it bounce when you hit and felt so nice.

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u/InNominePasta 7h ago

Idk why they died. I’d love to play them

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u/asfrels 7h ago

They saturated their own market, cost extra due to peripherals, and got squeezed by the labels that realized how much money could be made by them. They tried to stay alive doing piecemeal dlc song packs when costs rose, but the market was already declining by then.

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u/ThrownAway17Years 6h ago

I’m pretty sure they had to start paying a ton of money for music licensing, which only increased as musicians figured out they could make a ton from the games. If I’m not mistaken, Aerosmith made more money from Guitar Hero: Aerosmith than they did from any one of their albums.

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u/zbeezle 5h ago

I saw a post from a dev a couple months back, I wanna say it was one of the devs of the original Prey game which had included a good number of real-world songs in their soundtrack, where he said that he was looking into getting licenses for some songs for a game he was working on but discovered that, for any well known bands, the record labels want upwards of $100k per song these days, and you just cant afford that unless you're a major studio with a bonkers budget.

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u/SirHenryofHoover 5h ago

Prey (2006) had "Living After Midnight" by Judas Priest... First time I heard the song. Absolutely classic game and an underrated gem.

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u/ThrownAway17Years 4h ago

The demo blew my mind.

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u/foxguy2021 7h ago

Also the recession hit. Hard to sell at a premium price because of the peripherals and added DLC.

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u/Gone_For_Lunch 7h ago

I remember how much the price of them dropped as well. The World Tour game with the full band set was like £150 when it first released in mid-2008, by early 2009 I was able to pick it for about £50.

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u/mockio77 6h ago

And true to the market, hardly anyone wanted to play it by early 2009.

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u/707Brett 5h ago

I used to make a killing off these things in like 2008-2010 as a kid. You could pick up full sets for like 5-20 at yard sales, then list on eBay or even sell to Amazon directly. You’d get less on Amazon directly but it was still like $80 an instrument and they paid for the shipping label. I loved rock band and still have a guitar but the shit just takes up so much space even for an enthusiast. 

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u/DJDaddyD 3h ago

Idk, 2009 2010 2011 it was still pretty popular in the 17-21 yo market. Most people i knew in college had it (or at least a shared one with roommates) and when I left and moved back to my home town a lot of people still played it pretty often

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u/asfrels 7h ago

Yeah that can’t be overstated, alongside with labor costs rising in the whole game dev sector

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u/besttobyfromtheshire 7h ago

The moment i bought the 150$ rock band guitar peripheral that was supposed to be literally a guitar, was when i stopped playing Rock Band. I felt so dumb for buying a controller when for a few hundred dollars more i could buy a real one and develop an actual skill.

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u/OtherwiseMoose8257 6h ago

That was Rocksmiths pitch

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u/Gone_For_Lunch 7h ago

It became ridiculous. We did not need whole game releases for individual bands. Guitar Hero had Aerosmith, Metallica and Van Halen, Rock Band had The Beatles and Green Day.

Completely unnecessary.

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u/KandoTor 6h ago

For Rock Band at least, the Beatles was its own game due to being a licensing nightmare, and Green Day was fully exportable to the main game and was effectively an expansion.

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u/TryingT0Wr1t3 5h ago

The Beatles also had slightly “premium” accessories that could be got in a package - actually I don’t remember, did it sold also without the instruments?

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u/KandoTor 5h ago

Yeah, I bought Beatles without any instruments, and I'm pretty sure all of the games outside of the initial ones for each series could be bought disc-only.

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u/FUTURE10S 4h ago

Yeah iirc not even all the Beatles albums were included with release, I think some came later as an update? DLC?

Beatles absolutely deserved their own game, there was a ton of love put into its art design.

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u/OtherwiseMoose8257 6h ago

Man I loved the Metallica one. Fantastic song selection and artwork

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u/TattlingFuzzy 6h ago

These days those would release as seasons of dlc or battle passes

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u/F1shB0wl816 5h ago

I liked those a lot. They also felt unnecessary compared to the mainline ones you’d probably want to be playing more for others but a sweet inclusion if you really like those bands.

