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Prerelease:Guitar Hero

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This page details prerelease information and/or media for Guitar Hero.

Guitar Hero took nine months in all to develop.[1][2] RedOctane, the game's publisher, had experience producing peripherals for music games like Dance Dance Revolution and Guitar Freaks and sought out Harmonix, then known for the Amplitude and Karaoke Revolution series' of games, to develop a western-focused rhythm game using a guitar peripheral.[3]

Harmonix drew on its own previously-published games for the technology (a beatmatcher and note engine from Amplitude and stage animations from Karaoke Revolution) and its staff as hobbyist touring musicians for the style and art design. Despite all metrics that the game would fail, Guitar Hero would go on to sell one-and-a-half million copies through 2007 and spawn a line of even more successful sequels.

Earliest Prototypes

The earliest screenshots of what would become Guitar Hero

Guitar Hero had its first working prototypes in roughly a week or two of development. The game featured very basic, Pong style graphics and only four buttons.[2] Score was counted by notes hit, not by a point value applied to each note like in the final game. A fifth button was soon added to make players shift their hand, better simulating the feel of a real guitar.[3]

That was important in two ways. One is that it created an extra challenge for people, especially if you were not a guitar player, and two, it simulated the feeling of playing guitar. Let's say you're even in a simple punk rock band, you're going to be banging out power chords. It's the same chord position on your left hand, so there's not a lot that changes there, but the way you move it around on [the] neck of your guitar changes everything. It's where all the magic is. So being able to give the players now multiple positions made them feel more like a guitar player, rather than playing like, a simple video game interface.

— Art director Ryan Lesser [1]

Rob Kay, the game's lead designer, has said in multiple interviews that AC/DC's "Back in Black" was the first song to demonstrate the game. RedOctane staff Lennon Lange and Charles Huang remember Weezer's "Dope Nose" as the first instead, which is corroborated by sliptest.dta in the final game's files[4], which features a reference to it. "Dope Nose" was also used in Amplitude, so Harmonix would've had easy access to the song's separated instrument parts and a note chart for it. (That "Dope Nose" was the first song was also corroborated by RedOctane's John Tam in a 2006 interview released on IGN the day Guitar Hero II was announced.)[5]

It's likely a couple songs were used, as music licenses were not yet secured. Harmonix's devs recorded their own covers of songs for early tests, including "Back in Black", Aerosmith's "Walk This Way", and an unnamed Audioslave song (whose "Cochise" would end up in the final game).[1][3]

Concept Art

Concept art for venues, guitarists, and early versions of some of the game's menus were found in a 2006 Australian press kit from Activision.[6]

Venue Concepts

Most of the venue art can also be seen in the game's "Making of Venues" unlockable bonus video.[7]

Guitarist Concepts

Several guitarist concepts were recovered from a Photoshop project included with the press kit. These include three unused guitarists, a Zeus-like "rock god", a beefy guitarist in a chain and sports tee described as a "rap rocker" in the game's Making of Characters bonus video[8], and an indie rocker in a skinny tie, red shirt, jacket, and white shoes.

Unfortunately, these were saved with a rather low color depth, causing most to exhibit severe color banding. The concepts for Axel Steel and Clive Winston are featured separately in the kit in a much larger size and with better color depth, so those are featured here instead.

Early Menus

While these menus have a similar style to the final game's menus, being posters taped to a brick wall, they're also much less regularly shaped. They're at angles, they have torn corners, and they're curling around the edges. Whether these are in-game or rendered in a modeling package is anyone's guess, though internally, the Quick Play button is still labeled as "quickspin" in the final game[9] and into Guitar Hero II, suggesting something like these were tested.

The loading screen with the cassette tape, however, was used late into development. It can be seen in the build of Guitar Hero that was released with Project Deluge.

Miscellaneous Concepts

One especially notable image not covered by the above sections is what appears to be a mockup of the game screen, minus the Rock Meter and score display. An angular "crowd" throwing devil horns appears in shadow overlaid on a low quality image of Angus Young of AC/DC, and a fretboard with a rainbow array of frets (as opposed to the green-red-yellow-blue-orange, henceforth GRYBO, order the final game and all subsequent Guitar Hero games would use) appears on the very top.

Cut Gameplay Elements

With such a crunch and a budget of between $1-2 million, some gameplay ideas tested for Guitar Hero were not implemented or carried over to the final game.

