Guitar Hero: Smash Hits
 

Mike Griffith, president and CEO of Activision Publishing, announced the Greatest Hits repackaging during today's quarterly earnings call, a collection it plans to ship this year for the PlayStation 3, Xbox 360 and Wii.

Guitar Hero: Greatest Hits will feature favorites from previous entries — Guitar Hero, Guitar Hero Encore: Rocks the 80s, Guitar Hero II, Guitar Hero III: Legends of Rock, etc. — updated for full band play, which Activision introduced with World Tour.

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...Discuss.

Nice

I have mixed feelings. On one hand, there are still old GH tracks that have yet to be upgraded in RB or GHWT, on the other hand it was a matter of time issue. Why not clear out old game catalogs via DLC? I don't know. I'll need to see a set-list or get an idea of how they conclude something as a 'hit'.

Yeah, I'd have preferred this DLC. However, if they leave out the majority of 2 and 80s, I'll be happy. And for the tracks they do include from those games, they'd better get the masters because those covers were godawful.

Now they can sell another disc.

Atually kinda pissed.

Rockband did this for 5 bucks. Probably gonna have to pay 40 for this, and it won't even be everything.

Garbage.

Yeah, should have been dlc

True. But with the way licensing works, Rock Band probably had this planned from the start. How would you get tracks from the PS2 to the 360 or PS3 logistically? DLC would be best, but either way it means re-licensing all the songs which means we pay out our asses.

If Rock Band planned it from the beginning, there would be no relicensing or fee. There would be no missing tracks, either.

I'd point out part of the issue isn't relicensing, though, but the time and effort required to chart the music. Rock Band 2 didn't need to do that, the music was already charted.

Yeah, was going to point that out. With Rock Band they were just making it so you could access the already built in content from a different disc. With Guitar Hero, they're charting out drums, and vocals for songs that didn't initially have that content and probably were never intended to have the content until Rock Band came along. Yeah, it would be great if they just did it through downloaded content, but still.

No interest in this whatsoever.

I will pass.

Also, the likelihood of any of the bonus songs from the first 2 games is probably zero, which sucks since they actually had some decent stuff in there amongst the crap.

Explain why.

Games that are entirely in house like Freezepop have appeared in Neversoft/Activision's versions. I've been told there were others, especially on the DS versions. However, clearly the idea that there's no chance is utterly ridiculous.

If you're going for the more reasonable "they're not hits" argument, then yeah.

In my case, this is kinda moot. I mean, I really don't care enough about GHWT to actually get it right now. Maybe later (I'm not one of the GH SUCKS! crowd, mind....), but regardless. Being able to download the tracks I want would make for a better option.

I'm hoping more GH 1 and 2 songs are filled in for Rock Band, either on the RB3 disc or as DLC. And this time, masters, motherfucker.

So I'm guessing some of these will be the same covers, with bass, drums and vocals added? I'd really like a master of Hey You.

I figure Harmonix (or was it Wavegroup?) owned the covers, so they would need new covers or... master tracks.

They may have sold the "catalogue" along withnames.

Confirmed:

"Them Bones" by Alice in Chains
"Killer Queen" by Queen
"Nothin' But A Good Time" by Poison
"Killing in the Name" by Rage Against The Machine
"I Wanna Rock" by Twisted Sister
"Through the Fire and Flames" by Dragonforce.

All masters, full band play. Greatest Hits will pull from GH1, GH2, GH80's, and GH3 to fill their 40-ish tracklist (10 a game?). Neversoft has yet to define 'hit', as all the tracks above are on-disc music and I'd like to know how they're cherry picking these songs (not that I'm complaining).

40 songs after they've released like...300? come on.

Some songs I want on there from the past GH games. All masters of course:

Hey You - The Exies
Iron Man - Black Sabbath
Smoke on the Water - Deep Purple
Cowboys from Hell - Pantera
Heart Shaped Box - Nirvana
Free Bird - Lynyrd Skynyrd (This is a MUST!)
John the Fisherman - Primas
Mental Health - Quiet Riot
War Pigs - Black Sabbath (Because Rock band version is a cover)
"Thunder Kiss '65" - White Zombie
"Cochise" - Audioslave
"Bark at the Moon" - Ozzy Osbourne
"Cult of Personality" - Living Colour
"Before I Forget" - Slipknot
"The Seeker" - The Who
"Welcome to the Jungle" - Guns N' Roses

I knew the list would be gay in the end. They should just rerelease GH1 and leave it at that.

