Guitar Hero (series)

The Guitar Hero series are music games created by RedOctane and Harmonix Music Systems and published by Activision.Other companies involved in development are Neversoft, Vicarious Visions, Budcat Creations, Machineworks Northwest, Beenox Studios and Aspyr Media. In the game, the player uses a guitar shaped controller to simulate playing of the guitar and, since World Tour, a drum shaped controller and a microphone. The series itself has become a cultural phenomenon and has sold 25 million units worldwide and has made $2 billion.

Gameplay
The controller itself has fret buttons to simulate playing chords, and use the strum button to act as plucking strings. There is also a whammy bar. The core game play is to hold onto the right colored fret and strum at the right time to make the note in the song. The harder the difficulty the more complex it gets, from using 3 buttons to the full 5 with combinations of more than one fret a time.