In career mode, which you can also embark on with a friend, you earn money after each song you play. The higher your score, the better your reviews and the more cash you collect. Spend your money at the in-game store, where you can purchase songs, characters, outfits, videos, and guitars and basses. You can also pick up style variations for your outfits, along with additional finishes for your instruments.

The store features nearly 50 axes to peruse, from Gibson’s standard models to ones shaped like sharks, bats, pirates, and more. Finishes include variations on the classic archtop guitar, a recreation of the custom paint job Jimi Hendrix gave to his Gibson Flying-V, and a variety of distinctive color schemes.

And if you want to peek behind the scenes, Guitar Hero III lets you hear what Johnny Rotten and other surviving members of The Sex Pistols have to say about re-recording “Anarchy in the U.K.” for the game. (The original master tapes were lost for that song and Living Colour’s “Cult of Personality,” necessitating re-recording sessions.) You can also watch Poison lead singer Bret Michaels, Slash, and Tom Morello go through their stage moves for Neversoft’s motion-capture team.

Bonus Tracks. The Stone Roses’ “She Bangs the Drums” is one of 25 extra tunes you can unlock.

• “The best advice I can give is practice, practice, practice,” relates Adams. “It also helps to use the music cues to feel the rhythm of hitting the notes. One of our best players at Aspyr can play songs without even looking at the screen, just because he knows them so well.”
• If you miss a note in a tight cluster, skip the next one and get back on track after that. Missing one note throws off your timing, leaving you behind the beat of the music and potentially causing you to miss the rest of the series, if you get frantic about hitting every note after that.
• If you can’t get past a boss battle, don’t worry: the game will give you a “Wuss Out” option to give up and move on after you’ve tried several times. Sure, it’s not the route rock stars take, but at least you can get to the next stage in your career.
• During boss battles, wait for the right moment to activate battle power. For example, hit him with the whammy bar when he’s in the middle of a complex series of notes and he’ll miss most of them. Remember: You lose the battle even if both of you complete the song, because your goal is to make him fail.

• When you activate Star Power, the notes come at you faster until the effect ends, so get your fingers ready. You earn double points for each note you hit while Star Power is active, so don’t use it during the guitar-less portion of a song.
• And don’t fiddle with the strum bar while waiting for the guitar part of the song to pick up again. Flipping it up or down without a fret button pressed will also count as a missed note.
• Guitar Hero III is full of references to rock ‘n’ roll trivia, such as the address of the Backyard Bash venue: 22 Arcadia Avenue, which alludes to the Iron Maiden song “22 Acacia Avenue.” Spinal Tap fans will also notice plenty of references to their favorite clueless band.

To enable cheats in Guitar Hero III, select “Options” from the main menu and then choose “Cheats.” Select “Enter Cheat” and follow the pattern of notes below. When you see two or more notes together, you must hold down all of those colors as a chord.

G = green, R = red, Y = yellow, B = blue, and O = orange