Harmonix has a knack for making music game. The Massachusetts based studio is the driving force behind the plastic instrument trend that swept the world a few years ago, creating the Guitar Hero, Rock Band and Dance Central franchises. But before all that, the studio was behind EyeToy: Antigrav, a motion controlled game for Sony’s PS2 Eye Toy, and now it seems that the studio is looking to get back into the non-rhyhtmic ring.

“I think we’re always open-minded about new opportunities,” Harmonix CEO Alex Rigopulos told Joystiq in an interview at the Tokyo Game Show. “Certainly our focus always has been and probably always will be on music-themed games,” he added, but his company’s involvement with Dance Central has rekindled the studio’s interest in other types of motion-based gaming. “A perfect example is the Kinect, which I think that through our work on Dance Central we’ve developed an affinity for — towards motion gaming.”

The studio has quite the track record when it comes to motion games, creating not only the early EyeToy favorite, but Dance Central, widely regarded as the Kinect game. The studio’s next release will be Dance Central 2.

LOS ANGELES — Here we are at E3, a magazine from Boston. And from Boston, there are some amazing developers of video games.

The biggest local question: Can Harmonix keep it going with Dance Central 2, or have we seen the end of the music video game?

Four local game makers had big news to unveil at the show so far this year, including Irrational Games, of Quincy; Turbine Inc., of Needham, Quick Hit Inc., of Foxborough and of course Cambridge’s own Harmonix Music Systems Inc.

Harmonix has the most riding on the expo. The music game maker is on troubled waters. In February, Harmonix, which created the Guitar Hero and Rock Band franchises, announced nearly 40 layoffs amid slumping sales figures that spurred parent company Viacom/MTV Games to unload it in a firesale.

At E3 this year, Harmonix showed off the sequel to its latest project, Dance Central, an Xbox 360 exclusive title that was one of the first games built on Microsoft’s Kinect motion capture technology.

Dance Central 2 continues the trend of completely controller-free, full-body motion capture which has made Kinect different than Nintendo’s Wii and Sony’s Move technologies.

The sequel adds real-time multiplayer, allowing two people to bust their moves at the same time. And if you get tired, another friend can jump right in mid-song without penalty.

“We just wanted to get people dancing together,” said Kasson Crooker, senior producer at Harmonix. “The game really shows off Kinect really well. Whenever people talk about Kinect, they talk about our game.”

Dance Central was developed parallel to Kinect, and released around the same time.

“Harmonix adapted and embraced Microsoft’s Kinect peripheral, making Dance Central the system’s first killer app,” said Will Tuttle, a video game industry expert and editor in chief at GameSpy.com. “While this week’s announcement of multiplayer dancing in Dance Central 2 wasn’t earth shattering, you can bet that fans of the first game will snatch it up.”

Dance Central 2 will include more than 40 songs, including music from Rihanna, B.o.B, Usher, Nicki Minaj, and Far East Movement. AL CQ

Harmonix introduced Dance Central here at E3 last year. The game was a success when it launched, selling about 2.5 million copies so far, Crooker said.

Tuttle thinks the company will come out of this year successfully.

“No matter what they do next, I think Harmonix has shown that they know music games far better than any developer in the game industry,” he said. “More importantly, the musicians themselves now respect Harmonix enough to work closely with them, ensuring a finished product that is more polished than competing games.”

But a change was obvious for Harmonix at the show this year. In years past, the company was a larger-than-life presence at E3. In 2009, during the Beatles Rock Band hype, the company erected mock concert stages and had one of the largest booths at the show. Last year’s was 100,000 square feet, with Dance Central. Harmonix had dance floors created to show off the game. This year, Harmonix, under new ownership, was relegated to sharing space with five other Kinect games inside Microsoft’s booth.

The problem for Harmonix has been the plateauing and quickly declining popularity of music games. Sales problems resulted in conflict with Harmonix parent company Viacom/MTV Games, which put Harmonix on the block. In December, Harmonix was bought by New York investment firm Columbus Nova LLC for $50 in cash and the assumption of $100 million in liabilities.

Elsewhere around the Bay State’s presence in LA, tiny Quick Hit actually busted out of the gate first, with the announcement Monday that it would be essentially bought out by Majesco Entertainment Co., of New Jersey.

Quick Hit produces a free online football strategy game which received a coveted NFL license last year.

Majesco paid about $800,000 for nearly all of the company’s assets and will hire all of its employees, CEO and founder Jeffrey Anderson who will join Majesco as its Senior Vice President of Social Games.

The move makes sense for Majesco, as the company is focused on casual and social gaming and is trying to make a big move into sports this year. Majesco also announced Monday that it would develop an NBA licensed basketball game that uses casual elements combined with motion capture technology. That game is due out next spring.

Irrational, the Quincy-based arm of 2K Games, is the studio behind the Bioshock video game franchise. It did not exhibit at E3 last year, but this year it showed off a new game and hinted at a second new title in the works.

At a Sony press event Monday, Ken Levine, Irrational’s creative director, announced that the PlayStation 3 version of its upcoming Bioshock Infinite game would be compatible with PlayStation Move for motion capture. Levine also said that he had a “pet project” in the works – a Bioshock game for Sony’s new PlayStation Vita handheld system. He did not give the project a name or release any other details on the game.

The barebones announcement still set off fuses of excitement in the gaming community.

“That’s all we know. But like, isn’t that enough to pique your interest? It’s enough for us,” blogged Justin McElroy, the reviews editor at Joystiq, who was covering the Sony event.

Another consistent local success story at E3 is Turbine. After being purchased by Warner last year and taking its popular online role playing game The Lord of the Rings Online from a subscription model to a free play model, Turbine now runs the number 3 and 4 online RPGs in the world, in Lord of the Rings and Dungeons and Dragons Online.

At E3 this year, Turbine announced the Rise of Isengard expansion pack, which adds three new regions for players to explore as well as expanding the leveling-up ability to 75, and adding a 24-player cooperative mode as players explore and save Middle Earth. (more on that later this week)

Also at E3, Immerz Inc., with an office in Cambridge, showed off a new and improved version of its KOR-fx device, which places an audio peripheral on the user’s chest, allowing them to actually feel what’s going on in a game or a movie. The company sees applications for the device in movie theaters, theme parks, and now with video games. Inventor Shahriar Afshar CQ announced yesterday the company’s first partnership for a video game built with KOR-fx technology, High Flyer Death Defyer, upcoming from Game Mechanic Studios, which also makes the Resistance franchise on the PlayStation.

The newly designed version of the KOR-fx was a brilliant move. Immerz waited until the product was ready in order to set a release date. Blast checked out this product at E3 last year, and it just wasn’t ready for shelves. There were too many wires, and it felt like you were being hooked up to some kind of polygraph by the time you turned on your movie or video game. The new version can be used wired (with fewer wires) or wireless, so that it does not get in your way. It was a smart move that will help the product when it launches this fall, especially in its near $200 price point.

LOS ANGELES — Cambridge-based Harmonix Music Systems Inc. has had well-documented troubles lately, including poor sales of its last Rock Band franchise titles that led to parent company Viacom/MTV Games practically giving it away to an investment group.

