Our inner 13-year-old boy cried yesterday when news broke via Rolling Stone that video game company Activision was officially pulling the plug on popular music game franchise, Guitar Hero. The game that made plastic kiddie guitars cool and launched millions of virtual rock star dreams was declared dead.

Although Activision released an official statement about its decision, L.A. Weekly dipped under the velvet rope and into the VIP booth to ask guitar icon Slash, star of 2007's Guitar Hero III: Legends of Rock, about why he thought the franchise got axed.

“It was inevitable,” Slash told us. “Sales declined after the success of GH3. It was too costly to produce the game as a result.”

(The fact that the game's sales performance had dropped off so significantly took us by surprise. I mean, we knew Wii's Violin Paradise was on its way to becoming the nextbigthing but never expected it to happen so fast.)

Guitar Hero, rest in peace. Boring house parties across the world thank you for always providing that much needed distraction from the fact the keg was dry. It's cool — we were never that good with the whammy bar, anyway.

Check out one of our favorite Guitar Hero memories below as Anthrax shredder Scott Ian attempts to play his own song on the video game… and fails.

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