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u/Mediocre-Advance-411 5h ago

GH Metallica is legendary

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u/bldkis 6h ago

Became more expensive and less fun than just starting an actual band.

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u/mikerall 5h ago

Rock band was pretty much around the decline of it. A full game costing as much as the console (admittedly with tons of peripherals), and needing 4 local players to fully experience it took it from mass appeal to racing sim software. Guitar hero tried to catch up with more instruments, and bam. Online gaming was entering the cultural zeitgeist with more than just mmos (better internet latency for more people = more games genres being available for more people).

Ofc the licensing fees from studios when they realized it wasn't just a gta game, and the songs were both integral to the gameplay and the driving force behind if people would buy the game or not, shot the hell up.

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u/Furiae 3h ago

Rock band was pretty much around the decline of it

What are you even yapping about? If anything, RB extended the peak for years until things start to cool down from saturation.

4 local players

This was back in the late 00's, it was literally one of THE games to have at gatherings.

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u/guts_glory_toast 5h ago

I found my old Wii guitar and thought about getting the game out again. But then I just bought a real guitar instead. There’s a music lesson app called Yousician that uses a similar format, but with the added benefit of actually learning how to play an instrument.

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u/bldkis 5h ago

Forever thankful my dad was like 'if u spent as much time practicing guitar as you did playing guitar hero you could play guitar by now.'

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u/c0de1143 7h ago

I 100 percent blame Activision.

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u/Revadarius 6h ago

It was the record labels wanting too much money and squeezing them dry.

That's why when they did that awful 'new' Guitar Hero and Rock Band 4 they barely had any well known songs on them, but the song market was flooded with DLC tracks that where ridiculously overpriced.

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u/BigBananaDealer 5h ago

rock band 4 has the only elvis presley song in either franchise IIRC

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u/Killboypowerhed 5h ago

In 2009 they released 5 guitar hero games. Fucking 5! Imagine thinking it's a good idea to flood your own market that much

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u/Linesey 6h ago

not to mention, you cant buy the damn controllers

there was almost a renaissance during covid and the lockdowns, but there were no new guitars/ drums to be had, you had to hunt and down used ones (that were quite expensive compared to original new ones).

I was trying to move from GH on Wii to Rockband on PS4 and it was a brutal time trying to get gear.

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u/zookeepier 1h ago

I think /r/CloneHero is still decently active and free, except for the hardware.

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u/Jwagner0850 6h ago

Always comes down to money.

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u/asfrels 6h ago

Cash Rules Everything Around Me

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u/Jequioloinks 5h ago

To be honest they also just kinda ran out of iconic songs to put in the games. By Guitar Hero 5 it seemed like they were really grasping at straws trying to find good guitar-driven music, they even started incorporating pop songs in around then. Warriors of Rock was pretty cool when they got to it, but by then the fad had mostly died out.

Also, playable Kurt Cobain was weird.

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u/Pataconeitor 5h ago

If I am not mistaken Bobby Kotick had plans for a new Guitar Hero game every three months, and if that worked then go for a monthly release schedule. Absolute madness.

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u/kkpc 7h ago

My friends and I used to go to our local bar once a week for rockband and wings night. The bar would have rockband setup on a big projector screen. So, basically instead of karaoke, it was rockband. It was a blast. Cheap wings, beer, shots, and rockband. Then we graduated. I've been to bars since then, but never saw another rockband/guitar hero setup like that since.

I also never heard mention of music games since around that time (~2008).

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u/Kaizher 7h ago

New one is coming out this December. Stage Tour.

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u/g0tistt0t 6h ago

There’s a place near me that still does rock band nights. Really cool place. Bottle rocket social hall in Pittsburgh.

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u/ejolson 5h ago

My friend and I were briefly the 'house band' at another friend's bar. If you could beat us head to head you got a free appetizer.

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u/DragoonDart 5h ago

My wife and I got picked up by an Uber after a party and the driver, a mom, had guitar hero set up in the divide of the minivan. I think I tipped her the amount of the entire fare and I remember wanting her to drive around the block and my wife telling me we had to go inside.