New York investment firm, Columbus Nova LLC, clearly had faith in Harmonix to assume $100 million in liabilities when it paid just $50 for the company in December.

But another big time player also outwardly expressed support for the music game pioneer: Microsoft.

“The team at Harmonix has delivered ground-breaking music titles to the video game industry including Dance Central, the best selling dance game on Kinect for Xbox 360. While quite a few developers can create a compelling vision for an experience, Harmonix is one of the few who can actually bring it to market. Kinect challenges game designers to think differently and it’s been a joy to see Harmonix embrace the technology to create a fun dance experience for everyone to enjoy,” said George Peckham, general manager of Microsoft’s Global Publishing Group, when asked by Blast for a comment on Harmonix’s position at E3.

For the first time in years, Harmonix does not have its own booth at E3 this year. Instead, Dance Central 2 is mixed in with a half dozen Kinect titles inside Microsoft’s booth.

Microsoft, however, has no problem giving Harmonix a platform to showcase its latest offering.

Will Tuttle, editor of GameSpy.com, agreed with the sentiment.

“Right now, I think it’s too early to say that the music/rhythm game genre is dying. It’s definitely evolving, and Harmonix has been the developer most responsible for driving that change. When they first released Guitar Hero back in 2005, doubters questioned whether anyone would buy a plastic guitar. Sure enough, they did,” Tuttle said. “When Rock Band was revealed, we wondered if people would care enough about music games to invest hundreds of dollars in a complete band set. The game was a smash hit and spawned Rock Band parties and bar nights dedicated to helping people live out their rock ‘n roll fantasies. Once that market soured slightly, Harmonix adapted and embraced Microsoft’s Kinect peripheral, making Dance Central the system’s first killer app.”

To Tuttle and other analysts, the decision to back Harmonix is simple: people love music, and Harmonix does music video games better than anyone else.

“Harmonix has shown that they know music games far better than any developer in the game industry,” he said. “More importantly, the musicians themselves now respect Harmonix enough to work closely with them, ensuring a finished product that is more polished than competing games. They’ve also shown an affinity for pushing the music genre outside of traditional ‘gaming’ in an effort to actually teach people how to play music. With music department budgets shrinking in our public schools, this should be viewed as a step in a very good direction.”

Dance Central 2 features more than 40 songs, including a new multiplayer dance mode, allowing two players to dance at the same time.

“While this week’s announcement of multiplayer dancing in Dance Central 2 wasn’t earth shattering, you can bet that fans of the first game will snatch it up,” Tuttle said. “So what’s next for Harmonix? I’m personally hoping for a game that combines dancing and singing, allowing me to channel my inner Justin Timberlake to put on the ultimate stage show.”

Harmonix, the studio behind titles like Rock Band, Dance Central and the original Guitar Hero games has announced that they will unveil a brand new title at this year’s E3 on June 7.

The new game will be unveiled at a party thrown by the studio. The invite for the event promises ”Drinks, Dancing and Developers to celebrate the announcement of our latest title with the best and brightest in the industry.”

Dancing huh? Seems like we may be getting first word of the highly rumored Dance Central 2.

It’s been a tumultuous year for Harmonix, as the company was recently sold by Viacom after releasing two huge games; Rock Band 3 and Dance Central, the later which happened to be the best selling game for Microsoft’s Kinect.

Blast will be at the Harmonix event on June 7 and will of course  bring you all of the latest information.

When Activision announced that they were effectively killing off the Guitar Hero franchise, the next obvious question was, what would happen to Rock Band. Rest assured, Harmonix, the game’s Massachusetts based developer has no intentions of killing off the series, instead, they’d rather re-imagine it.

“The marketplace is clearly demanding something very new,” Harmonix CEO Alex Rigopulos said in an interview with Edge Magazine. “It’s clearly demanding a dramatic evolution of the Rock Band franchise, I think that’s actually exciting for us.”

Things haven’t been so great for Harmonix lately,as the development studio was recently sold by Viacom and has since gone back to it’s humble beginnings as an independent developer. Still though, Rigopulos is very optimistic for the future of the franchise and the music genre in general.

Rigopulos noted that Rock Band 3 will still receive DLC and updates throughout the year, and that the company is working on a sequel to it’s wildly popular Kinect title Dance Central, but also added that the company is looking past the titles, to something new in the motion control field. ”It’s safe to say you’ll see a lot more in that domain from Harmonix beyond Dance Central,” Rigopulos teased. “We’d be absolutely open-minded about that.”

Earlier this year, Viacom announced plans to sell off Cambridge-based Harmonix, creators of the Rock Band and Dance Central franchises. You didn’t expect it to get ugly did you?

Gamasutra reports that Harmonix founders, along with a group of now ex-shareholders have filed a lawsuit against Viacom for failing to pay on performance based incentives for the Rock Band franchise.

The lawsuit claims that the acquisition deal promised that Harmonix shareholders would be awarded with 3.5 times any gross profit of the Rock Band franchise over $32 million in 2007, a deal that Gamasutra states had “no cap.” A similar deal applied to 2008 for profits over $45 million. According to the suit, the shareholders allege that Viacom negotiated a deal with EA that intentionally raised Rock Band profits, but lessened what was to be received by Harmonix.

As of this writing, Viacom has yet to comment on the suit or the allegations.

When Viacom announced plans to sell off Rock Band and Dance Central  developer Harmonix, it was all but assumed that EA, publisher of the Rock Band games would pick them up. According to an interview with John Riccitiello; it’s not looking likely.

“We’re still out of favor,” EA’s CEO John Riccitiello told Bloomberg. “Moves that look like I’m doubling down on yesterday would make it harder still to convince investors that tomorrow is the Promised Land.”

“I’m sure some smart investor will buy the business feeling that they can catch a falling knife,” he continued, “but more people have been cut trying to catch falling knives than have benefitted from getting the timing exactly right.”

Media giant Viacom has announced that they plan on selling Harmonix, the Cambridge-based game developer responsible for Dance Central on Kinect and the Rock Band franchise.

The move comes on the heels of word that Harmonix has recorded its fourth straight year of loses, and that sales of music genre games like Rock Band and Activision’s rival Guitar Hero series (which was also created by Harmonix) in recent years. Just how bad are things for the developer? Viacom revealed in a regulatory filing that Harmonix had a net loss of $87 million on $362 million in revenue in 2009 and a net loss of $24 million on $678 million in revenue in 2008.

Harmonix has many potential suiters for a buyout, including Electronic Arts, which has a long standing publishing deal with the firm, and Activision, who may look to reacquire the studio in an effort to regain a larger, nearly complete, portion of the music video game genre.

Stick with Blast Magazine for more on this developing story.

The music industry is filled with albums we’ll never forget. The Beatle’s Abbey Road defined a generation in transition. Michael Jackson’s Thriller announced the arrival of a new standard. Nirvana’s Nevermind was the voice of a changing American landscape. Rock Band 3 is all of this, and more; much more.

Rock Band 3 is a phenomenal achievement that not only rejuvenates a dying genre, it redefines it. With a slew of tweaks and a set of cool new features, the newest Rock Band title bridges the gap between musical game andmusic in general.  Simply put, Rock Band 3 proves that Harmonix are still the masters of the genre, even with a whole new set of challengers.

