10 Video Games Popular Franchises Stole From
5. Guitar Hero Stole From Guitar Freaks
Red Octane's 2005 game, Guitar Hero, was so successful, Aerosmith has made more money from it than from their albums. That should you give you an idea of how powerful this series was. In Guitar Hero, you play a guitar-shaped controller to emulate the music of the greatest rock-stars ever. With a premise like that, how could the game not be a hit?
However, Red Octane didn't create the game from scratch. A Konami game called GuitarFreaks was released exclusively in Japan in 1999 which has the exact same premise; press buttons on a guitar-shaped controller in sync with the music to progress through each level.
Now, is it possible that this is a coincidence? Theoretically, yes. In practice, no. You see, Red Octane was hired to create a western version of the controller for the US release of Guitar Freaks. In mid-development, the company realised they could just make their own game with their newly designed controllers.
Guitar Hero went on to make billions while Guitar Freaks was left in the dust. Weirdly, Guitar Freaks is still popular in Japan to this day, with its most recent sequel released in 2019.