Development
The surprise success of Guitar Hero readily led to the development of a sequel for the game. :According to developer John Tam, the team felt they "hit the sweet spot" of genres and decades within the set list and wanted to maintain that for the sequel. The costs of obtaining licensing rights for music from "big bands" such as AC/DC, Led Zeppelin, Van Halen, and Metallica, in addition to the lack of understanding of how the music would be used prevented these groups from being used in Guitar Hero. However, Tam notes that with the success of Guitar Hero, "They understand that we're not going to embarrass their music, we're going to actually pay homage to their music and get it to the point where people are going to fall in love with their music and understand their music in a totally different way than they've ever experienced it before." They also had requests by artists to include master tracks within the game.
In addition to working more directly with artists, RedOctane and Activision worked with various musical instrument and equipment companies to provide in-game product placement. Such vendors include BOSS Effectors, DW Drums, Eden Bass Amplication, EMG, Epiphone, Ernie Ball Strings, Gibson Guitar Corporation, Guitar Center, Hofner, Kramer, Krank, Line 6, Mesa Boogie, MusicMan Basses, Orange Amplifiers, Randall Amplifiers, Roland, Vans and the Vans Warped Tour, VHT, and Zildjian.
Guitar Hero II was originally announced for the PlayStation 2 on April 17, 2006. A demo version of the PlayStation 2 version of Guitar Hero II was released with issue #110 of Official PlayStation Magazine on October 5, 2006. Features of the demo included four playable songs on four difficulty levels for single player and co-op modes. Demo releases do not feature the ability to flip the notes for left-handed players. Demo versions feature the songs "Shout at the Devil", "You Really Got Me", "Strutter" and "YYZ". The demo featured slightly different note charts than the final release for some of the songs. The retail game was released for the PlayStation 2 on November 7, 2006 in North America, November 15, 2006 in Australia, and November 30, 2006 in the United Kingdom and Europe. It was released as both a stand-alone game and as a bundle containing the game and a cherry Gibson SG guitar controller.
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