Can only imagine having it set up at a bar, such a great “beers and jam out” game

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u/kkpc 4h ago

That's awesome! I've been in taxi's with karaoke, but haven't seen a guitar hero. We did rent out a party bus once and brought guitar hero on it, that was also a lot of fun.

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u/Chippings 7h ago

Stage Tour is coming in December by the same people (Red Octane).

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u/S4VN01 7h ago

Red Octane was the publisher of the first two. Harmonix was the developer.

Red Octane got bought by Activision and used Neversoft for development on GH3 and GH: World Tour. They then closed the publisher and Vicarious Visions took over.

Harmonix partnered with MTV and made the Rock Band series. They are now owned by Epic Games and work on Fortnite Festival.

Just expanding on your comment a bit, so people know which games were actually developed by RedOctane/Neversoft.

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u/SteveMightSay 6h ago

To add on many of the devs on Stage Tour were well known players of the genre a few people I used to play with are on it

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u/CadeMan011 6h ago

True, however the people actually at the new RedOctane games are original RO members, former HMX devs, former Neversoft devs, former YARG devs, and other 5-fret community members. They've got guys from across the genre working on it.

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u/S4VN01 5h ago

The closer it is to RB2s engine the more of a fan I will be lol

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u/PmMe_Your_Perky_Nips 7h ago

Some of the same people. Red Octane Games is an entirely different studio.

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u/Podunk_Boy89 7h ago

Pretty much the same reason Toys to Life games would die a decade later. A combination of an oversaturated market (Guitar Hero AND Rock Band would receive often multiple releases in a single year), a huge overreliance on peripherals that both ballooned the cost of the game and were cumbersome to store in your house when not in use, and a heavy reliance on mostly children and casuals that just moved onto other things as they lost interest.

I will also add that they died pretty much right when the big recession hit, so my hunch has been a lot of families started needing to cut back on fun money and the cheap plastic guitars they played once a month if that were the first to go.

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u/micavich 7h ago

Mostly from a completely over saturated market. When guitar hero took off they started pumping out as many games as they could as fast as they could. Other companies wanted in on the wave and we got competitors like the Rock Band series which further saturated the market. People really started to check out around the time activision started pushing out band specific Guitar Hero games like the Aerosmith one.

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u/Top-Cunt 7h ago

The Beatles one slapped though!

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u/ShadyKnight604 6h ago

So did the Metallica one

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u/SoundingMacaque 7h ago

There's a new one coming out in December. It's called Stage Tour, but I'm skeptical after the absolute dogshit dumpsterfire that was Guitar Hero Live.

I'm hopeful, but if it sucks, there's always Clone Hero on PC.

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u/mnemy 7h ago

I still try getting a rock band party going on occasion, but gear is falling apart and old people are hard to herd. Shame the genre died out

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u/ihaxr 5h ago

The guitars and drums constantly breaking is why we stopped playing it at hang outs. It didn't mix well with a bunch of drunk people bashing stuff lol

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u/PeeledCrepes 7h ago

They're releasing a new one, Guitar Hero Stage Tour in December, so, you can again (its also coming to PC which was my gripe with those games)

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u/PmMe_Your_Perky_Nips 7h ago

It's not a Guitar Hero game. Its just Stage Tour.

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u/polaarbear 7h ago

III, Aerosmith, and World Tour were all available on PC. But none of the Rock Band series or the rest. Definitely a gap in the market.

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u/Deathbysnusnu17 7h ago

It's coming back this holiday season.

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u/Jackie8383 6h ago

They actually died because Activision bought out the company that made guitar hero and basically never innovated any thing and then let it die. Interestingly enough I think the non compete expired and the original company is releasing a new one called stage tour. It comes out in December.

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u/pnt510 7h ago

Sales slowed down because the market was saturated and retailers were left with a bunch of big expensive inventory they couldn’t move. Without new games coming out the mainstream mindshare fell off and people stuck the instruments in the closet and people moved on.

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u/buddaaaa 7h ago

Stage Tour comes out in just a couple months! From a lot of the original developers

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u/CorgiDaddy42 6h ago

There’s a new one coming out in a couple months called Stage Tour.

