9 Famous Video Games That Are Actually Responses To Other Famous Video Games

9. Rock Band Happened Because Activision Snubbed Harmonix

Starting with a relatively obvious one here, the brief, soaring success of peripheral-led music games in the mid-2000s led to the biggest rivalry this side of Pepsi and Coke: Guitar Hero vs Rock Band.

The two franchises were strikingly similar, but the latter brought - as the title suggests - a whole band's worth of plastic musical instruments to join in on the fun, adding drums, a microphone and later a keyboard alongside the regular guitar. It seemed like a natural progression of what GH started when it debuted, but publisher Activision didn't seem to think so.

In fact, the publisher didn't care all that much about the developers of the original games, Harmonix. They didn't own the IP, the manufacturer of the peripherals, RedOctane, did, and Activision didn't even meet with studio about working on more sequels, instead bringing production in-house.

Consequently, Harmonix got to work on a rival, crafting the ambitious Rock Band (which allegedly cost $200 million to make), and forcing Activision to play catch up, themselves introducing full-band peripherals a little while later.