Guitar Hero:World Tour is released to the world today, but it wasn’t until Tim Riley was standing in a London recording studio watching the seminal 1970s punk band the Sex Pistols rerecord their smash hit Anarchy in the U.K. that he realized just how popular Guitar Hero had become.

To include songs on Guitar Hero, the makers need the master tapes to the recording. The only problem was the master recording to the Sex Pistols hit song Anarchy in the U.K. had been lost for four decades.

Much to his surprise, the surviving members of the band offered to go back into the studio – something they hadn’t done in 30 years – just to record a song for a video game where players rock out on plastic guitars in time with colored dots on a screen.

“It was the craziest thing ever,” he said. “I never thought something like that could happen.”

Tuesday marks the beginning of the latest chapter in the unlikely story of Guitar Hero, with the release of its latest incarnation, Guitar Hero: World Tour.

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