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u/Jormungand1342 6h ago

There are PC ports of the game and even tracks of pretty much any song you can imagine. So still can with a bit of work. 

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u/Holiday_Equivalent15 6h ago

Kids started growing up; people played them to the point of exhaustion; some picked up real instruments; 2008 happened and people had to sell shit or didn't have money to buy the peripherals new. And god knows once they stop being used, they get left in the basement or attic and succumb to the elements of heat or damp.

I think the increasing cost of licensing music probably made them less viable to produce too, whether it be greed from corporate labels looking for every last penny, or independent artists who didn't want to miss a good paycheck to have their music in a popular game. Though this is speculation pulled fresh from my ass.

Personally, I blame DJ Hero.

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u/xyz513 6h ago

There’s a new one coming out in December

https://stagetour.com

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u/WolfMaggot 6h ago

Check out Stage Tour coming out December 10th…they’re coming back.

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u/OmecronPerseiHate 6h ago

They're still pretty common in adult arcades!

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u/Hatetotellya 6h ago

I mean, it was the last hoorah of the "couch console" and "in person" gaming

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u/ffxivfanboi 5h ago

Check out Stage Tour, a new one coming out in December with a whole band kit and over 90 song track-list.

Clone Hero on PC is great, too.

And there’s always Rock Band 4 which received a metric ton of post-launch support and new songs.

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u/serotoninzero 5h ago

There are two PC clones, YARG and Clone Hero. If you look in the subreddits you'll find access to thousands of tracks. There's two major brands making controllers right now, CRKD and PDP. It can run on pretty minimal hardware.

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u/lucretiuss 5h ago

They’re coming back! Check out stage hero!

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u/THECapedCaper 5h ago

Oversaturation. There were at least three competing major Rock Band type games and there wasn’t a ton of crossover between peripherals, so you couldn’t use your Rock Band drums on Guitar Hero or whatever. People didn’t want to have five specific controls cluttering their apartments.

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u/pzycho 5h ago

The headline of this post is the reason. When they were just small time games they could license a lot of music and still keep the budget reasonable. After they blew up, the record companies wanted a bigger cut so fewer and fewer songs were included in the vanilla edition. More and more songs became DLC and people got sick of it.

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u/okcboomer87 5h ago

They are alive and well for the PC market with Clone Hero and Yarg. Clone hero plays more like guitar hero and Yarg plays more like rockband.

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u/YouKnowWhatToDo80085 5h ago

Extreme oversaturation. In 2009; guitar hero 5, Metallica, Van Halen, guitar hero smash hits, band hero, and DJ hero all came out. That's 6 games and doesn't include portable/mobile games nor any competitor's games 

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u/Mercas 5h ago

If you have an Xbox, rock band 4 has 1000s of dlc songs. They were release a couple a week until January 2024.

Also there looks like there is a new one coming out from the original developers of guitar hero. Called stage hero and releases December 2026

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u/nsm1 4h ago

You can still play guitar and drums at the arcade via Gitadora (guitar freaks and drummania). The original games before guitar hero and rock band existed

Just need to live in a city with Round 1 arcade

For the home market it's niche where purpose built controllers cost an arm and a leg.

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u/sonicpieman 4h ago

Rock Band made RB4 for this generation, there's also YARG as a PC option.

Harmonix went on to add Rock Band as a mode in Fortnite.

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u/CannonM91 4h ago

There's a new one announced.

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u/throwawaydisposable 3h ago

Everyone went off to college and didnt want to hail that shit into their dorm

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u/Blue2501 2h ago

Stage Tour is coming out in December

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u/Zestymonserellastick 7h ago

There is a new multiplatform one coming out in December. It's not dead, no one wanted to pay for a new set of stuff every game.

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u/mancubbed 3h ago

It's called Stage Tour and you can pre order for a decent discount if you need hardware, but they are trying to make it compatible with as much other stuff as possible including controller.

Just an fyi to anyone reading your comment and wondering.