Rock Band 3 succeeds mainly on the strength of its own ambition of all else.  While most music games are okay with the idea of being just that – a game – Rock Band 3 aims a bit higher. With the game’s new Pro Mode, it becomes less about high scores with plastic peripherals and more about learning actual music notes. Rather than merely matching up the now expected colored boxes, Pro Mode tasks players with playing actual notes. Please note, the mode isn’t for everyone, in fact – some will hate, but it opens up a brand new, and much deeper experience for those already fluent, or looking to become so at their instrument of choice. Pro modes requires a new instrument – be it a drum-kit add-on or the insane pro-mode guitar complete with 102 buttons and the ability to use it as an actual guitar, but if you’re serious about music – you’re going to want to experience pro mode. Take that Prince.

The Rock Band experience has always been about vocals, guitar, bass and drums, but Rock Band 3 introduces players to a new addition to the band – the keyboard. Now, it may not seem as badass as the other choices, it is a great addition to the lineup, and tons of fun to play. There’s a ton of keyboard centric tracks here, and you can use the controller as an extra guitar for those songs that don’t make much use of the peripheral. While the keyboard feels just as rewarding as the drums or guitar, certain sections of certain songs can be downright challenging. While learning the ins and outs of the keyboards, odds are you’ll probably going to fail…a…lot.

Speaking of the set list, I can honestly say that Rock Band 3’s is easily the best of the franchise. Come on, how can you down a game that features both The Power of Love by Huey Lewis and the News and Bohemian Rhapsody by Queen? There’s a pretty wide variety of content here, and though not everything is going to please everyone, you should be able to find enough to keep you busy – especially considering that all of the previous songs from Rock Band 1 and 2 are compatible with the third game. Seriously, that’s over 2000 songs you can choose from. With that much content, it can be pretty hard to navigate, but luckily Rock Band 3 comes packed with a whole new way to sort your tracks. Now, you can sort by everything from number of vocal parts (the game also supports the three part harmonies introduced in Beatle’s Rock Band), decade, genre and more.

Rock Band 3 is also much more accessible than its predecessors. In previous titles, you had to earn fans strictly by playing the career mode, here though, you can do that in just about any game mode (save for the Tutorial of course). Players can now drop in and drop out of gameplay as they wish, as well as being able to navigate menus for each player without disrupting the experience of others.

The Blast Factor: If you’re into music games – Rock Band 3 is an absolute must buy. If you’ve been burnt out on the genre and haven’t played on in a while, here’s the perfect chance to come back.  Rock Band 3 is a cultural achievement because it questions what a music game can be. Simply put, it doesn’t get much better than this.

Rock Band 3 won’t hit shelves for a few more weeks, but that hasn’t stopped Harmonix from announcing the first slew of DLC for the title. What’s more, they’re giving some of it away for free.

Anyone who plays the game online during launch week will get three songs by the legendary band The Doors free in celebration of the game’s release. The songs “Touch me,” “Light My Fire,” and “Riders on the Storm” will be available via the game’s music store the week of launch.

At the outset of the Rock Band 3 project, we identified The Doors, with their powerful songs driven by intricately woven keyboard, guitar and drum parts, as an ideal partner for our game,” said Paul DeGooyer, Senior Vice President of Music, Electronic Games and Programming for MTV Networks. “As they are also one of the greatest rock bands of all time, we are tremendously proud that they will be the first artist featured in the Rock Band 3 download store and that we’re able to bring this special offer of their music to everyone who buysRock Band 3 the week it releases.”

In addition to the three tracks, players will have access to a slew of priced Doors tracks the week of launch including “LA Woman” and “Touch Me.” Several of the songs will also feature pro bass and guitar functionality, which enables the game to be played with a more realistic guitar peripheral, complete with actual frets and strings.

“I’m very excited that keyboards are finally a part of Rock Band. It’s about time you guys got hip to the necessity of keys in rock,” said Ray Manzarek, keyboardist for The Doors. “This is going to be great for all the gamers, because it’s a lot more difficult.  Rock Band 3 will require some brainwork, so let’s ‘Break On Through!’  By the way, get those free downloads: ‘Light My Fire,’ ‘Riders On the Storm’ and ‘Touch Me’ are all great keyboard songs. And look out for The Doors’ lost masterpiece, Live in Vancouver, when it releases Nov. 22!”

Harmonix, makers of the famed Rock Band series, are primed and ready to unleash Green Day: Rock Band, their second band-specific game, following The Beatles: Rock Band of last year, in just a few weeks on June 8. However, if some is good, more seems to be better as the game-maker has posted a survey today in hopes of gauging interest in the next big thing.

The survey is short and sweet; only two questions long.

The first asks, “would you be likely to buy a dedicated Rock band video game by ANY of the following artists, knowing the game would contain music ONLY by the specific artist?

The options are:

Pink Floyd, The Eagles, Queen, U2 and Led Zeppelin.

The next question asks, “which artist would you like like to see in a dedicated Rock Band video game,” where you can select up to three of the above options.

It might happen

Actually, there are three questions. The third asks you for a write-in vote, which you can answer with anything you’d like.

Of course, Harmonix issued a disclaimer, to hopefully nullify the wild rumors that are likely to immediately spread.

“In the interest of immediately addressing suspicion and heading rumors off before they start, this poll is not an indication, implication, hint, suggestion, guarantee or promise that Harmonix is going make games based on any or all of the bands listed in this poll. We know how excited Rock Band super fans get about uncovering the next big thing, so we wanted to clear that up right from the start,” reads the statement.

Well now, it looks like this little thing we call the music-game genre is in fact going nowhere, instead growing and growing. Just imagine; a Led Zeppelin: Rock Band, that’d sell millions and millions you’d have to think.

Take the survey here.

Harmonix and MTV Games released a new trailer for the upcoming Green Day: Rock Band music game recently and it pumps the punk up to 11.

The songs in the trailer are “21st Century Breakdown,” “She” and “Holiday” and of  we get a look at Billy Joe’s blue hair and Tre’s green stylings.

Green Day: Rock Band releases for every home console June 8 and is compatible with most plastic instruments (even Guitar Hero ones).

Next week the deceased rocker, Jimi Hendrix, storms onto the Rock Band scene with a host of tunes from the man’s storied career, specifically his “Axis: Bold As Love” album.

The news comes by way of Rolling Stone magazine, which also reports that Jimi Hendrix avatars and props are also coming to as part of the studio’s commitment to releasing “a wave of downloadable content” from Hendrix’s career.

Below are the goods, headed to Rock Band and Rock Band 2 gamers, beginning March 30.

• “Up From the Skies”
• “Spanish Castle Magic”
• “Wait Until Tomorrow”
• “Ain’t No Telling”
• “Little Wing”
• “If 6 Was 9″
• “You Got Me Floatin’”
• “Castles Made of Sand”
• “She’s So Fine”
• “One Rainy Wish”
• “Little Miss Lover”
• “Bold As Love”
• “Valleys of Neptune”

As if this week’s Lady Gaga Rock Band DLC wasn’t enough, next week country diva Carrie Underwood, that dude who can’t stop apologizing, and more, grace the Rock Band stage.

