Like, it used to be one of the biggest franchises. Fucking everyone had some of those games. You couldn't go to a house without seeing a plastic guitar. It was a fun little game that encouraged hanging out together and you even got to listen to songs you like. Then it just kinda died overnight. How did they do that?
You understimate the game industry. it was like 11 games in one year. Perfect example for capitalist overproduction.
Yeah I think when you had to buy an entire new game just to get any Beatles songs and then another whole new game to get any Green Day songs and then another one to get any Metallica songs a lot of people just said fuck it and gave up.
that's what it was for me mostly. I liked when the games would have some DLC, but then it just got out of control and i was like... i'm not even really having fun with most of this. I'd rather just listen to the music and play a different game.
Obama made having fun illegal, the thot police came by and confiscated everyone's plastic guitars.
I’m trying to play chords but I’m dummy thicc and the clap from my ass cheeks keeps alerting the thot police!
What happened?
:marx:
"The tendency of the rate of profit to fall."
i remember they had a demo unit of this at the store back when it was new. cool stuff
Hellish overproduction mostly. Far too many games came out far too quick and you'd have to keep buying the games and the expansions to get the songs you want. If you're someone with a diverse musical taste it got to be a pain as you'd have to change games to get to play songs you wanted to play.
Rock Band was also way cooler if only for having the other instruments as options. I played the fuck out of the drums on Rock Band even though I'm more of a bass guy. Should have tried the bass on it though.
Bass on rock band was just guitar but easier. The drums do help get the fundamentals of playing real drums down even if the kick feels wrong and everything is in the wrong place.
There were just four pads in front of you in a semi circle and a pedal that was for the kick. You could probably take the drum kit apart and customize it if you really wanted but the hardware isn't in the shape of a real drum kit.
The real drum game is GitaDora. If there's a Round 1 near you, they should have one.
I think they made expansion bits for rock band but they were just a couple cymbals and I don't think they sold well.
Well of course, which is also what sunk the thing. No one brought up shot like DJ Hero and Tony Hawk Ride and the oversaturated peripheral game market at the time. The Wii also helped destroy that by having most peripheral gimmicky stuff be part of motion control. I hadn't really thought of it in about fifteen years but the guitar hero craze almost certainly influenced the design direction Nintendo took with the Wii
Also for drums once you get enough peripherals it's just a regular electronic drum kit. Which are neat and cool and I'm looking into one.
The bass was cool because you could rack up a really high score for "getting into the groove" which meant you hit a lot of notes right. Similar for guitar it was like x5 points instead of capping at x4.
i was weirdly picky and didn't like the way the guitar felt on rock band.
YOOOO THIS IS MY TIME TO FUCKIN POST. hi him a huge fucking rhythm game nerd to the extreme
Basically, they just over-produced them, mostly with the single-artist spinoff titles. Rock Band: Green Day, Guitar Hero: Metallica, etc. Both RB and GH pumped out a new title mainline title annually, plus a shitton of spinoffs. The market for the single-band titles was tiny, obviously, you need a pretty specific music taste to want a version of GH that's only Aerosmith songs (or in the case of the DS spinoff titles, just unplayable due to the control scheme).
So like, GH3 in 2007 was the big name one. In 2008 and 2009, we got: GH4, GH5, GH:SH (basically a best-of of GH1/2/3), GH:Aerosmith, GH:Metallica, GH:Van Halen, GH:On Tour 1 2 and 3, Rock Band 2, RB:Beatles, RB:Green Day, and RB:Unplugged. No one gives a shit about any of those except GH4/5 and RB2. But, damnit, the games sell good, why are these spinoff titles not selling too?? Just make more, I'm sure we'll make the money back!!
People just stopped paying attention to the new releases after that because just, holy shit, no one's buying that many games for artists they don't care about. The publishers saw the profitability of the titles fall, without ever stopping to ask if they oversaturated the market, and stopped making them.
GH isn't dead, though. Grab any USB guitar, plug it into your computer, and head to https://clonehero.net/
People have gotten RIDICULOUSLY good over the last decade. Just. What the fuck. Like, the community is at the point now where the infamous Through The Fire And Flames is like, not interesting. That's not to say you can't get into the game without being absolutely godlike! There's a ton of charts for normal people. But holy shit the skillcap is just so far beyond what anyone thought was possible back in 2010.
And, hell, if Guitar Hero isn't your thing, the rhythm game scene in the west is growing again too. Some games you might wanna look into (and probably don't know about, since only DDR and GH/RB took off here) if you don't know about 'em: Beatmania IIDX, Sound Voltex, and Chunithm are all incredibly fun. Admittedly you either need to find an arcade that's got 'em, or buy a pricy controller for home play, but honestly, not like that's anything new, the full Rock Band kit was, what, $300 or something?
