rambling about guitar hero nostalgia

i started playing ghwtde and fortnite festival again since they added guitar support (and the community found a fix for other controllers) and it's only made me miss the aesthetic of the older games. i remember discovering guitar hero when i visited my dad's one summer the year that the game came out. i immediately got super into it and from then on i got every new entry-- but i don't think any of the guitar hero games beyond 2 really had what i liked about the games.

i fully realize that after 2, the games were developed by a new team and that's the reason why the games feel different, but it definitely was a letdown to go from a humble feeling game to one that felt really polished and well produced. and that's not to say that guitar hero 3 onward weren't good products, quite the opposite. guitar hero 3 is probably the peak of the series for me. but there was something about the rough around the edges nature of the first two games that really made them endearing to me. especially the wavegroup covers that made up the setlists. once the setlists were made with master recordings (and rerecorded masters) it felt like an era had gone by.

i'm probably being dramatic but whenever i listen to 'i love rock and roll' by joan jett and the blackhearts, i always feel like the song feels off because i was so used to the wavegroup cover, and then i remember how long it's been since i played the first two guitar hero games and yearn for those times again. but, don't we all yearn for times long past?

also before someone asks, i only owned the first rockband because i played on ps2 and after playing through the first one i was underwhelmed by the lack of character customization (i thought the game had none at all because i didn't have friends or bother looking up the 360 version online) so i have basically no nostalgia for the rockband series as a whole. 'maps', 'i think i'm paranoid' and 'should i stay or should i go' are bangers though.