If you need us to paint you a picture of what playing Guitar Hero: Aerosmith feels like, get up, take a step outside of your cave and ask the first person you see if they’ve ever heard of this thing called Guitar Hero. They’ll probably think you’re a freak, which would serve you right for taking us too seriously. But seriously, the title says it all. It’s Guitar Hero with lots and lots of Aerosmith songs.
But what the title doesn’t tell you is that Guitar Hero: Aerosmith will be taking the franchise in a new direction, which is exactly what we think the series needs. Instead of the out-of-place cutscenes last seen in Guitar Hero III, Guitar Hero: Aerosmith will feature footage of the band that tells the story of their rise to stardom.
Aerosmith themselves will set up the background behind each venue for you with tales of past shenanigans as you follow the band’s career from their humble beginnings at the Nipmuc High School Gymnasium all the way to their big comeback. “I opened up a locker and there was this shirt that said ‘Nipmuc High School’ and I said ‘Well, it’s got less holes than mine,’” said lead singer, Steve Tyler about his holey shirt-stealing days in one of the game’s many rockumentary-style movie montages.
Factoid: Aerosmith got $50.00 for playing at Nipmuc High School back in 1970. That’s probably why Steve Tyler needed some high school kid’s gym shirt
Each gig will feature two opening act songs and Aerosmith worked closely with developer, Neversoft to help make sure the bands that meant a lot to them would be recognized in the game. “Mott the Hoople took them on their first tour. Cheap Trick is good friends with the band…” explained lead designer, Adam Flores.
“[Aerosmith] had a lot of involvement with the game, which is great because you have a lot of bands that might just license their stuff and walk away from it. These guys were involved. And not only were they involved, they were involved on a daily basis. Steven Tyler spent a month at our studio doing motion capture,” added producer Aaron Habibipour.
Lead guitarist, Joe Perry was also excited about the project and spent a lot of time with Neversoft to pick out which of his guitars he wanted recreated in the game and which songs they should show up in.