All songs are master recordings and come to Xbox 360 and Wii March 23 and PS3 March 25. Songs marked with + are also available in the LEGO: Rock Band music store and * denotes 99 cent songs and “Am I Crazy” will be a free cut for Xbox 360 and PS3, sorry Wii owners.

• X — "Blue Spark" +
• X — "The Hungry Wolf"
• X — "I Must Not Think Bad Thoughts"
• X — "Los Angeles"
• Little Fish — "Am I Crazy" +
• Little Fish — "Bang Bang" *
• Little Fish — "Darling Dear" *
• Ace Frehley — "Outer Space"
• Carrie Underwood — "All-American Girl" +
• OneRepublic — "Stop & Stare" +

Harmonix today confirmed Rock Band 3 for a Holiday 2010 release and said it will ‘revolutionize’ the music genre.

The company made the announcement on Facebook today and said the game will yet again “innovate and revolutionize the music genre.”

The official announcement ran only a few sentences, so rather than summarizing it, here it is, in its entirety.

“Harmonix is developing Rock Band 3 for worldwide release this holiday season! The game, which will be published by MTV Games and distributed by Electronic Arts, will innovate and revolutionize the music genre once again, just as Harmonix did with the original Rock Band, Rock Band 2 and The Beatles: Rock Band. Stay tuned for more details!”

Just how will Rock Band 3 innovate and revolutionize the genre? We have absolutely no idea. But feel free to speculate.

And you thought Activision and Guitar Hero were destroying the music game world.

MTV Multiplayer today reports that four songs from Lady Gaga, “Poker Face,” “Just Dance,” “Bad Romance,” “Monster” and the South Park Cartman “Poker Face” version, will arrive in the Rock Band Music Store next week.

Each song will sell for $2 and $6.99 gets you the entire pack.

On top of this heap of oddity, is more Lady Gaga promised for the title. So if you’re upset about the lack of “Paparazzi,” don’t fret, it’ll arrive eventually.

Source: MTV Multiplayer.

Harmonix, maker of all things Rock Band, recently revealed they’ve let go 39 individuals from their Massachusetts-based development studio.

The company sent pink slips, or however you layoff video game workers, to the workers, and, according to Joystiq, the 39 let go, represents 13% of the company’s entire staff.

However, the vast majority of the firings came from the studio’s Quality Assurance department. These are the guys who playtest games before the software is packaged and sent to you.

A Harmonix/MTV Games spokesperson, speaking with Joystiq, stated that the layoffs were not precipitated by sales of The Beatles: Rock Band or any other software for that matter and was instead incurred to “accommodate the 2009 worldwide release schedule.”

The spokesperson said:

“This was a process and business decision unrelated to the performance of any MTV Games / Harmonix product. MTV Games and Harmonix are very pleased with the sales of our Rock Band titles and we expect to continue to see strong sales throughout the holidays across all of our titles. The Beatles: Rock Band has sold over 1 million units worldwide to date. Again, the reason for the restructuring is due to better aligning our staffing to best suit our product development plans and schedules moving forward.”

Additionally, in the future, Harmonix will establish a method of QA many other studios use; outsourcing that is!

That same spokesperson, whose jaw must now be hurting said, about the company’s new quality assurance direction:

“[we will now shift to] a combination of temporary/part time help, outsourcing and support from external partners — which is in line with how other game developers manage their QA departments.”

Finally, and thankfully, the studio promised “no future projects were affected by the restructuring.” Hooray.

Source: Joystiq

For some crazy reason, LEGO –themed video games caught on. First the little dudes saved the universe in the Star Wars series, then the block men and women played out the Indiana Jones tales, and next year, they’ll shapeshift into Harry and company in LEGO: Harry Potter.

But today, LEGO fans can take to the stage and play as the miniature men in LEGO: Rock Band, one of the oddest digital endeavors in recent memory.

The formula is simple. Take one part acclaimed and beloved music-game franchise, Rock Band, and add to it the cute-beyond-belief LEGO series, and what do you get? An unusual idea, but a compelling one too.

First off, and definitely most importantly, LEGO: Rock Band applies the same winning formula applied in every Rock Band title to date. The notes cascade down the virtual fretboard, you hit them in time for drums, bass, and guitar, and pitch-match for singing, yadda yadda yadda, you get it.

Additionally, in the game’s campaign, you’ll again start a band and rock the world, though in the LEGO flavor. You get the chance to customize your own LEGO avatar, give him or her Mohawk, a rockin’ t-shirt, and lots more.

The game progresses through a series of gigs, as we’ve become accustom to, but the main point of consideration in this title is the LEGO spin on everything.

Traveller’s Tales, the development team behind every LEGO video game, know what the heck they’re doing in terms of storytelling. Anyone who’s ever played LEGO Star Wars or Indiana Jones can attest to that. The narrative in LEGO Rock Band is surprisingly compelling and rich, and even more impressive when you consider no one speaks a word throughout the game. It’s all hand gestures and hilarious sequences.

I won’t lie, during the opening sequence, when you’re graced with a cutscene of a band audition session, I LOL’d… a lot. Traveller’s Tales knows just what buttons to press to get the laughs, and applied that formula; somehow, to this music game, and best of all, it works!

Additionally, in true LEGO game fashion, LEGO: RB is all about collecting LEGO bits and pieces. These pieces, dependent on your level of success in any given song, are awarded to you, and can be used in the Rock Shop to buy everything from new clothing, to instruments, and even new vehicles to get from gig to gig.

When I played LEGO Indiana Jones, I was the whoriest of collectors. I had to have every last piece, it’s just the OCD I have for such a thing, and in LEGO: RB, that trait burst through too. When you finish a song, you hear and see the "stud tally" rack up and might I say, it’s quite a satisfying moment.

LEGO: Rock Band is also extremely accommodating to new users. A new Super Easy mode, which you could ace at a comatose level, is kind of a joke, but I guess some people are just that bad. Additionally, in the options menu you can toggle off kick pedal notes for drumming, therefore scaling down the level of needed percussive proficiency.

Furthermore, you pretty much can’t fail a song, at any difficulty in the game’s career. To stay in the game and not fail out you simply spend the studs you’ve collected, and voila, you’ve made it!

A final move made in LEGO: Rock Band towards accessibility is, and as a musical purist I hate this, a Short Song mode. This alteration allows you to play a shortened version of nearly every song in the setlist. Sure, I can see why some might want this. Who needs that fourth chorus anyway, right?

But as much as I enjoyed my time with LEGO: Rock Band, I had some serious gripes with it as well. Things that truly left a throwup taste in my mouth, and things you need to know.

First, the game’s song-list is unacceptably brief. The game ships with only 45 songs and sells for $50. Let’s see, I could buy Rock Band 2 for less than that and get 84 songs, which would I choose? I think you know.

Second, of those 45, I wanted to play no more than 6 of them. Now, this is an extremely personal assessment based on my musical preferences, but it truly destroyed the experience for me. For this reason, trudging through the campaign felt like stabbing myself in the ears, only to become somewhat musically-aroused by the occasional great song "Fire" by Jimi Hendrix or Tom Petty’s "Free Fallin." Simply put, I hated the song-list, which can be seen here just scroll down a bit.

