Guitar Hero (2005)

The original Guitar Hero was in many ways just an evolution of developer Harmonix's gameplay found in previous titles like Karayoke Revolution, Amplitude, and Frequency. But instead of having gamers plug in a microphone or mash buttons on their controller, it brought with it a simple-to-play guitar peripheral that came bundled when customers bought the title.

Guitar Hero was a breakout game for home consoles, bringing mass appeal to the idea of using specialized musical instrument peripherals for home gaming. It brought with it a slew of licensed music, along with covers of popular songs, but the real hero was the guitar peripheral itself. It had the usual features of a guitar-themed game controller with colored buttons for notes and a strum bar. It also packed a whammy bar that let players adjust the pitch of any given note, and a tilt sensor that would let them aim the neck of their guitars to the sky to activate in-game bonus scoring. This feature was used in later games to help bail out someone you were playing with if they missed too many notes.