Aerosmith News

Will it make you want to walk this way?

By: Giancarlo Varanini | GTGV

Whether or not you’re a fan of the Guitar Hero games, there’s no denying the enormous following the series has garnered over the past couple of years. It’s one of the few videogames that manages to appeal both to the hardcore and mainstream audience--in fact, there have been entire segments dedicated to the art of virtual strumming on Ellen DeGeneres’ talk show and several other TV programs of that ilk. And we can thank that popularity for making Guitar Hero: Aerosmith happen.

Or at least, we can thank the son of Joe Perry, famed lead guitar player for Aerosmith, who is a huge fan of the Guitar Hero games. A few phone calls were made, emails were undoubtedly exchanged, and the project went from there.

But to be clear, Guitar Hero: Aerosmith isn’t just a Guitar Hero game that happens to have Aerosmith songs in it. For one thing, out of the 40 songs featured in the game, about 40 percent of them aren’t Aerosmith songs, but rather songs from artists who are either close friends of Aerosmith or who had a profound impact on the band’s career. And the game itself actually tries to recreate the progression of Aerosmith’s career, starting with one of their first gigs at Nipmuc High School in Menden, Massachusetts, to Max’s Kansas City where the band was formally signed by Clive Davis in 1971.

A funny thing about these older venues in Guitar Hero: Aerosmith is that they don’t exist anymore--or to be more precise, their original form when Aerosmith played them doesn’t exist. So to make them as historically accurate as possible, Neversoft (the development team behind the game) consulted with the band to get their recollection of what they looked like. In some cases, they had to scratch a little deeper to get the information and detail they needed. One of the few remaining pieces of visual evidence of the original Max’s Kansas City exists only in an old video on YouTube. The designers watched this video for countless hours, attempting to nail down the general floor plan and look of the venue before taking the final layout to the original owners, who were surprised at how well the design team got it right. Other venues have been designed to resemble the cover art from some of Aerosmith’s most popular albums; chances are that if you have a particular favorite, it’ll be represented in the game in some form.

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