The Coolest Video games We Noticed At GDC 2026

Guitar Hero and Rock Band dominated my life for a protracted stretch of time. I poured hundreds of hours into these franchises, and doubtless much more {dollars} as I gathered as a lot DLC as attainable. I even performed competitively in tournaments for a few years. Today, I nonetheless mourn the lack of the style, which is why I used to be exhilarated to satisfy with Echo Foundry Interactive, a crew consisting of former builders of Guitar Hero, Rock Band, and different rhythm video games, to see their upcoming title, Sound System.

Sound System performs very similar to the basic Guitar Hero video games that launched the Western world to the guitar-driven rhythm-based style, with five-lane observe highways, background animations, and loads of partaking rock songs to strum and hammer-on/pull-off your approach by. Echo Foundry is taking a wise method, delivering grasp recordings of indie songs, whereas licensing extra common (and costly) tracks to allow them to embody covers of them within the tracklist – a transfer the crew tells me will assist maintain prices down and make beforehand inaccessible songs attainable.

On prime of a big record of songs included at launch, in addition to a strong post-launch DLC plan, Sound System additionally features a built-in customized tune creator, that means you possibly can add any tune and create your personal chart for it. For instance, I watched the creators add probably the most iconic rock songs that followers have been clamoring for for the reason that inception of Guitar Hero and design how they assume the intro ought to go. It will definitely take time and data, however I might see a group forming round this function and sharing charts for sought-after songs. Sound System is about to reach on PC someday this yr, with the crew investigating bringing it to consoles someday after that.