Feb. 18, 2026 | Belen Ponce Leal | Lifestyle Editor
I dedicate this article to my cousins Oscar, Armando and Cristian.
When I was younger, I spent a lot of time sitting on the floor of my older cousins’ room while they played Guitar Hero III: Legends of Rock. Music has always been an important part of my family’s background and they all ended up learning how to play the guitar. So, it was no surprise that my uncle bought this game for them. My favorite song from the game was “Barracuda” by Heart. It ended up being the song that they played the most because of their younger cousin constantly asking for it.
The Guitar Hero game franchise is a series of games that revolve around using a guitar-shaped controller to replicate playing guitar to various rock songs. The controllers would have colored buttons in place of frets on the neck of the guitar to simulate the player strumming the notes. The games mimic things that real guitars have, such as a whammy bar that is meant to be able to alter the pitch of notes. Similar to real life bands, the player can decide whether they want to play the lead guitar or the bass, with both having separate rhythms and parts. The game was extremely popular in the mid to late 2000s, with over 25 million copies being sold and an astounding $2 billion in sales.
The gameplay is simple, but extremely fun. When going into the game, a set list appears which is where the player can see what songs are unlocked and pick which one they want to play. When a song is selected, a scrolling fret board appears with various colored notes appearing on the screen. The color of each note matches the ones on the guitar controller. As the song plays, notes appear and the player needs to hit them in time with the song. The higher the difficulty is set, the more notes appear and the faster the player needs to hit them. On the side of the screen is a meter known as the “star meter.” The player can make the bar fill up whenever they hit all the star-shaped notes that will occasionally appear throughout the song. When it’s full enough, lifting the guitar controller will make star power activate, which doubles the game’s scoring multiplier. If the player misses notes, it makes the guitar create a screeching sound. Missing too many will make the meter drain, with flashing red coming from it meaning the game is about to end.
There are two different modes that the game offers: career mode and free-play. Career mode follows the player’s journey to becoming a rock star.Free-play mode is simply what the title says: the player is able to play any of the songs they have unlocked at any time. Depending on the game, the story of the game can change. However, the gist is the same. The player joins a band and every gig that the band books is on a different level. In each level, the band plays popular rock songs with at least three needed to be completed before unlocking the next one. After completing the last song, there will be an encore performance with a new song that wasn’t shown in the main set list. Performing the encore unlocks another song with the cool detail of the stage being influenced in a unique way. For example, in one of the stages in Guitar Hero III: Legends of Rock, playing the encore in the first stage will summon the cops, who instead of arresting people, will jam out to the song played and helicopters fly around to give some cool lighting for the band.
There are several playable rock stars that the player can choose from. Each has their own personality and a brief description of their backstory. They all have different outfits that can be bought at the store from the money the player makes from getting through songs successfully. Some characters can also be unlocked from doing a guitar battle with them and winning, though at least in the games that I’ve played, I still had to buy them at the store.
My personal favorite is a playable character in the first six main games known as “Judy Nails.” Her backstory is as follows: Born Judith Ann Taylor, she started going by Judy Nails after a nail gun incident when she was 7. Despite her parents trying to get her to do anything else, it was clear that she only had one love and that was rock n’ roll. She has a particular love of alternative rock and formed a band called the “Nail Gunners” after taking cash from her mother’s purse. Fun fact about her: she went to court due to some charges against a reporter who claimed she struck him. Her only comment was, “He had asked about my hair and clothes, and not once about my music.” The charges were thankfully dropped. Honestly, good for her.
Each of the playable characters have detailed backgrounds like this, making them feel like the stereotypical rock stars many think of.
The history of how the game came to be is quite fascinating. It begins with the company called RedOctane. They noticed that there was a very popular game in Japan called “Guitar Freaks,” which when looking at the gameplay of it, looks quite similar to what “Guitar Hero” is known for. The players would use guitar shaped controllers to simulate playing the instrument to popular songs. RedOctane then noticed that while the game was popular over there, there wasn’t any game in the Western market at the time that offered that gaming experience with a guitar-shaped controller. RedOctane already owned a company known as Harmonix, which had made music centered games before, like Karaoke Revolution. So, they had them create a game with similar gameplay and a controller that would simulate the player actually playing the instrument. The first Guitar Hero came out in 2005, becoming an immediate success.
A few months ago, I began reminiscing about that game and how I never had the opportunity to play it. My husband and I then began a manhunt to try to find not only a copy of the game, but also game guitars that were compatible with it. Through determination and sheer luck, we managed to find two working guitars at Goodwill and two of the Guitar Hero games at a thrift shop. We found Guitar Hero World and thankfully, Guitar Hero III: Legends of Rock. I’ve been playing the game a lot more than I probably should and if anyone can, I strongly recommend playing it. Not only is it any game collector’s dream to own the game and a guitar, it’s also such a fun game to play with amazing songs.
Contact the author at howllifestyle@wou.edu