I also was dismayed at the choice to abandon Rock Band 2′s graphical presentation in favor of that of The Beatles: Rock Band. LEGO: RB feels like a downgrade from Rock Band 2, and maybe it was supposed to, but nevertheless, I didn’t like it. Notes don’t pop and explode in the same graphical fidelity as in RB2 and the entire experience feels softer. And again, perhaps this was an intentional decision made, but I still do not agree with it.

I also believed in Harmonix and their seemingly deep appreciation for music, but that thought died when I played LEGO: Rock Band. To me, this game feels like a very real attempt at cashing in on a profitable brand name, LEGO.

Harmonix has always stood for the most authentic music experience out there, and the company achieved this by making you feel like the rocker on stage. But with LEGO dudes and dudettes on-stage, I never once felt like I was the center of attention. I could not connect personally with the game, and ended up just not caring, which is completely opposite how I feel about Rock Band 2. The game just doesn’t feel right.

But does this even matter? The game is clearly aimed at the younger demographic, who very well might not care at all. That said though, Band Hero, Activision’s attempt at the same market, does create that sense of immersion and is a definite reason to consider that title before this one.

Somewhat of a saving grace for the title, if you’re gifted it, is that all 45 songs can be transferred to your Rock Band library for an acceptable fee of $10. Maybe I’ll do that, but it’s still ten dollars.

Of note: LEGO: Rock Band does not support online multiplayer. You can download age appropriate songs from the Music Store to play in the title, but that’s all you can do online. No battling other bands, teaming up with friends or anything. Sad, huh?

Blast Factor: For all intents and purposes, LEGO: Rock Band works. It does what it needs to. You’ve got the engaging and proven Rock Band formula laying a solid ground work and as a music game, it’s fine. The LEGO theme is odd. On one hand, the LEGO-specific bits are fun, different, and mostly welcome. But at the same time seeing a LEGO Freddy Mercury sing "We are the Champions" is slightly disheartening. I never felt engaged enough in this title to fully enjoy it, due to the fact that I’m not made of blocks, at least last time I checked. The game’s song list is eclectic to say the least, and you’ll most definitely want to look it over at length before purchasing.

LEGO: Rock Band is available today for Xbox 360, PlayStation 3, Nintendo Wii, and Nintendo DS. A copy of the game was given to us by the publisher for review purposes. I am not a 12 year-old girl. Maybe that’s why I didn’t enjoy it.

Harmonix will offer up selections from Simon and Garfunkel as well as hard-rockers Slipknot next week, making the 12/8 update one of the most varied to date.

As you could have probably guessed, the Slipknot tunes won’t be available in the LEGO: Rock Band Music Store, and we don’t really question that choice.

Here’s the full list with availability dates.

Available on Xbox 360 and Wii December 8 and PlayStation 3 system (Dec. 10):

• Slipknot — "Duality"
• Slipknot — "Psychosocial"
• Slipknot — "Sulfur"
• Simon & Garfunkel — "I Am a Rock"
• Simon & Garfunkel — "The Sounds of Silence"
• Lights Resolve — "Dreaming of Love" * + (available on Xbox 360 and PS3 only)

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Clothing retailer Old Navy and Rock Band publisher MTV Games today announced a unique partnership primed and ready to bring in-store kiosks, special promotions, and Rock Band merch to Old Navy stores nationwide during the Holiday 2009 shopping season.

Select Old Navy stores will open their doors on Thanksgiving to commence what the company calls its “Gobblepalooza” promotion, which lasts three-days, with varying deals peppered throughout.

On Thanksgiving day, if you haven’t become incapacitated with all the turkey you ate, and decide you want to do some shopping, Old Navy is offering a free Rock Band guitar with the purchase of Rock Band 2. Yupp, Old Navy will carry the full line of Rock Band software this season including branded t-shirts, Rock Band 2, The Beatles: Rock Band, LEGO: Rock Band, and Rock Band Classic Rock Track Pack.

On Black Friday, besides $15 jeans (!), Old Navy is giving anyone who purchases only $20 worth of Old Navy items, a free copy of LEGO: Rock Band on their preferred system.

That’s kind of amazing, but, as we suspected, Old Navy noted in their press release that supply is “extremely limited,” so you might just have to punch a grandmother in the chest to secure your copy. Can you do that?

Additionally, Old Navy will set up Rock Band gaming kiosks in over 700 stores nationwide, you know, so you can relax from all that shopping.

And finally, in the month of December, on the two Wednesdays leading up to Christmas, Dec. 9 and 16, any shopper who spends $25 or more will score a free code to download a song from the Rock Band Music Store.

"Rock Band offers families a wonderful activity to enjoy together and we’re excited to bring that experience to life in Old Navy stores this Holiday season," said Christina Glorioso, Vice President of Marketing Sponsorships for MTV Games. "This will make shopping for the Holidays fun for everyone and give moms a great activity to keep kids (and dads) entertained."

Congratulations Old Navy, you’ve preemptively lured me into your store!

What about you guys? Anyone planning on shopping at Old Navy this season now that you know about the gaming tie-in?

Full details on the entire Old Navy + Rock Band promotion here.

Harmonix today announced that a single from Them Crooked Vulture’s new self-titled album will land in the Xbox 360 Rock Band Music Store next Tuesday, Nov. 17.

The single is title “New Fang” and will hit the Xbox 360 version of Rock Band exclusively, for $2, the same day the band’s album “Them Crooked Vultures” hits shelves and iTunes.

"Them Crooked Vultures are keenly aware of the different ways in which modern music fans digest new music and are therefore especially happy to be able to offer the first single from their self-titled debut up as a downloadable Rock Band game track on the same day the album goes on sale," stated Them Crooked Vultures.

If you want the song today, the band released the tune on their Web site Nov. 3 for anyone, anywhere to download at no cost. Additionally, TCV’s entire album’s been up on the same site for you to stream, again, without charge.

PlayStation 3 gamers, the tune comes to you Nov. 24, and Wii rockers? Dec. 3 for you!

I got my first taste of this generation of Mad Catz music game accessories at E3 over the summer. two products stood out. One was a $300 real wood Fender Stratocaster, which is basically an actual guitar with video game components inserted instead of strings and pickups. The other wasn’t quite as flashy, but it was still cool in the looks and concept departments.

The Wireless Fender Precision Bass is one of the only (Beatles Rock Band not included) video game guitars that specifically caters to the oft-ignored bassists out there. The most obvious feature will grab you right away in the split strum bar. This allows you to have a certain degree of realism in doing two-fingered bass strumming.

The elongated neck and fret buttons make for comfortable game playing. The guitar is 84 percent to scale, but it actually feels like you’re holding a bass when you hold this guitar’s shape in your arms and start to pick away at your favorite songs.

The two fingered mode is interesting, but I’m still a “thumb strummer” in Rock Band and Guitar Hero. It takes some getting used to. But the bass is well put together.

It’s a Rock Band 2 product, licensed by Harmonix/MTV Games on the Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3 for $89.99.

The many faces of Dave Grohl, and some others, are your additions to the Rock Band Music Store for the week.

