[1] The game was programmed by Robinson Technologies (shortened to RTSoft) in affiliation with MachineWorks Northwest LLC.

[4] In June 2009, it was announced that Glu Mobile would be developing versions of several Activision titles, including Guitar Hero 5, Modern Warfare 2, and Tony Hawk: Ride for release in the last quarter of 2009.

[7][8][9][10] Other features include online leader boards, file saves, and accomplishments achieved by meeting certain in-game criteria.

[1] The game features only single player Career mode, working through fifteen songs sorted into three tiers similar to other Guitar Hero games, and Quickplay mode, allowing the player to play any unlocked song at any time.

Guitar Hero World Tour Mobile also supports a two-player competitive mode in a manner similar to the "boss battles" introduced in Guitar Hero III: Legends of Rock; a player may be able to collect power-ups that can be triggered in the same manner as Star Power to affect their opponent's ability to play for a brief period of time.

Successfully completing the encore allows the player to unlock the next tier of songs and play them in Quickplay mode.

[17] Cell Play referred to the game as "the true mobile port of rock," and praised the level of difficulty accomplished with the three button setup.

[1] 1UP's review criticized the compact layout that led to hand cramps, and that the limited space on the mobile version only allowed two songs to be stored at a time.

1UP also lamented the shorted versions of the songs given the outstanding audio quality achieved on the mobile platform; their review summarized their experience as "As a literal interpretation of the Guitar Hero formula, there was apparently no room to alter the game to emphasize the strengths of the mobile platform.

[18] The game has been downloaded by users 2.5 million times,[19] with both Verizon and Hands-On Mobile claiming that over 250,000 songs are played a day on the platform.

[20] Guitar Hero Backstage Pass was also praised for the addition of role-playing elements and smaller minigames to bring the series in line with other mobile phone games.

[19][22] However, Pocket Gamer UK noted that on the Java ME version, the songs are only slightly improved over that of a MIDI file.

[23] The addition of drums, which is said to effectively double amount of gameplay, and multiplayer to the mobile game was also well received.