Harmonix Talks Guitar Hero’s Genesis

As part of a new book extract debuting on Gamasutra today, Harmonix’s Rob Kay has been discussing the creation of the original Guitar Hero, revealing the original game budget of $1 million and the Konami-inspired, hardware-based project genesis.
In particular, the following exchange from the interview explains exactly how the game started - partly notable because Guitar Hero III’s use of Konami patents further underlines the direct lineage to Guitar Freaks:
How did [the Guitar Hero] project concept emerge?
Rob Kay: RedOctane had been talking to Harmonix for a while. It was a rental company and then they made dance mats for DDR [Dance Dance Revolution]. It ended up selling a bundle of these dance mats and wanted to progress that side of its business.
The company was interested in making a guitar game as they’d seen Guitar Freaks, which Konami had done. So they came to Harmonix with the request, “will […]

Original post by editors@gamesetwatch.com (Simon Carless) and software by Elliott Back