8 Great Video Games That Inspired EVEN BETTER Ones

6. GuitarFreaks Inspired Guitar Hero

Guitar Hero became the rhythm game to rule them all in the mid-2000s, but it actually wasn't the first game of its kind to include a plastic guitar.

Guitar Hero was predated by GuitarFreaks, which launched way back in 1999 and effectively invented the whole gameplay template which Guitar Hero later cribbed.

But the inspiration gets even more blatant than that, as Guitar Hero was the brainchild of RedOctane, a company which previously manufactured plastic guitars for GuitarFreaks and subsequently decided to produce their own competing product with developer Harmonix.

Yet credit where it's due - Guitar Hero was truly on a whole other level, with its glitzier, more bombastic presentation, bigger and better track-list of songs, and all-around greater effort to lean into the whole Rock God fantasy.

And like that, a pop-culture phenomenon was born, with Guitar Hero raking in over $2 billion in revenue before it died off, all while GuitarFreaks never rose above cult classic status.