Harmonix brought the Guitar Hero series to life in 2005.

I played this game when I was younger a lot. I enjoyed Guitar Hero 1, 2, and 3 quite a bit and was very excited to see a multi-instrumental game on the horizon, rather than just a guitar-based game. Despite having so much fun with the Guitar Hero series, I had basically had more than my fill of the guitar and was ready to move onto something new.

Rock Band brought that experience to reality. One of the most prominent pros of this game is obviously that you can play co-operative play with many more people at the same time, since you can have a vocalist, guitarist, drummer, and bassist. I believe you could only have two guitarists in the Guitar Hero series. This made it very easy to "find something to do" with all of your friends, unless of course you have more than four people total (this is something that was somewhat addressed in Rock Band 3 with the addition of the keyboard instrument).

The visuals had been much improved and given a lot more variety when you're on stage, so everything can change quite a lot depending on the performance of the band.

I feel like song selection really exploded starting with this game, because they took the Song Store a lot more seriously. By the time Rock Band 4 was out, there were hundreds of songs available for purchase.

Overall, I really really like what Harmonix did with this game and I'm thankful they created so many happy memories with family members and friends.