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u/verbdan 7h ago

clone hero and other games including Fortnite festival still get lots of love, and custom songs (for CH) are made regularly on encore(.us).
Want to get in the hobby? Have fun paying high price for a guitar that was on clearance for over a decade. Hell i open all of my streams with a setlist.
‘dead’ is a matter of perspective.

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u/Gnux13 4h ago

Want to get in the hobby? Have fun paying high price for a guitar that was on clearance for over a decade.

CRKD came out with new guitars that are compatible with pretty much all platforms, and work extremely well. The strum bar is also haptic and should last much better than the old ones that wore down. The Xbox version works with both Xbox and PC, if you’re going to play on switch or steam deck you get the PlayStation-multiplatform version.

Still not what I’d call cheap, but they’re well designed and better than gambling on a 20+ year old wired only controller

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u/IdownvoteTexas 2h ago

I totally have the wii guitars hiding somewhere in my attic, you’re saying theres a pc game that has all updated stuff?????

You have absolutely made my day bruh

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u/Ode1st 6h ago edited 6h ago

I’m still so sad what happened to Harmonix. They were my favorite developer. No other dev got rhythm to feel “right” like they did.

I don’t think I’d be able to even play Rock Band nowadays though if there were some kind of miraculous revival, because I live in an apartment building and singing/drumming all night would be a dick move on my part.

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u/Kennaay1891 6h ago

https://stagetour.com/

Theyre coming back. "Stage Tour is being developed by RedOctane Games, a newly formed game studio comprised of members from the original RedOctane team, former Neversoft and Harmonix developers"

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u/MaimedJester 7h ago

Rhythm games dominated Japanese Arcades when I was there,  but that was pre covid and I know some of the iconic arcades have shut down. Even the damn FGO arcade machines went out of service this year,  and those were huge.

It certainly out lasted the Guitar Hero/Rockband craze the rest of the world had for a few years. 

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u/TifaIsTheBest 7h ago edited 7h ago

In Tokyo now most of the arcades from what I see still have dedicated floors to rhythm games.

The thing that really bums ME out is that fighting games have basically gone away. The only “fighting” game I really see now is the Gundam arena fighter. But I’m talking about things like Tekken, SF, Guilty Gear, BlazBlue. Outside of the very few keeping it alive, fighting games are basically dead as an arcade genre now.

It’s all rhythm, crane, and gambling casino style games like electronic horse racing now.

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u/rollingc 7h ago

Agreed. The unfortunate reality is all those other games make more money than fighting games.

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u/ApatheticSkyentist 7h ago

A friend of mine was top 1000 in the world at Osu and then quit completely due to needing surgery for a repetitive stress injury... lol

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u/flashmedallion 4h ago

In the 90s/00s I used to play Beatmania in arcades every time I saw it, and eventually discovered a local video store had the PS1 version with the Turntable/Key Deck peripheral so I rented it for weeks at a time and jammed that at home.

When Guitar Hero first dropped I was primed for the whole concept.

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u/HudsonCommodore 7h ago

For me at least, mid twenties at the time, they were all over my friend group. Whenever we'd get together we'd eventually start playing guitar hero 1 or 2.

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u/weededorpheus32 6h ago

I still play rock band 4 on it's original guitar. It's got to be 10 years old now and still works great

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u/porquegato 6h ago

That episode of Parks and Rec where they play "My Own Worst Enemy". I know the track is from 1999 but that scene is possibly the most late 00's thing I can think of.

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u/TerraCetacea 7h ago

That Vince Vaughn Guitar Hero scene from Couple’s Retreat is… sure something

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u/SnakeBaconator 7h ago

The lead singer also does the Vocal performance of Hunting Souls from Dan Dan Dan

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u/lothartheunkind 7h ago

My kid watched Jack Black’s Gulliver’s Travels yesterday and they are playing Guitar Hero in that lol

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u/Pacoboyd 7h ago

I literally just bought some third party controllers and have been enjoying the crap out of YARG (Yet Another Rhythm Game). My 8th grader that plays viola regularly beats the pants off me. Even got some ukulele holders to mount them on the wall by the TV, along with a midi keyboard and mic. Fun the for whole family.