Eventually Rocksmith came out and at that point there was like band specific games (intellectual property became a limiting constraint on production) that didn't work for parties and shit tons of peripherals: Beatles Rock Band vs. Guitar Hero Metallica, so the experience with my friends at least was some of us started learning actual guitar and the rest of us... didnt
Potential reason: That Dragonforce song that was so hard that nothing could ever be harder than it, so people who mastered that song literally would never be challenged by anything else any of those games had to offer.
they actually released a lot of songs that ended up being harder in later Rock Band DLCs.
Luckily for us, Clone Hero is a thing now, so there's plenty of Dragonforce, Meshuggah, and Fleshgod Apocalypse to go around.
"The Violation" is the reason I picked up rake strumming, fuck that song lol.
I never understood how "click the button when the screen flashes" could be a popular game, much less a franchise.
One of the many things I was wrong about. "Oh, those Magic the Gathering cards are gonna fade away like the Dutch Tulip craze. No way am I paying $300 for a Black Lotus!"
The most famous FPS (counterstrike) has a mechanic where you have to ADADADADAD in perfect rhythm to be able to dodge without affecting your accuracy.
(Full disclosure: I am doing a bit.)
Bunnyhopping was a rhythm
edit: im old https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WmDGbY9NeSA
GH really combined my 2 favorite things, not knowing how to play an instrument and not playing a real video game.
That describes all rythym games pretty much. I know they're not for everyone but you should give them a shot sometime. I would recommend Crypt of the Necrodancer
My uncle had a bunch of beta up to ravnica cards. He gave his cards to me because I think my auntie said they were spending too much on cardboard and I showed an interest in them. He had a black lotus, he had the academy one, he had ancestral recall. Pretty sure he just pulled them from boosters (he had A LOT of cards). I didnt know their value at all and sold them all for $40 a few years after so I could get some pokemon game or something, cant remember, lol. I couldve paid for college off that collection if I had waited.
It's like tapping out the beat to a song while listening to it except with a cool controller/interface and a progression system. The most difficult songs in Bemani games are as difficult as playing a real instrument (or the same as playing a real instrument in the case of Drummania).
I used to be really good at guitar hero, tried it recently and am now awful. I learned to play a real guitar and keep trying to do that instead of the game.
Seems to just be a midi interface for your existing electric guitar that maps your real world chords to in game pips
I found a patch cord to usb cable in the trash a bit back and surprisingly my guitar had a direct patch in that I could use with audacity so maybe that would work too. Could be good for learning stuff though my music tastes are pretty far from what's usually available even for open source in a game. Crusties don't mod.
I go to an annual con, and one guy there has a Rocksmith booth with all the songs and instruments. It's actually quite fun, and yes, it uses real instruments.
Guitar guys in the mid 2000s were super cringe and that's all they really had. I remember this 14 year old Guns N Roses loving sweep picking enthusiast who went to my school and his personality was dad rock and hating on guitar hero because a video game isn't doing the thing. I skated but saw Tony Hawk games as valid and fun games that had very little to do with skating. Anyway his email address was LedZeppelin_Meatlicca@whatever, it was a funny typo.
I remember there was also some computer game that was similar to Rock Band but you needed a real guitar because it actually taught you how to play for real.
There was the free guitar hero clone “Frets on Fire” where you could hold the keyboard sideways and use the F1-F5 keys and space bar to replicate the guitar controller lol
Oh damn, I thought it was an open source thing. Seems like a perfect game for that.
Has rock music also fallen out of favor?
Rock Band Imagine Dragons doesnt sounds that appeal, IMO
Yeah rock (at least the popular stuff) is so trash now. I feel like a boomer only listening to old music these days
which sucks cause there've always been really good rock bands but they dont fit some neat little packaging pop stars get whittled down to.
Harmonix made the first two Guitar Hero games then sold the rights or something. They went on to make Rock Band which took over a lot of the popularity.
Playing custom tracks on your PC through modded guitar hero is pretty fun actually, there's a few guides floating around too and it's not hard to get set up. Really the toughest part is getting your hands on one of the guitars.
Depends on the model. Older 360 controllers (the white ones in particular) are still considered solid choices, and Wii guitars have become the new meta after everyone discovered the RaphNET adapter. After that it gets kinda muddy on if the guitar is considered good or just passable.
Though if you're not doing Acai, Darkly, or FrostedGH level gameplay your options are much, much wider. The "good guitar" charts are mainly for when you get to the level of learning complex tapping patterns, where a slow polling rate for inputs can eat or overlap your button presses and drop combos.
