The game features a guitar-shaped controller (resembling a miniature Gibson SG) that the player uses to simulate playing rock music.

The gameplay is similar to GuitarFreaks, in that the player presses buttons on the guitar controller in time with musical notes that scroll on the game screen.

The game's success launched the Guitar Hero franchise, which has earned more than $2 billion in sales, spawning several sequels, expansions, and other game-related products.

[1] A player using the standard controller simply presses the buttons that correspond with the displayed notes as outlined in the game's manual.

Activating Star Power will double the scoring multiplier and makes it easier to increase the Rock Meter by playing correct notes.

In Career Mode, players can earn money from their performances that is redeemable at the in-game store, where bonus content, such as additional songs, guitars and finishes, can be unlocked.

[1] After successfully completing a song in either Career or Quick Play mode, players are given a score and a rating from three to five stars, depending on their overall performance.

The first difficulty level, Easy, only focuses on the first three fret buttons while displaying a significantly reduced amount of notes for the player to play.

RedOctane's Kai and Charles Huang recognized the popularity of GuitarFreaks in Japan through their rental service, and planned to create guitar controllers to bring the game to North America.

[5] Greg Fischbach, one of the founders of Acclaim Entertainment, noted, regretfully several years later, they had passed on Guitar Hero, questioning "Who's going to buy a peripheral like that?

With a budget of about one million dollars (which Kay noted was "pretty tiny for a video game"), the two companies worked together to develop Guitar Hero.

The third key aspect was the use of Star Power "to provide a little more depth to the game — some replay value, some interest for people as they were playing beyond just hitting the notes".

[3] The controller initially had pressure-sensitive fret buttons to mimic the playing of a real guitar, but the idea was dropped as it made the gameplay too complex.

[8] The idea of using the whammy bar to boost Star Power, in addition to altering the pitch of sustained notes was only realized about a month before the completion of the game.

[8] The team had spent "precious development time and resources" into creating a free-style model that would have allowed players to improvise during songs but ultimately cut it as they could not work the feature into the existing gameplay.

The team also felt "morally obligated" to include older, classic rock songs like The Ramones' "I Wanna Be Sedated" to the younger target audience of the game.

In the case of Black Sabbath's "Iron Man", the team learned that the vocal effects were created by having Ozzy Osbourne sing from behind a metal fan.

Based on the experience from Frequency and Amplitude, the team realized that "people don't necessarily relate to really abstract visuals", and included the depictions of live performances as previously used in Karaoke Revolution.

Featured tracks include "Iron Man" by Black Sabbath, "Take Me Out" by Franz Ferdinand, "Spanish Castle Magic" by Jimi Hendrix, "Bark at the Moon" by Ozzy Osbourne, "Smoke on the Water" by Deep Purple, "Crossroads" by Cream, and "Fat Lip" by Sum 41.

[24] IGN praised the "fantastic soundtrack" and "great peripheral",[2] further commenting that mini-Gibson SG controller "is what makes Guitar Hero, rather than what breaks it".

[28] Eurogamer said, "the lack of international star quality about the roster of songs and the absence of the original artists is perhaps the only thing that may detract from the package from an importer's perspective" and "it would have been truly amazing with a better track list".

[26] Shortly after release, Guitar Hero became an unexpected hit;[8][31] it was the second-highest-selling PlayStation 2 title in February 2006 according to the NPD Group.