nkarafo
Member
The first thing that comes to most people's minds when thinking about that short amount of time is the endless amount of plastic shit you had to amass. Which is understandable since they overdid it in that front. It was the one thing that made the bubble burst after all.
But there was one other thing that very few seem to appreciate or even realize about these games. They offered something extremely valuable, that we shouldn't have the privilege to have access to. Something that many music enthusiasts and audiophiles thought it would be impossible to get their hands on: Original stems/muti-tracks of classic songs. Most of them remastered and/or better quality than CDs or any other format you can get.
Now, the first couple Guitar Hero games only had covers instead of original songs. But starting from Guitar Hero 3, the games would feature actual original studio recordings where you could have the guitar and bass completely separated from the rest of the song. Later on they also separated the vocals, drums, keys and even had the drums themselves separated. And not only that, the audio quality was amazing. Remember Metallica's Death Magnetic drama about the album's shitty quality and how the Guitar Hero DLC was the best way to listen to the album? Well, that was true for most of the songs actually. From any artist and any album. Like, you can finally appreciate the bass in The Justice for All album, for instance.
Of course, all the tracks and DLCs can be ripped from the discs. And you can use these files in programs like Audacity to play with the songs and mix them as you see fit, without having to play the game at the same time. Now think about it. You have the original stems from classic songs you grew up with and you can mix them how you like. You can listen to these songs in a completely new way. You can isolate Flea's bass or listen to Kurt Cobain singing the studio versions of his songs without the rest of the band. They even kept him coughing a bit in Smells Like Teen Spirit and i'm pretty sure he does in the original CDs, you just can't hear it.
As an audiophile myself, i was in heaven during this craze. I didn't care much about the gameplay but i got almost all the GH/RB games on 360 (the Wii versions had reduced sound quality btw) and a bunch of DLCs. But now it seems this is over forever. Even newer games that followed don't use multi-tracks anymore. Rocksmith, for instance, only has a single song and you play along with it. Which is a shame since that game has my favorite song of all time (Paranoid Android) and i would give one of my kidneys to have it as a multitrack. This was a one time deal and i don't think we will ever get similar access to other songs in the future since these games aren't as popular anymore and getting the masters is an expensive and difficult endeavor.
Still, i managed to get about 400+ favorite classic songs with their instruments separated from all this. Seriously people, forget about the plastic guitars, the files in those discs are a treasure.
But there was one other thing that very few seem to appreciate or even realize about these games. They offered something extremely valuable, that we shouldn't have the privilege to have access to. Something that many music enthusiasts and audiophiles thought it would be impossible to get their hands on: Original stems/muti-tracks of classic songs. Most of them remastered and/or better quality than CDs or any other format you can get.
Now, the first couple Guitar Hero games only had covers instead of original songs. But starting from Guitar Hero 3, the games would feature actual original studio recordings where you could have the guitar and bass completely separated from the rest of the song. Later on they also separated the vocals, drums, keys and even had the drums themselves separated. And not only that, the audio quality was amazing. Remember Metallica's Death Magnetic drama about the album's shitty quality and how the Guitar Hero DLC was the best way to listen to the album? Well, that was true for most of the songs actually. From any artist and any album. Like, you can finally appreciate the bass in The Justice for All album, for instance.
Of course, all the tracks and DLCs can be ripped from the discs. And you can use these files in programs like Audacity to play with the songs and mix them as you see fit, without having to play the game at the same time. Now think about it. You have the original stems from classic songs you grew up with and you can mix them how you like. You can listen to these songs in a completely new way. You can isolate Flea's bass or listen to Kurt Cobain singing the studio versions of his songs without the rest of the band. They even kept him coughing a bit in Smells Like Teen Spirit and i'm pretty sure he does in the original CDs, you just can't hear it.
As an audiophile myself, i was in heaven during this craze. I didn't care much about the gameplay but i got almost all the GH/RB games on 360 (the Wii versions had reduced sound quality btw) and a bunch of DLCs. But now it seems this is over forever. Even newer games that followed don't use multi-tracks anymore. Rocksmith, for instance, only has a single song and you play along with it. Which is a shame since that game has my favorite song of all time (Paranoid Android) and i would give one of my kidneys to have it as a multitrack. This was a one time deal and i don't think we will ever get similar access to other songs in the future since these games aren't as popular anymore and getting the masters is an expensive and difficult endeavor.
Still, i managed to get about 400+ favorite classic songs with their instruments separated from all this. Seriously people, forget about the plastic guitars, the files in those discs are a treasure.
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