Here we go… Guitar Hero III: Legends of Rock. The behemoth title that saw the commercial and pop culture peak of the music game genre, exceeding $1 billion in gross revenue across all platforms, helping the franchise become the cultural phenomenon we’ve all come to know.

Released in Fall 2007, Guitar Hero III was the first Neversoft-developed iteration in the series, who handled the lead development on the Xbox 360/PlayStation 3 version. The game was also released on PS2, Wii and PC & Mac, with the porting of each handled by Activision-owned studios Budcat Creations, Vicarious Visions and independent studio Aspyr Media, respectively. Guitar Hero III marked the first release of a Guitar Hero title on the PS3, Wii, PC and Mac, which soon became the norm for all future Guitar Hero releases.

The title stays true to the formula established by the previous games in the series and the core gameplay is identical, but it did introduce a handle of new features, most notably online multiplayer, the co-op career, competitive Battles (featured both in the career and as a multiplayer game mode) and the inclusion of famous musicians, namely Slash, Tom Morello and Bret Michaels.

A testament to the music game genre’s ever-increasing mainstream presence and prevalence, the game’s soundtrack included 73 songs, a whopping 54 of which were master recordings. As another first for the series, two songs – Sex Pistols’ Anarchy in the U.K. and Living Colour’s Cult of Personality - were specifically re-recorded for the game as the master recordings could not be found. In addition to this, three songs were specifically written and recorded for the game: Slash and Tom Morello’s Guitar Battles and Steve Ouimette’s metal version of The Devil Went Down to Georgia. All three of those songs feature as boss battles during the career mode.

The game was released a month before the North American release of the first Rock Band game, and as such the two titles shared six songs:

• Beastie Boys – Sabotage
• Black Sabbath – Paranoid
• The Killers – When You Were Young
• Mountain – Mississippi Queen
• The Smashing Pumpkins – Cherub Rock
• The Strokes – Reptilia

Interestingly, a seventh song – Queens of the Stone Age’s 3′s & 7′s - was one of the fifteen songs released as DLC for Rock Band on the day of game’s release, while Die Toten Hosen’s Hier Kommt Alex was as one of the nine European exclusive tracks included on the disc of the European version of the game when it released in May 2008.

Five songs from Guitar Hero III have been released as DLC since Rock Band 3′s release, four of which have featured pro guitar/bass upgrades. In chronological order of their Rock Band release, these songs are:

• Santana – Black Magic Woman
• DragonForce – Through the Fire and Flames
• Kiss – Rock and Roll All Nite
• Heart – Barracuda

Two more songs from Guitar Hero III – Pearl Jam’s Even Flow and Stevie Ray Vaughan’s Pride and Joy - are legacy DLC that have had pro guitar/bass upgrades released for them. Rock Band 3 itself included Slipknot’s Before I Forget, meaning that seven songs from Guitar Hero III have pro guitar/bass functionality in Rock Band.

As noted in the previous Setlist Checklist post (and all future posts, as well), Rock Band 3′s setlist creation tool allows us to create, save, and share setlists, so we have included a Rock Band 3 setlist below that you can save to your profile if you would like to check out any or all of the songs! And as the holes are continually filled in by Rock Band’s weekly DLC releases, we will update this post, and keep it linked in the FAQ page above, for future reference.

Main Setlist

The setlist for Guitar Hero III: Legends of Rock contained a wide range of music, but with a focus on metal and classic rock. The single-player career featured 39 songs and the co-op career had six exclusive Encore songs, while the the other 25 tracks were bonus songs.

Of the core 39-song single-player setlist (though ignoring the three boss battles), 24 are currently available in Rock Band, which is roughly 62%. Three of the six (50%) co-op-exclusive songs and six of the 25 (24%) bonus songs are available in Rock Band, which means that 45% of the entire 73 songs in Guitar Hero III are currently in the Rock Band library – the highest percentage for any Guitar Hero game covered thus far in the Setlist Checklist feature.

* Denotes a cover song in the original title.
** Denotes a live version of the track.

Guitar Hero III: Legends of Rock Main Setlist for Rock Band 3

Bonus Setlist

* Denotes a cover song in the original title.
*** Song is unplayable in Rock Band 3.

Guitar Hero III: Legends of Rock Bonus Setlist for Rock Band 3

Check out an embedded playlist of ALL the on-disc songs after the break…

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