Beginning next Tuesday, gamers can enjoy a triple-shot of grungey Nirvana tunes, and an ice-cold four-pack of Foo Fighters, oh and some Joan Jett on the side, for that touch of randomness Harmonix so often provides.

You know le drill, each tune is a master recording and available for $2.

Available on Xbox 360 and Wii (Nov. 3) and PlayStation 3 system (Nov. 5):

• Foo Fighters — "Best of You"
• Foo Fighters — "The Pretender"
• Foo Fighters — "Wheels"
• Foo Fighters — "Word Forward"
• Nirvana — "About a Girl"
• Nirvana — "Blew"
• Nirvana — "School"
• Joan Jett & The Blackhearts — "Fake Friends"

Tracks available for Rock Band Unplugged (Nov. 5):

• Bullet For My Valentine — "Waking the Demon"
• System of a Down — "Toxicity”

Source: Rock Band Forums

Harmonix today unveiled next week’s additions to the Rock Band Music Store, naming selections from Rob Zombie, Morningwood, and Liz Phair, as your digital bits of content.

Best of all, the two Morningwood songs are only $1, instead of the normative $2.

Available on Xbox 360 and Wii (Oct. 27) and PlayStation 3 system (Oct. 29):

“¢ Rob Zombie “" “Burn”
“¢ Rob Zombie “" “Dragula”
“¢ Rob Zombie “" “Superbeast”
“¢ Wolfmother “" “New Moon Rising”
“¢ Wolfmother “" “Pilgrim”
“¢ Wolfmother “" “Sundial”
“¢ Wolfmother “" “White Unicorn”
“¢ Wolfmother “" “Woman”
“¢ Liz Phair “" “Rock Me”
“¢ Morningwood “" “Best of Me”
“¢ Morningwood “" “Sugarbaby”

And no, you Rock Band: Unplugged gamers haven’t been forgotten. Harmonix are throwing two new tunes at you next week too!

Tracks available for Rock Band Unplugged (Oct. 29):

“¢ Sonic Youth “" “Kool Thing”
“¢ Steely Dan “" “My Old School”

Somewhere, in a bunker, there’s a whopping stash of Rock Band boxes. Harmonix and MTV Games decided that to get rid of the excess, they’ll throw a crazy-awesome deal at consumers, nicely preceding the impending shopping season.

For $79, MTV Games are selling the Rock Band Special Edition, and Rock Band 2 (software only).

Best part? Shipping is included in the figure.

Now, you’re getting first-generation instruments, so there’s that fact to consider, but, they are fully compatible.

You can also think of it this way; you’re getting 140 songs for $80. That’s not bad.

The deal is good only for the Xbox 360 and PS3 versions of the game. Sorry Wii-lovers.

With the holiday season rapidly approaching, if you’ve got someone on your list wanting to dabble into the music-game sector, this is likely the best deal you’ll see all season.

Revel in the savings at the Rock Band Web site.

Source: Kotaku

Ten tunes from Freddy Mercury and the rest of Queen are your new additions to the Rock Band Music Store next week.

The list is impressive, but no “Bohemian Rhapsody” irks me a bit. Maybe Harmonix is saving that one for Rock Band 3, where there will hopefully be vocal harmonies, a la The Beatles: Rock Band.

Rock Band: Unplugged gamers can enjoy two new additions next week.‚  One tune from The Offspring, and the other by Blink 182. Here’s the full list.

Available on Xbox 360 and Wii (Oct. 20) and PlayStation 3 system (Oct. 22):

“¢ “Another One Bites the Dust”
“¢ “Crazy Little Thing Called Love”
“¢ “Fat Bottomed Girls”
“¢ “I Want It All”
“¢ “I Want to Break Free”
“¢ “Killer Queen”
“¢ “One Vision”
“¢ “Somebody to Love”
“¢ “Tie Your Mother Down”
“¢ “Under Pressure”

Tracks available for Rock Band Unplugged (Oct. 22):

“¢ Blink-182 “" “The Rock Show”
“¢ The Offspring “" “All I Want”

Each song is $2, and if you prefer bundles, the “Queen Pack,” with all 10 songs, is $15.99.

Electronic Arts today confirmed a Rock Band game for iPhone/iPod Touch, named its setlist, and dated it for release by the end of October.

“Rock Band is coming to iPhone/iPod touch this month,” EA Mobile announced on its Twitter account today but publisher’s love of social outlets didn’t stop there.

A post on the EA Mobile Facebook page reads:

“Check out the in-game Music Store to purchase additional tracks from OK Go, Foo Fighters, Smashing Pumpkins, Lenny Kravitz, Social Distortion, Devo, and more.”

So not only did EA confirm the game, they also confirmed an in-game music store for the game. Nice!

And best of all, EA released the game’s full core setlist. Have a look.

‚· 30 Seconds To Mars – “Attack”
‚· AFI – “Girls Not Grey”
‚· All American Rejects – “Move Along”
‚· Beastie Boys – “Sabotage”
‚· Blink-182 – “All The Small Things”
‚· Blondie – “Hanging on the Telephone”
‚· Foo Fighters – “Learn To Fly”
‚· Foo Fighters – “Everlong”
‚· George Thorogood & the Destroyers – “Bad to The Bone”
‚· Jethro Tull – “Hymn 43″
‚· Joan Jett – “Hymn 43″
‚· Lynard Skynard – “Simple Man”
‚· Motorhead – “Ace of Spades ’08″
‚· Pixies – “Debaser”
‚· Presidents of The United States of America – “Ladybug”
‚· Rise Against – “Give It All”
‚· Silversun Pickups – “Lazy Eye”
‚· Smashing Pumpkins – “Cherub Rock”
‚· Steve Miller Band – “Take The Money and Run”
‚· The Go Go’s – “We Got The Beat”

The game will include vocal, guitar, bass, and drum parts and will take advantage of the Bluetooth functionality built into your iPhone or iPod Touch for up to 4-player multiplayer fun.

Tap Tap and Tap Tap Revenge beware, when Rock Band for iPhone hits, you won’t be the fattest cat in town.

Source: MTV Multiplayer

When LEGO: Rock Band ships next month it’ll have the LEGO likenesses of famous artists as well as a multitude of more “kid friendly” songs. So far Harmonix has told us Iggy Pop and David Bowie are lending themselves to the digital creation, but how do they look in action?

Trailer to the rescue!

Harmonix today detailed plans for a Queen ten-pack of songs headed to the Rock Band Music Store in a couple weeks on October 20.

The list contains some of Queen’s greatest. I mean who wouldn’t want to sing/play along to “Crazy Thing Called Love”? Do you have any idea how catchy that song is?

Also, a massive red flag went up for me when I didn’t see “Bohemian Rhapsody” on the list. Is that not one of Queen’s most iconic tunes?

Except for that omission, the list is stellar. Queen fans rejoice.

Another One Bites the Dust
Crazy Little Thing Called Love
One Vision
Fat Bottomed Girls
I Want It All
I Want to Break Free
Killer Queen
Somebody to Love
Tie Your Mother Down
Under Pressure

Harmonix today revealed next week’s DLC for Rock Band and named tunes from Alanis Morissette, The Raconteurs, Electric Six, and Flobots as groups lending music to the game.

