GuitarFreaks is a music video game series produced by Konami. It is a rhythm game where the player uses a controller to simulate the playing of an electric guitar. The game consists of music predominantly from the rock music, rock and roll and J-pop genres. It is considered one of the most influential video games of all time, for having laid the foundations for popular guitar-based rhythm games, such as the Guitar Hero series. Working Designs attempted to bring Guitar Freaks PlayStation 2 games in the U.S., but patent problems with the guitar controller prevented the project from moving forward.
The game's nineteenth version, GuitarFreaks V8, was released in March 28, 2011. It was speculated to be the final release of GuitarFreaks V.
A spin-off series, GuitarFreaks XG was released in Japanese arcades on March 10, 2010, which added two more buttons to the fret bar.
A sequel, GuitarFreaks XG2, was released on March 9, 2011. Another sequel, GuitarFreaks XG3, was released on Feb. 23, 2012
Source: Wikipedia, "[en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Guitar_Freaks Guitar Freaks]", available under the CC-BY-SA License.
The Japanese name is ギターフリークス