Pressure-Sensitive Fret Buttons

RedOctane, who manufactured the Guitar Hero controllers, experimented with making the frets on the guitar controller pressure-sensitive, but scrapped it as it made the gameplay "too complex".[10]

The Rock Band 2 drum kits would later feature pressure-sensitive pads to reduce or increase each drum's volume per hit.

Freestyle Mode

Harmonix, in line with their original philosophy of helping non-musicians experience the joy of making music, intended to add a freestyle solo mode to Guitar Hero that was ultimately cut. A lot of thought had gone into the feature, including matching the guitar tone of the song being played and smooth transitions between slow held notes and fast pentatonic scales, but the team were unimpressed and the feature was never implemented.

We actually did a bunch of the R&D for that. In fact, there was a GDC [where] we actually brought the lead guitar thing to demonstrate it to everybody. And then it actually made it into Rock Band 4, a different version of it. It ended up years later—like 10 years later—shipping.

— Project lead Greg LoPiccolo[1]

GameSpot Gameplay Previews

GameSpot demoed Guitar Hero several times throughout 2005, all with very striking differences from the final product. These are dated to give a good indicator of when certain features were added and graphical elements were changed.

Some commonalities to all the demos include the lack of Star Power, beatlines passing over the targets on the fretboard like in the Deluge prototype (they'd pass under the targets in the final game to not block the player's vision), and several unique character models. Axel Steel appears in all videos with much smaller eyes ringed black, and the singer model has a mullet that'd get the chop for his final. He also keeps one hand on his mic stand at all times. In the final game, he does various poses with his arms when he's not singing.

Speaking of instrument interactions, all guitarists hold their guitar differently, strumming either above the strings or strumming open-handed instead of with a fist. Clipping issues on their fretting hands suggest that Harmonix was still tweaking how the guitar models were parented to their guitarists well into the late stages of development.

Most videos use the Freak Pit (small club) and Garden (arena) venues, suggesting they were the first two built for the game.

May 24, 2005

At this point, scoring was not final. Like how Karaoke Revolution had players sing phrases whose point values would be added to their total score after each one, the blue meter where the Star Power meter would go fills up through the course of the phrase, and the number above it represents the points the player would receive for that phrase. After the orange beatline indicating the end of the phrase, the score would be added to the player's total score at the top right of the screen. Visually, the score uses the same font as the score display in the Karaoke Revolution games.

The Rock Meter, aside from its visual differences, acted differently from the final game. The needle doesn't move smoothly from one section to the next, and its range of motion also doesn't extend as far to the right. No score multiplier, HO/POs, or Star Power were yet added. The whammy bar functionality had yet to be implemented as well, according to the video; Harmonix CEO Alex Rigopulos would recount that they asked RedOctane to implement one on the guitar controllers, despite them not yet having a use. (Final whammy functionality would be set about a month from the game's launch.)[10] With no Star Power, presumably, all they would be for would be to pitch bend sustains.

Much of the graphics for the HUD, characters, and venue are different, including Axel Steel's model, the drummer's drumkit, Axel's amp stack (branded as Marshall, while the final game would feature no branded equipment aside from the guitars), and the lack of a "No Diving" sign in the Freak Pit venue. The HUD was still being tweaked as well; the fret order is still rainbow like the mockup instead of GRYBO like the final, and sustains would burn with a flame graphic instead of shooting sparks.

June 16, 2005

Early end of song graphics appear in this video. The fretboard burns up from the end to the bottom of the screen, and "You Win" appears in place of "You Rock!". The final's fretboard explodes into fragments and dust instead, which helps to mask the models transitioning very jarringly from their play animations to their post-song animations.

This video is noteworthy among Guitar Hero fans for having a cover version of Jimi Hendrix's "Spanish Castle Magic" with the vocals intact. In the final game, the song is an instrumental, as the Hendrix estate seemingly didn't appreciate the impersonation. (The real version of "Spanish Castle Magic", with intact vocals, would later appear as DLC for Harmonix's other game, Rock Band.)

Like the Freak Pit venue in the earlier video, the Garden venue featured in this video has some minor differences, notably in the flames that appear out of the grates around the stage and the drumkit. The female singer is not used for the "Take It Off" portion of the video, which suggests the model wasn't yet finished.

