Guitar Hero finally makes its long-awaited return, but fans aren't happy

Guitar Hero has (in a legally distinct sort of way) just popped up in a completely different franchise, and some fans aren’t too happy about it.

Neversoft are best known as the developers behind the original Tony Hawk's Pro Skater games, having worked on nine separate Tony Hawk titles (including the very first Tony Hawk's Pro Skater and Tony Hawk's Underground) before they were shuttered in 2014.

As the sales of the Tony Hawk games began to dip, Neversoft were relocated to a new franchise by their publisher, Activision: Guitar Hero.

Now it’s a bit of a distant memory at this point, but at the time, fans were not happy about this. They wanted a new Tony Hawk game, and instead, Neversoft were forced to churn out yearly entries in a rhythm-action game franchise.

Which leads me to the point of this story; as spotted by Push Square’s Liam Doolan, the latest remake in the Tony Hawk series, Tony Hawk's Pro Skater 3 + 4, features a legally distinct nod to the Guitar Hero franchise… in a bin.

The “Banjo Hero” knock-off was spotted by one user over on Reddit, who criticised Iron Galaxy (the developer of Tony Hawk's Pro Skater 3 + 4) for their lack of “respect”.

The Iron Galaxy Dev Team Reddit account actually responded to this post too, stating: “We have the utmost respect for anyone who makes games, we’re investigating how that got in there in the first place. Thank you to the community for bringing this to our attention and we’ll be removing that from the environment art in the next update.”

Personally, I hope they don’t remove it. This is clearly a bit of a jab at Activision for their disrespect for the Guitar Hero franchise, and they’re absolutely right for doing so.

I mean, have we all forgotten that back in March, they pumped out some fake AI-generated adverts for a Guitar Hero game that doesn’t actually exist… just so they could gauge interest?

Activision is the last company any of you should be defending.