Additionally, Rock Band Unplugged gamers will enjoy two new cuts from Green Day and Rush.

Available on Xbox 360 and Wii (Oct. 6) and PlayStation 3 system (Oct. 8):

“¢ The Raconteurs “" “Many Shades of Black”
“¢ The Raconteurs “" “Salute Your Solution”
“¢ The Raconteurs “" “Steady, As She Goes”
“¢ Alanis Morissette “" “Head Over Feet”
“¢ Alanis Morissette “" “Ironic”
“¢ Electric Six “" “Dance Epidemic”
“¢ Electric Six “" “Gay Bar”
“¢ Electric Six “" “I Don’t Like You”
“¢ The Flobots “" “Handlebars”

Tracks available for Rock Band Unplugged (Oct. 8):

“¢ Green Day “" “Know Your Enemy”
“¢ Rush “" “Red Barchetta”

Every song is $2 and a ‘Raconteurs’ and ‘Electric Six’ bundle, with all songs included, is $5.49, a savings of 50 cents.

Whether you believe the music-game scene is a tired, exploited, and boring genre, or if you’re in love with the thought of cascading notes raining down your television, its presence is undeniable.

The two competitors in the genre; Activision and the Guitar Hero brand and Harmonix and Rock Band, have taken different approaches to creating and selling their respective titles over the years. But whichever side you personally favor, there’s another person out there disagreeing. So we’re not going to hype one side or the other, I mean we loved Guitar Hero 5 and The Beatles: Rock Band for goodness sake.

Harmonix recently released the “Metal Track Pack” for Xbox 360, PS3, and Wii and I played the heck out of in the past week. It’s a collection of 20 tunes highlighting the many shades of metal with one overarching theme: the songs are freakin’ hard!

Of the 20 on-disc tunes, 6 of them are brand new additions to the Rock Band universe and are not sold in the Rock Band Music Store. This means the only way to experience these songs is to buy the disc. Here’s the full tracklist with the exclusive tones denoted as such *

All That Remains – “Two Weeks”
At the Gates – “Blinded By Fear”
Black Tide – “ShockWave”
Blue ƒ–yster Cult – “Transmaniacon MC”*
Bullet For My Valentine – “Waking the Demon”
Children of Bodom – “Are You Dead Yet”
Evile – “Thrasher”
Godsmack – “I Stand Alone”
The Haunted – “D.O.A.”
Hawkwind – “Master Of The Universe”*
I Mother Earth – “Levitate”*
In This Moment – “Forever”
Judas Priest – “Screaming for Vengeance”
Lacuna Coil – “Closer”
Lamb of God – “Laid to Rest”
Motƒ¶rhead – “Killed by Death”*
Nazareth – “Hair of the Dog”*
Queens of the Stone Age – “3′s & 7′s”
Rage Against The Machine – “Bulls On Parade”*
Yngwie Malmsteen – “Red Devil”

The Rock Band Metal Track Pack adds nothing new, besides the exclusive songs, to the Rock Band series. No artistic redesign in a metal-tone or any digital likenesses of members of bands featured in the game, but Harmonix has never done this with their slew of track packs over the years.

Visually, the Metal Track Pack is 100% similar to Rock Band 2, nothing more, nothing less. This isn’t a terrible thing, but with Guitar Hero 5, and Beatles: Rock Band both on the market, I’ve come to expect a much higher level of aesthetic fidelity and the Track Pack simple doesn’t deliver in that department.

However, as a lover of the metal music scene, and anyone who does purchase this game need be, I found the selection of songs to be utterly fantastic; you won’t want to skip anything. The tunes range from the hardly metal “3′s and 7′s” by the Queens of the Stone Age to the in your f*cking face anthem “Laid To Rest” performed by none other than hardcore thrashers Lamb of God.

Most of the songs in the Track Pack are very difficult, but we’re talking about the metal genre here; to expect anything less would be silly. Additionally, no one is forcing you to play through the tour on Expert. I had to dial down my ambitions a bit, suck it up, and play a few tunes on Hard to get by. I didn’t enjoy doing so but now I have a thirst to get back and conquer those few songs on Expert.

Additionally, if you’re a drummer, the Track Pack will set your feet ablaze as the metal genre demands a light-footed, proficient stick-wielder to get by. The drum part in “Waking The Demon” on Expert? Yeah, it’s a little tough.

Living-room rockers looking to score a quick Gamerscore boost will be hard-pressed to do so with the Metal Track Pack, as the achievements are mighty beasts to slay, and includes tasks like “5-Star “Blinded by Fear” on any instrument… with your eyes closed.” Good luck.

The Track Pack is a standalone piece of software meaning you need nothing but instruments and the disc to get rocking. Additionally, all 20 tunes import into either your Rock Band 1 or 2 libraries, and is really the right thing to do to avoid rampant disc-swapping.

Blast Factor: The Metal Track Pack is for fans of the circle pit, lovers of face-melting, finger busting solos, and those who aren’t afraid to scare the girls next door by playing At The Gates at 2 in the morning. If you haven’t downloaded any of the on-disc tunes already and love the 6 disc-exclusives, this purchase is an absolute no-brainer.

Played all songs, mostly on Expert guitar. Played drums on Expert and Hard. Tried singing, failed hard, but still had fun.

The Rock Band Metal Track Pack is available today for Xbox 360, PS3, PS2, and Wii. It’ll run you $29.99.

Xbox 360 Rock Band 2 gamers were treated a a glorious title update today, but what exactly is new? Let us explain.

Harmonix unleashed this behemoth of a title update earlier today for Xbox 360 and with it came a host of new features including wireless microphone support, improved hammer-ons and pull-offs, background downloading for music store purchases, and the greatly hyped Audition Mode, a tool that allows Rock Band Network users the ability to rock out to their created tunes.

You had me at background downloading Harmonix, thank you, finally!

But if you own a PS3 or Wii and want the goods? Good news for the former, bad for the latter.

A PS3 update is only the way but currently stalled at the certification process, while a Wii rehash is nowhere, at all, to be found.

via Joystiq

Breaking Benjamin make their music game debut next week alongside five tunes from Alice in Chains and a few from Just Kait and Kula Shaker.

All songs, thankfully, are master recordings and will be available next Tuesday for Xbox 360 and Wii gamers, and Thursday for the PS3-faithful.

Additionally, the Rock Band Unplugged store adds two more tunes from the Foo Fighters to it’s growing library.

Here’s the full list. You know the drill, every song is $2, excepted where noted *

Tracks for Xbox 360, PS3, and Wii.

“¢ Alice in Chains “" “A Looking in View”
“¢ Alice in Chains “" “Check My Brain”
“¢ Alice in Chains “" “No Excuses”
“¢ Alice in Chains “" “Rooster”
“¢ Alice in Chains “" “Would?”
“¢ Breaking Benjamin “" “I Will Not Bow”
“¢ Breaking Benjamin “" “So Cold”
“¢ Breaking Benjamin “" “The Diary of Jane”
“¢ Just Kait “" “U Suck” *
“¢ Kula Shaker “" “Hey Dude”
“¢ Kula Shaker “" “Knight on the Town”

Rock Band Unplugged, available Oct. 1

“¢ Foo Fighters “" “Monkey Wrench”
“¢ Foo Fighters “" “Lonely As You”

When LEGO Rock Band releases in early November gamers will have the shirtless, muscly, former Stooge frontman Iggy Pop to look at.

