Overview

Guitar Hero Encore: Rocks the 80s is a music rhythm game that runs on the Guitar Hero II engine. The Game has an emphasis on music and style from the 1980's - most of the tracklist comes from that time period and all of the characters and venues have been redesigned to fit the style of the time. Guitar Hero Encore: Rocks the 80's was the first in what would be a long line of expansion packs with minimal improvements for the series, and also the last Guitar Hero game Harmonix worked with Activision on, before moving over to EA to develop Rock Band. 

Tracklist

Tier 1: Opening Licks

• Quiet Riot - "(Bang Your Head) Metal Health"
• The Go Go's - "We Got the Beat"
• Flock of Seagulls - "I Ran (So Far Away)" *
• Accept - "Balls to the Wall"
• Skid Row - "18 and Life"

Tier 2: Amp-Warmers

• Scorpions - "No One Like You"
• Eddie Money - "Shakin' "
• Asia - "Heat of the Moment"
• White Lion - "Radar Love"
• Limozeen - "Because, It's Midnite" *

Tier 3: String Snappers

• Dio - "Holy Diver"
• The Vapors - "Turning Japanese"
• .38 Special - "Hold On Loosely"
• Scandal - "The Warrior" *
• Twisted Sister - "I Wanna Rock" *

Tier 4: Return of the Shred

• The Romantics - "What I Like About You"
• The Police - "Synchronicity II"
• Krokus - "Ballroom Blitz"
• Oingo Boingo - "Only a Lad"
• Ratt - "Round and Round"

Tier 5: Relentless Riffs

• Poison - "Ain't Nothin but a Good Time"
• Billy Squier - "Lonely is the Night"
• Faster Pussycat - "Bathroom Wall"
• X - "Los Angeles"
• Iron Maiden - "Wrathchild"

Tier 6: Furious Fretwork

• Judas Priest - "Electric Eye" *
• Dead Kennedys - "Police Truck"
• Winger - "Seventeen"
• Anthrax - "Caught in a Mosh"
• Extreme - "Play With Me"

* - Indicates master recording. 
 

The Romantics Lawsuit

Shortly after the game was released on 21st November  2007  , The Rock band The Romantics filed a lawsuit to Activision Blizzard, Redeoctain, Harmonix and WaveGroup  Sound over the cover version of "What I Like About You". the band state that:

"the cover is virtually indistinguishable from the authentic version" and thus would "[confuse] consumers into believing that the band actually recorded the music and endorsed the product". 

they band also tried to stop the game from being sold (This happen even though the company's involved got the right to place the song in the game, I think  that a cover version of a song should sound a close to the master recording, and as a matter of fact The Romantics did endorse the game for allowing their song to feature in the games setlist.) later on that year in December Activision Blizzard was awarded a preliminary injunction to stop the band from stopping the game from going on sale. On 9th July 2008, the case was settled with a summer judgment hearing, which lead to a case dismissal because Harmonix (the then games developer) had obtained the proper right to use the song and that The Romantics themselves did not hold the copyright on the song anymore. 
 

Trivia

 

• The soundtrack was originally going to include the Bow Wow Wow version of I Want Candy but it was removed for unknown reasons.