Guitar Hero is a franchise of rhythm games first published by RedOctane and Harmonix and distributed by Activision in 2005. The player uses a guitar-shaped controller to simulate playing the lead, rhythm, or bass guitar tracks across numerous songs. They must match colored gems representing the notes of the song that come forward on the screen to the five colored fret buttons on the controller, using a "strum bar" on the body of the guitar to strum the notes in order to score points, and entertain the virtual audience. The guitar controller tries to simulate many features of playing a real guitar, such as a whammy bar to alter the pitch of notes and the use of fast fingering hammer-ons or pull-offs. Most games in the franchise feature single player modes, typically a "Career mode" allowing you to start a band and play through every song in the game, and both cooperative and competitive multiplayer modes, local and online. While the game is called Guitar Hero, the introduction of a four player band featuring vocals and drums came with Guitar Hero: World Tour in 2008.
Here is a list of what are, in my opinion, the most notable Guitar Hero games in the franchise in order of release date, not including the DJ Hero games, DS & mobile games, or arcade games.
Guitar Hero features a unique type of guitar-shaped controller for playing the game. Here are some of the many designed guitars. While the games that the guitars come with are labeled, you can use any of the guitars for any Guitar Hero game, as long as it's compatible with the game system you're playing on - you can't use a guitar for the PS2 on a Guitar Hero game for the Xbox 360. If a guitar isn't labeled, it's for all platforms as far as I know. This will not include the drum and microphone controllers.
The Black Gibson SG (PS2) for Guitar Hero I
The Cherry Gibson SG (PS2) and Gibson Explorer (Xbox 360) for Guitar Hero II (Explorer also comes with Guitar Hero III: Legends of Rock for PC)
The Kramer (PS2) and Gibson Les Paul (Xbox 360 & Wii) for Guitar Hero III: Legends of Rock
The "Genericaster" for Guitar Hero: World Tour and Guitar Hero 5
The "Battle Axe" for Guitar Hero: Warriors of Rock
And that's pretty much it. Discuss the game, music, community, etc, post videos, whatever. This game is totally dead but I still love it. Feel free to discuss Rock Band, too.
