The first game was extremely successful, prompting sequel, Guitar Hero II, a year later.
They partnered with rhythm game developer Harmonix, and released Guitar Hero in November of 2005. This game had only been released in Japan, and RedOctane was confident they could make a very similar game, with a comparable Guitar controller, in the west. Sometime in the early to mid 2000s, hardware developer RedOctane discovered a rhythm game made by Konami called Guitar Freaks, which used a Guitar shaped controller and featured a rock and roll based soundtrack.
