Stage Tour Brings Guitar Hero Vets Back to Switch 2 This Year

The Band Is Getting Back Together

Somewhere in a storage unit near you, there is probably a plastic guitar with a broken orange fret button. Stage Tour, a new rhythm game from developers who worked on Guitar Hero and DJ Hero, wants to make you dig it out. The game has been confirmed for Nintendo Switch 2, with a launch window targeting the end of 2026, according to Nintendo Life.

The setup will feel immediately familiar to anyone who spent their teens failing “Through the Fire and Flames” on Expert. Stage Tour supports guitar controllers, microphones, and drums, aiming to recreate the full band experience that made the rhythm game genre a genuine cultural moment in the late 2000s.

Sixteen Tracks and Counting

The confirmed song list already covers a lot of ground. On the heavier end, players can expect Slipknot’s “Psychosocial,” Ghost’s “Square Hammer,” Rise Against’s “Broken Dreams Inc.,” and Static-X’s “Terminator Oscillator.” Things get a little softer with Weezer’s “Island In The Sun,” Avril Lavigne’s “Bite Me,” and Paramore’s “For a Pessimist, I’m Pretty Optimistic.” BABYMETAL and Electric Callboy show up together on “RATATATA,” which is exactly as chaotic as it sounds.

Rounding out the announced lineup are Red Hot Chili Peppers’ “Dani California,” Extreme’s “Get The Funk Out,” and tracks from Good Kid, Honey Revenge, Jfarrari, The Long Faces, The Paradox, and Castle Rat. Nintendo Life noted it will continue tracking additions to the setlist as the release approaches.

The Controller Question

Stage Tour will launch alongside official Kramer guitar controllers. Nintendo Life also reported that CRKD’s guitar range, which the outlet reviewed and called exceptional if a little pricey, will very likely be compatible as well. Up until now, Fortnite Festival was essentially the only Switch game that justified picking up one of those controllers, so Stage Tour’s arrival gives those peripherals considerably more purpose.

Of course, the peripheral situation cuts both ways. One reader comment on Nintendo Life’s coverage summed it up pretty well: after a generation of plastic guitars snapping at the neck or dropping inputs mid-solo, some former fans are more interested in playing without buying new hardware entirely. The game does support standard controls alongside the peripheral options, which could be a meaningful factor in how widely it gets adopted.

An Uphill Road

Nintendo Life acknowledged directly that Stage Tour has some real competition to contend with. Fortnite Festival is free, it is already on Switch, and Epic keeps adding songs to it. The rhythm game space is not the wide-open market it was when Guitar Hero III landed in 2007. Audiences have more options, many of them at no cost.

That said, there is a specific appetite for what Stage Tour seems to be offering. The DJ Hero and Guitar Hero pedigree of the development team is a genuine selling point for people who remember what those games were at their peak, before the genre collapsed under the weight of too many releases and too many plastic instruments piling up under Christmas trees. A focused, well-made rhythm game with a strong setlist and proper peripheral support is something the Switch 2 library does not currently have.

Slipknot and Paramore sharing a setlist with Castle Rat and Good Kid suggests the team is thinking about range rather than just chasing nostalgia. Whether the final product lives up to the pedigree behind it remains to be seen, but the bones here look solid.