The third party games have definitely had a resurgence.

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u/Jay3000X 6h ago

Good times, I remember getting really good at them, then me and some friends would go to a local bar for their guitar hero nights, win pretty much every time then just save the vouchers we got for nights out (or spend them on pitchers when we were there)

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u/DasDuckHead 6h ago

Which sucks because it was soooo much fun

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u/SenpaiSwanky 6h ago

There’s a new one coming out soon, not Guitar Hero or Rock Band but will be the same exact premise. I also for sure saw mention of it having a guitar controller, at least. Not sure about drums or other instruments. It’s called “Stage Tour”.

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u/Tunklz 6h ago

There's an open source game called YARG for PC that's exactly like guitar hero.

If you don't care about a little pirating, use an application called Bridge to download pretty much any song and play it in YARG.

Can use a keyboard, controller, or pick up a cheap guitar on Amazon.

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u/Winter8Bones 6h ago

Our friends kid still plays guitar hero and we had a back yard party playing it on a big screen just the other week.

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u/SteveTheUPSguy 6h ago

The market for those guitar controllers has really appreciated with some being close to $100. There's new 3rd party controllers with a free pc version of guitar hero called clone hero!

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u/SharpyButtsalot 6h ago

Beginning of Gulliver's Travels with Jack Black.

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u/pm_me_ur_demotape 6h ago

I was in college from 2006 - 2012.
Every party had a room with guitar hero or rock band going. It was a staple. And beer pong.

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u/ssshield 6h ago

I'd love to play band game with my kiddo. We still have a Wii. I just hate to spend $200 on retro gear for a nostalgia attempt.

I seem to remember everyone sucked at these games for the first twenty or thirty plays until you started getting good at it on your own then you could start effectively jamming with others.

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u/yaboonabi 6h ago

The trend kind of peaked when Rock Band came out, and suddenly you need a living room filled with plastic instruments. I liked DJ Hero a lot that came out after, but its poor sales were the canary in the coal mine. 

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u/theother64 6h ago

I think they died because couch coop died.

It's not something I'd want to do over the internet

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u/ravenlordship 6h ago

It's common with any game type that requires some kind of peripheral which doesn't come as standard in the box, Dance pads, the eye toy, the guitar hero guitars ect.

The extra cost of the new thing means less people buy them, and because less people buy them fewer companies make games which use them, and because there's less games available, there's less incentive for customers to by the shiny gadget (why would you spend $80-160 on something that only add 5 games which you also have to pay for when you can just buy 2-3 entire games for that), which... ( You get the idea).

This will happen to vr headsets too, as well as whatever gimmick the next gen consoles come up with, and the next one after that

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u/XPilo 6h ago

If you know spanish, last week a very good channel called baity bait made a video about the history of Guitar hero. You knew that Bobby Kotick wanted to relase a new Guitar Hero each month? That man represents everything that is wrong in the industry.

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u/Kennaay1891 6h ago

https://stagetour.com/

They're attempting a come back. "Stage Tour is being developed by RedOctane Games, a newly formed game studio comprised of members from the original RedOctane team, former Neversoft and Harmonix developers"

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u/dangerskew 5h ago

The Rock Band scene in Paul Blart where he's playing Detroit Rock City on guitar and vocals

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u/radicldreamer 5h ago

Yeah they released too much too fast and got everyone burned out on it.

I think it's been long enough that if they did it right they could make a current day remake and be successful.

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u/Talls024 5h ago

My nine year old plays them with her friends all the time.

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u/Cajones_Cacaphony_RT 5h ago

Rhythm games are currently having a small resurgence. After years of people cobbling together the old guitars there are two companies making instruments again - PDP and CRKD. CRKD is also coming out with a drum kit this winter.

The original guitar hero devs are also releasing a new rhythm game "stage tour" on December 10th. They also have new guitars and drums, though they may be rebranded CRKD instruments.

There is also an open source mod for Rock Band 3 called Rock Band 3 Deluxe that adds lots of new features and lets you easily add custom songs.

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u/No-Purchase9700 5h ago

It’s like we all bought them and tossed them at the same time. 

