Guitar Hero III: Legends of Rock

Guitar Hero III: Legends of Rock is the entry in the series that turned the plastic guitar from a curiosity into a mass phenomenon, occupying store shelves and TV commercials for months on end. The principle is still instantly readable: colored dots stream down a tilted note highway, the left hand holds the matching frets on the neck of the controller, and the right hand strums with the pick lever. Long notes can be shaken by tilting the guitar, missed notes interrupt the music with an ugly wrong sound, and the crowd starts to leave. New in this entry was the ability to charge Star Power by lifting the guitar's neck upward, turning every song into a small living-room theater performance.

The third game brought boss battles into the career mode, where the player competes against legends of rock guitar and sends disruptive effects their way, from scrambled strings to a jammed fret. On top of that came full online multiplayer, meaning that on the Xbox 360 version you could measure yourself against anyone in the world. The difficulty curve is famously steep: while the lower tiers need only three buttons and a sense of rhythm, expert mode demands genuine coordination and stamina. The closing track by DragonForce became a legendary test of patience and a symbol of the entire series.

Technically it was a cartoonishly stylized spectacle with exaggeratedly animated musicians, smoke and lights, where the main role, however, is played by the readability of the note highway and zero lag between the press and the sound. That's exactly what the Xbox 360 handled reliably. The soundtrack leaned on well-known rock hits in both original recordings and cover versions, becoming for a lot of teenagers at the time a gateway to music they'd otherwise never have listened to. Reception at the time was very warm and commercial success enormous, though this is also where the market saturation began that would knock the genre down a few years later. Today Guitar Hero III still plays great, provided you have a guitar and the willingness to make your wrists ache all over again.