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Getting Started

Clone Hero is compatible with keyboard controls, gamepads (Xbox, Playstation, etc), guitar controllers, and drums (gamepad style and midi style). 

For a comprehensive overview of compatibility and requirements, please review the community maintained spreadsheet. If you have questions about how to bind your controls, please see the controls section of the manual.

If you are unable to navigate the main menu, be sure that you have pressed start and selected a profile before any trouble shooting. On keyboard, you will press ENTER and then us the A key to "Accept" and the S key to "Cancel" by default.

Controller Spreadsheet

You can find information about every official instrument and its connection method on this wiki, but we also have an alternative view of said information in the form of a spreadsheet, which can be found here.

The spread sheet is read by identifying the guitar type and the console it originates from, and then reading the note that corresponds to the number listed in the cell. 

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For example, if you have a Guitar Hero 5 controller from the Xbox 360, then the corresponding note (11) says "Must be paired to a 360 controller receiver, Type !receiver for more info". You can find the receiver through the wiki's search bar, in our Guitars, Drums, Controllers section, or you can join our Discord server and type !receiver in one of the channels.

We recommend the Guitar Hero 5, the Xplorer, and the Xbox 360/Wii Les Paul (GH3), and the World Tour guitars as the "best". These guitars offer the best experience with the least amount of effort, however plenty of other controllers are perfectly good. With that said, we advise against the PS3 Les Paul (GH3) guitar, and we strongly advise against buying any "new" guitar off AliExpress or amazon. 

See our Recommended Guitars page for more information

Where to buy

The best places to buy guitar controllers are thrift shops, pawn shops, Craigslist/your country's equivalent, Facebook Marketplace and, occasionally, eBay auctions. Generally speaking, $60 USD is considered expensive; $30 USD is considered a good buy.

When buying a guitar, be sure to factor in the cost of the dongle (if wireless), the Wiimote (if a Wii guitar), or the breakaway cable (if a wired Xbox 360 guitar). 

WiitarThing

WiitarThing is software used to facilitate the use of Wiimotes on PC. There are many versions of Wiitarthing on the internet, but we only recommend the latest version of a specific repository, as it has the most stable driver and drum support. You can find said repository here. Make sure to carefully follow the guide, especially if you're updating from an older version like 2.7.

Vocals and RB Keyboard/Piano

These are not supported and there are no plans to support them moving forward.

Xbox360 Controllers and Mac

Since the Ventura update for Mac OS, Xbox controllers no longer work. There is no known workaround for this. If you are on a Mac we highly advise that you avoid all Xbox controllers and guitars.

Known Issue with Gamepads

If you are trying to use a gamepad with the v1 version of the game, please be aware that the R2/L2 (RT/LT) buttons do not assign correctly. 

A workaround is to download v0.23.2.2 and map controls there, then go back to v1.0.4080 where they should stay mapped (may not work with some recently-released controllers).
v0.23.2.2 download: https://clonehero.net/releases/v0.23.2.2/

You may also need to wait until the bind countdown completes before pressing any trigger, this is to ensure that the "Press" is what is bound instead of the "Release."

Please Be Aware: As of 1.0.4080-final, the PS5 gamepad (known as the Dual Sense) will not work with this workaround. You may be able to make it work by using the program DS4Windows which converts your PS device into an XInput device. Installing and configuring this should make it possible to use the above workaround.

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