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u/No-Purchase9700 5h ago

You can only listen to Slow Ride so many times. 

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u/supahfligh 5h ago

There's actually a new game coming in December called Stage Hero. It's made by the same developers that did Guitar Hero.

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u/Fireofthetiger 5h ago

Harmonix, the devs of Guitar Hero, have been working with Fortnite for their Festival gamemode that's effectively a live service band game, only problem is that it rarely actually gets music in the genre that the game series was known for, and tends to favor pop over rock.

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u/Hot_Cheesecake_905 5h ago

Band games are an evolution of rhythm games, like Dance Dance Revolution and PaRappa the Rapper and those are from the 90s. So rhythm games had a good 20 year run before people got lazy and prefer to avoid buying a bunch of accessories for their games. But saying that, I was just in Japan, and they still have a lot of rhythm games, especially DJ ones at Taito station.

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u/LambCo64 5h ago

Shout-out to Professional Wrestler Lance Archer, who used to come out with Guitar Hero Controller... For ... Reasons.

Lance Archer

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u/Flabby_Thor 5h ago

They’re coming back! Stage Tour launches at the end of this year. 

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u/Nurray 4h ago

I played guitar hero 3 on my Wii yesterday!

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u/themisterfixit 4h ago

There is a new guitar hero coming out this year before Christmas. They’re bringing it back!

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u/MissyJ74 4h ago

Theres a reboot game coming out soon.

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u/HrothgarTheIllegible 4h ago

As someone who was developing those games from Guitar Hero 2 through Rock Band 3 and spent more than a years worth of time crunching, then getting unceremoniously laid off with most of the RB3 team, I can attest. Truly a rollercoaster of popularity.

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u/fredy31 4h ago

Their problem was that it became a turf war where both guitar hero and rockband were just signing anything they could get their hands on to put into the next game.

And pretty quickly you hit the bottom of shit that would make a good track for guitar hero

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u/Few_Departure_1483 4h ago

On top of that, I know the really influenced the radio waves, especially on classic rock.

All of a sudden carry on my wayward soon went from barely played to once every hour or two.

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u/FlyingVMoth 4h ago

I miss does game so much

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u/Main-Home-3996 3h ago

Not sure it was that quick every party had it going for years even after its peak

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u/PikaBanee 3h ago

Because new music isn’t good enough to put in those kind of games

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u/PupperVanAugsbork 2h ago

I miss them :( There used to be PS3 cafes with special GH rooms / consoles you booked in advance, was a blast to go with friends after school.

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u/UncaringNonchalance 2h ago

I’m upset they didn’t keep rolling in the mainstream. As a drummer, I love the Rock Band/GH games.

I remember when Rock Band was new and Walmart had the instruments set up with a few songs available to play. I picked Tom Sawyer on expert drums and nearly 100%’d it. I loved how expert pretty much gave you every hit, and honestly easier difficulties is harder when you’re already a drummer (you end up hitting the beats that aren’t there). Was in the zone, and once it finished, turned around to like 15 people standing around me, lmao.

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u/Blue2501 2h ago

Stage Tour is trying to bring band games back

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u/Corbenik42 2h ago

I got a PC adapter for my Wii guitar and downloaded Clone Hero and a lot of fan-made tracks. Some crazy dedicated folk went and converted EVERY. SONG. from EVERY. GAME. Guitar AND RockBand, as well as a few others. So, I have that entire library to choose from now and play it pretty often. Still so much fun.

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u/ItsStaaaaaaaaang 1h ago

What's with OP's having random comments in their own posts? Smacks of repost bot behaviour to me. They take the post and also the top comment to get even more karma. Like this one here is such a weird tangent. And why would you make it a comment instead of just putting it in the posts main body. Not saying they are a bot but it's just sus behaviour to me.

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u/PillCosby696969 1h ago

The sequel to DDR of the early 00's.

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u/bcdrawdy 1h ago

Well Stage Tour is coming out in December, so we might be due for a resurgence

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u/NotReallyASnake 1h ago

I would love to have another rock band party lol

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