July 29, 2005

The HUD is closer to final. The Rock Meter's needle moves smoothly, the fret color order has been changed to GRYBO, flames for both single notes and sustains appear to be final, and there's a multiplier, albeit one displaying only as text instead of in a meter. The multiplier seems to stop at 2x, instead of going to 3x and 4x like in the final game. Scoring appears to be final, but is still displayed in the top right of the screen.

Star Power is finally implemented, though in a unique way. The meter doesn't seem to fill up smoothly, Star Power phrases end with a fireworks graphic exploding from the final note instead of lightning striking the final note, and the sound effect played at SP phrase completion is a "sparkle" sound effect from Karaoke Revolution. The player never activates Star Power, so we don't know how different that would've looked or sounded, or if it was even implemented yet.

Chart differences can be seen with "Take Me Out"; pitches are different, the verse riff when the vocals come in are moved down a fret from final, and some notes are missing altogether. The guitar is also much louder mixed.

October 12, 2005

The HUD actually appears to be less final than in the previous video, judging by the very bright red-yellow-green gradient and additional angling on the Rock Meter and the completely different Star Power meter. The font on the multiplier has changed to the font it would use in the final game, though it still caps at 2x and still appears as plain text.

Like the June 16 demo, there's some audible differences in the cover singers! "I Wanna Be Sedated" uses a different vocal take, featuring a different, more nasal singer who sings more staccato and intentional than the final's singer.

The Toxic Fest venue is shown for the first time in a very early state. The camera will follow the guitarist through stage geometry, there's TV monitors that don't appear in the final version of the venue, the cars are more busted up and damaged than graffitied, the crowd is far too large for the venue, and many of the textures, including the stage and sign textures, are different and much brighter. The lighting in the middle of the stage is also much more green and radiant (like toxic waste) than it would be in the final game, while darker around the edges and by the bassist.

One measure of "I Wanna Be Sedated" (around two minutes into the video) has the fretboard highlighted in bright blue. The purpose of this overlay isn't yet known.

GameSpot Screenshot Previews

Along with video clips, GameSpot hosted some screenshots of early gameplay. These seem to line up best with the May 24, 2005 videos compiled above, but have differences to even those. The scores use different Karaoke Revolution fonts, and the Rock Meter is missing the word "ROCK" altogether.

These screenshots are rather difficult to find now. These were sourced from IGN's page on Guitar Hero.[11] More might very well exist.

Crashing G-Phoria Coverage

The behind-the-scenes for G4's G-Phoria 2005 award show featured some more early footage of the game, with early menus and note charts throughout. (Guitar Hero footage starts at 23:05 in the YouTube upload.)

As far as the setlist goes, tiers are early and unnamed, scores are obvious placeholders, no stars appear, and "No One Knows" is referred to as "Queens of the Stone Age", the band who originally recorded the song. The post-song newspaper screen appears to be unimplemented; only a "Song Complete" overlay similar to the pause menu appears, with options to pick a new song, replay the song, or exit the game.

The gameplay itself looks very similar to the July 29, 2005 video, with the final's GRYBO frets, the score acting like final (albeit still in the top right), and the naked, text-only multiplier that only seems to go up to 2x.

References

  1. 1.0 1.1 1.2 1.3 The Oral History of Guitar Hero - Vice, January 27, 2021
  2. 2.0 2.1 Inside Game Design - Iain Simons, pages 69-79, 2007
  3. 3.0 3.1 3.2 "We were basically trying to keep Harmonix afloat": The making of Guitar Hero - GamesRadar, December 30, 2020
  4. dotdot/dotdot/system/run/config/sliptest.dta, line 54 - Guitar Hero game scripts (GitHub)
  5. Guitar Hero II Interview - IGN, April 17, 2006
  6. Guitar Hero 1 Press Kit and Assets - Internet Archive, August 21, 2020
  7. Making of Venues - Guitar Hero bonus video (YouTube mirror)
  8. Making of Characters - Guitar Hero bonus video (YouTube mirror)
  9. ghui/main.dta, line 32 - Guitar Hero game scripts (GitHub mirror)
  10. 10.0 10.1 - 'Guitar Hero': The Video Game That Literally Rocks (via Wayback Machine), December 14, 2005
  11. Guitar Hero - IGN, November 1, 2005