It isn't theirs to release, right? Can they do that? Who gets GH1/2/80's money? Harmonix?

The split wasn't the most amicable, but Harmonix have their own series now and didn't raise a stink when this was announced, so Activision probably does own it 100%.

yes they can. The Franchise rights belong to Activison now.

Also, War Pigs ain't gonna happen, D-Mac. It can't happen. They don't have masters usable for the purposes of Rock Band or Guitar Hero.

:(

If Free Bird isn't on there then automatic FAIL.

IGN: Which songs made the cut?

Paul Gadbois: You'll be happy to know that the final setlist includes 48 master tracks from Guitar Hero, Guitar Hero II, Guitar Hero Encore: Rocks the 80s and Guitar Hero III: Legends of Rock and we are announcing eight of them today. So here it goes:

"Them Bones" by Alice in Chains, Queen's "Killer Queen," "Nothin' But A Good Time" by Poison, Rage Against The Machine's "Killing in the Name," "I Wanna Rock" by Twisted Sister, Joan Jett and The Blackhearts's "I Love Rock N Roll," Heart's "Barracuda." … oh and Guitar Hero III favorite Dragonforce's "Through the Fire and Flames!"

IGN: Will downloadable tracks purchased for Guitar Hero World Tour work with this disc? What about GHTunes songs?

Paul Gadbois: Guitar Hero Greatest Hits (working title on PS3/PS2) will support the entire library of downloadable user-created songs from GHTunes and players can once again create and publish their own songs from the Music Studio.
Currently, downloadable songs for Guitar Hero World Tour will work with that title only.

IGN: Will there be any way to purchase this disc and import the songs into Guitar Hero World Tour (or vice versa) to have all of the tracks accessible at once?

Paul Gadbois: The 48 songs in this game will all be instantly playable and are designed to be playable off the disc only.

BOOOOOOURNS!

Knew it. Fail.

Yeah, it's gonna be 60 bucks too. They won't even jack some cash off of the price for us. :mad:

Speaking as a Wii player who only started playing when GH3 came out, I'm glad about this one, I will be getting this

Yeah, that's like the only benefit is if you don't already have the originals.

Even if the game had 60 tracks it'll still probably be worth it for the musical gamer-collector to actually purchase all of the old GHs.

SNOOZEFEST

Van Halen, GH5, Band Hero for 2009 News

News by Tom Bramwell

Today 16:45
Activision plans to expand the Guitar Hero range several more times before the end of the year according to a source close to the publisher.

Eurogamer has been told that Hard Rock Van Halen (August), Guitar Hero 5 (presumably a working title - September), DJ Hero (October), and Band Hero (November) are among games planned for release on PS3, Xbox 360, Wii and PS2 in 2009.

Following the release of Guitar Hero: Modern Hits, Activision also plans to release at least one more DS Guitar Hero title in 2009, the same source said.

Several of the above games are already in varying states of public undress. Activision Blizzard boss Bobby Kotick has spoken publicly about DJ Hero already, and mentioned Van Halen rather notably at an investor conference in early 2008.
Guitar Hero 5 and Band Hero (a trademark registered at around the same time as "Drum Hero") are supposedly separate titles due for the same spread of home consoles within the space of a few months, although our source was quiet on any specifics.

It would be no surprise, however, if Activision were to significantly ramp up the number of Guitar Hero releases given its importance to the company's bottom line. The impending Greatest Hits standalone disc and a Metallica title just months after Guitar Hero World Tour's late-2008 release suggest the company is eager to keep taking advantage of its breadwinner.

Activision told Eurogamer it does not comment on rumour and speculation.

This could end up rather annoying. Curious about Band Hero and GH5 being different games.

I gotta admit, the one thing I was thinking is that it'd be great to have GH1 songs on my 360, since I always had a bitch of a time with the lag on my TV. I could never fix it on GH2, either, but at least on the 360 it doesn't lag.

So I suppose there's some worth, otherwise.