Guitar Hero successor revealed from original creators

A number of the original Guitar Hero creators have regrouped to make a spiritual successor known as Stage Tour. You’ll be shredding riffs with plastic guitars again in no time.

It’s been over 20 years since gamified guitars first hit store shelves with the original Guitar Hero on PS2. In the years that followed, it exploded into its own genre of game, with countless iterations and spin-offs. Who remembers DJ Hero?

RedOctane was one of the dev teams involved in bringing life to the at home rock concert experience. Now, two decades later, many of the original crew involved have reconnected as RedOctane Games, and they’ve just revealed what they’ve been working on.

Stage Tour is a spiritual successor of sorts to those classic rhythm games we grew up loving. It looks just like you’d expect, with colored notes flying down the screen on a track as you time the perfect strums of your plastic instrument.

Guitar Hero lives on as Stage Tour

While brief, the reveal trailer gives us our first look at the game in action, showing instantly recognizable cords floating along the track as a band tears it up on stage.

The description underneath gives us a bit more to go off, however. Devs are teasing that classic Guitar Hero experience, but paired with “new features, gamemodes, and dozens of bandmates and instruments to fit your unique style.”

More than just performing, Stage Tour is a bit of an RPG too, having your assign band members to certain instruments, choosing how they look, and how they act on stage, and so on.

“As you play, your band evolves with you. Mix and match characters to create a lineup that feels uniquely yours, whether rocking solo or jamming with up to four players.”

In the live-service era, it’s expected to be supported in the long run, with new songs and live events regularly drawing players back in.

There’s currently no word on when it might release in full, but Closed Alpha testing is set to kick off in late Spring to Early Summer.