Harmonix developed Guitar Hero using plastic instrument controllers that were heavily inspired by a relatively obscure Japanese arcade franchise called GuitarFreaks, which never…

A closer look

Harmonix developed Guitar Hero using plastic instrument controllers that were heavily inspired by a relatively obscure Japanese arcade franchise called GuitarFreaks, which never really found mainstream success in the West. The idea of shipping a bulky, fake plastic guitar with a video game seemed like commercial suicide in 2005, yet it completely revitalized the rhythm game genre and briefly turned everyone's living room into a fake rock concert. The massive cultural fad eventually burned itself out through sheer over-saturation, leaving millions of cheap plastic instruments rotting in thrift stores and damp basements across the entire globe. We all collectively hallucinated that pressing colorful buttons in time with a DragonForce song made us legitimate musical prodigies, completely ignoring the fact that we looked like absolute idiots holding a tiny toy guitar