You join this tale with me fully smitten with Guitar Hero III. It was June 2008. I had just moved into Gaz’s house which was considerably nicer than the dinge hole I had been previously staying in. I had convinced Gaz quite some time ago to buy GHIII and we were pretty much at the same level. We would play Guitar Hero quite a lot on 2 player mode, one of us being bass or rhythm and the other on lead and we quite enjoyed it. Things were good.

The sheer amount of time I had invested in GHIII meant I was quite bored of the track list I had played to death and back and then back to death again. GHIII was the latest version available so I had to look backward. Options were scarce back in them days and a mate at work had a copy of Guitar Hero II. I’d been interested to give it a whirl because one of the songs it contained was…

Yes. Woman by Wolfmother. I luuuurve this song. So when I fired it up I was a bit disappointed. It was a bit rough around the edges and there were loads of songs I didn’t know. Now, I should have known from the lessons I learned from GHIII that I would probably grow to love these songs but I was young and foolish. So having played Woman I cast it aside.

The first two Guitar Hero games were made by Harmonix but after a presumably messy split with Activision the reins were handed to Neversoft. Neversoft are probably best known for their stirling work on the Tony Hawk games up until about Tony Hawks 3, after that it just got silly. Now Neversoft did a good job with GHIII but theres not a great deal you can do wrong (or so I thought), but I should have been alerted at the time to Harmonix moving onto other things.

Generally if there is a split between publisher and developer, it is the developer who have a modicum of integrity and come away not looking like a douche. The prime example of this is the break up between Eidos and Sports Interactive over the game Championship Manager. Sports Interactive signed with Sega and went onto make Football Manager and carry on being wildly successful. Whereas Eidos kept the name in a quite petty fashion and pursued to have a series of feeble games made under the Championship Manager name. It goes to show when you have a developer making a cast iron winner, you should give them whatever they want.

This brings me to subject of this chapter. Whilst Neversoft were busy rehashing the same idea for the third time for Activision, Harmonix were busy too. Now GHIII is a great game, but I’ve learned now that it’s exactly the same as 1 and 2 with more polish and different songs, it’s standard mainstream games development protocol. Harmonix were doing what all great developers do, Innovating. They were working on…

Cometh the saviour

Ah yes, Rock Band. The next step in the music rhythm game. Taking the original Guitar Hero idea (which itself was taken from the Japanese arcade game Guitar Freaks by Konami, which I’ve played, awesome) and expanding it to include vocals and drums to the original facility to use guitar and bass. Such a simple idea, but so much potential.

Now when I first heard about this I was very interested but the reported price was quite a stumbling block. There were enormous rabbles on forums about it being hideously priced compared to the US retail price. So I gave it a wide berth thinking I couldn’t afford it. When the time came around for it’s release I had a bit of a cash and Gaz was very interested. When we found out our GHIII guitars would work on Rock Band it was on like Donkey Kong. We split the price and bought the game and a set of drums (which I had to lump from Poole to Southampton).

It was a revelation. It just felt right. We played with all the instruments for a while until we realised that Gaz’s place was on the drums and my place was on lead. Our band, Go Go Action Bronco, which we still have to this day, were touring the world, gaining fans and tearing up all kinds of awesome songs. Harmonix had seen Guitar Hero as a skeleton for something bigger, grander, richer and they completely realised it with Rock Band. We totally forgot about Guitar Hero III, it seemed like a prototype for what we had now. Everything was focused on the band, playing together and helping each other through.

Gaz baffled me with how quickly he took to the drums. I could never divorce the movement of my legs and arms which meant as soon as the rhythm deviated slightly I would be a mess. Whereas Gaz could plow through without missing a beat. I was not to be outdone and focused on the guitar. By now I was venturing into Expert country, we were both trying it on GHIII before we bought Rock Band and it was helped by the virtue that Rock Band was a bit easier.

We played it all the time and loved it to bits and again discovered so many great songs on Rock Band, for example:

Gimme Shelter  – The Rolling Stones

Here It Goes Again – OK Go

Say It Ain’t So – Weezer

Welcome Home – Coheed and Cambria

Pleasure – Bang Camaro

And who can forget? (Choooooooooo! \m/)

This chapter ends much like the first, with me happy with my lot. Gaz too. We loved Rock Band to bits, but once again new things were on the Horizon. Activision had been working away on it’s answer to Rock Band, a contender maybe? a successor? and Harmonix aren’t the kind of company to rest on their laurels, they had things in the works too. Exciting times were ahead…

Tune in next time for I used to be a Hero – Episode 3: Battle of the bands

p.s. Writing this has reminded me I haven’t played Rock Band for a while, Imma go play it now <3