French website Jeux.Video unearthed the images of Iggy and if you’d like to see the man in action? Yeah, they’ve got video too.

“The Passenger” by Iggy Pop will be featured in the game alongside these already confirmed tracks, and as excited as we are about Harmonixs’ latest project, we’re a tad skeptical at the same time.

Songs That Lingered on My Lips Excite Me Now

I realized recently that I’ve probably spent more time listening to the voice of Paul McCartney than I’ve spent listening to any other person on the planet, save for immediate family members (who have the rather unfair advantage of knowing me personally). Friends come and go, but the music of the Beatles (in both their Beatle and post-Beatle guises) has been with me since infancy, and might very well play me off the stage when it’s all said and done.

For that reason, I’m torn between tailoring this review to two types of readers: those for whom the Beatles are just another band (I know you’re out there), and those for whom they’re something akin to a religion. Of course, you don’t need to know all the words to “Revolution 9″ to find something to like in Beatles Rock Band, but your level of attachment to the band will largely determine whether you consider the game a worthwhile purchase.

You Say You Want a Revolution

Seth Schiesel of the New York Times recently suggested that Beatles Rock Band “may be the most important video game yet made.” While that lofty claim might have some validity in light of the game’s potential status as a “cultural watershed” the title that started the franchise — the original Rock Band — was far more important from a gameplay perspective. Beatles Rock Band merely tweaks the established formula. You’ll still be strumming or pounding plastic instruments in time with “gems” scrolling down on-screen note charts, and while “Overdrive” has become “Beatlemania” and “Awesomes” have been replaced by “Fabs” the core mechanics remain the same.

A three-second count-in before resuming play after exiting the pause screen and a more extensive drum trainer (“Beatle Beats” allows you to mimic 80 of Ringo’s signature strokes at reduced speed) are welcome additions, but Beatles Rock Band’s most notable innovation is its inclusion of three-part vocal harmonies. The Fabs were known for employing the sweetest harmonies this side of the Beach Boys or Zombies, and Beatles Rock Band capitalizes on the public’s familiarity with their songs to capture this essential element of their sound. Although the band bonuses conferred by activating “Beatlemania” encourage a degree of cooperation, the addition of vocal harmonies necessitates some planning and coordination, and goes a long way towards making each player feel like a part of a cohesive unit.

When harmonies are activated prior to starting any song that supports them, each player with a microphone can sing any of the vocal parts, with no penalties resulting from a failure to sing anything but the lead correctly. The vocal trainer in the practice mode allows you to isolate each vocal part and repeat each section of any song as many times as you like, and you might find yourself resorting to it when some of those peskier Double and Triple Fab scores prove elusive. As creative director Josh Randall noted, the Beatles rarely “shred” but while Beatles Rock Band offers few instrumental challenges on par with those of the most difficult songs found in previous incarnations of the franchise, playing on expert while singing complex harmonies represents a feat that only the experienced can master. If you’re especially sadistic, you can activate “Super Speed” in the game’s settings, increasing the rate at which the note charts scroll, or enter “Performance Mode” in which the notes themselves are hidden.

Is There Anybody Going to Listen to My Story?

In a nod to user-friendliness, Harmonix made 44 of the game’s 45 songs accessible from the start in quickplay mode (in previous iterations of Rock Band, one had to progress through a lengthy career mode to catch ‘em all). However, in order to unlock the final tune (it’s worth the effort), you will have to play through the story mode. Story mode divides the assembled fragments of the Beatles catalog into discrete historical periods, introducing each through an artful montage of animated archival material. Simply complete every song in a given period to progress to the next.

Once you complete each section, you’ll also have the opportunity to complete a “Chapter Challenge” which tasks you with five-starring each of that section’s songs without interruption, but Beatles Rock Band’s story mode is far less involved than those in Rock Band and Rock Band 2. You won’t be forced to replay songs countless times in pursuit of riches, mostly because there simply wouldn’t be anything to spend them on.

You Can’t Do That

That brings me to one possible source of frustration for fans of the franchise: Beatles Rock Band features a notable lack of customization and interactivity in comparison to the previous Rock Band titles. In the interest of historical accuracy, you won’t be able to create your own character, design your own logo, play dress-up with the Beatles, or tinker with their instruments. You’ll also find that freestyle drum fills and crowd participation have disappeared, whammying sustained notes no longer produces an audible effect, and butchering a song results in a failure message, rather than an inglorious exit from the stage.

Notice that I didn’t say that Beatles Rock Band suffers from these changes. There might be a certain segment of the game-playing public that laments these omissions, but I found the commitment to historical accuracy and the core Beatles experience far more rewarding than the ability to scour the sunglasses rack in Rock Band 2. Fortunately, the Beatles’ array of iconic outfits keeps things from growing stale on stage, even without the player’s intervention.

Every Little Thing

Beatles Rock Band positively oozes with Beatles-specific audio, imagery, and extras. In days gone by, I yearned for downloadable Beatles tracks to appear in the Rock Band music store, but now that I’ve witnessed the power of this fully armed and operational Beatles-station, I’m glad that the folks at Harmonix resisted the urge to drop the Beatles bomb before they were prepared to deliver the maximum payload. The game’s breathtaking intro and outro videos, produced by Passion Pictures, convey some sense of the Beatles’ cultural impact while drawing upon elements of the band’s visual legacy, and shorter animations, prepared by graphic design studio MK12, accompany the introduction of each new venue. Selecting menu options even elicits a chord that sounds straight out of “Getting Better.” In-studio chatter from actual Beatles recording sessions, some of which had never been officially released prior to appearing in the game, both precedes and follows the playing of most tracks, and helps to foster an immersive experience.

If strumming along with some of the best songs ever written doesn’t sound like an ample reward for your $60 outlay, you’ll be happy to learn that Harmonix has included a selection of photographs and videos of the band which can be unlocked through the story mode. The photos and their accompanying captions were vetted by Macca himself, and the videos, consisting mainly of excerpts from preexisting Beatle documentaries, offer a glimpse of the game’s principal characters in action. There’s little here that hardcore Beatlemaniacs haven’t seen and heard elsewhere, and it’s hard not to wish that Harmonix had managed to cram more of this material onto the disk, but what there is does offer a powerful incentive for players to master all of the game’s tracks, and should provide a handy primer for those new to the band’s history. In addition, a long list of achievements provides a host of more specific challenges which can be undertaken for Beatle bragging righties.

All These Places Had Their Moments

Although the music is the headliner, the venues in which you’ll find yourself playing it certainly qualify as co-stars of this show. As you advance through the story mode, you’ll find yourself playing to screaming crowds in a number of immediately recognizable settings, including the Cavern Club, the set of the Ed Sullivan Show, Shea Stadium, the Nippon Budokan, and the rooftop of Apple Records. Each of these locales was meticulously researched and recreated, and only the somewhat generic appearances and recycled animations of the crowds subtract from their overall effectiveness.

If you turn on “Realistic Mode” in the game’s settings, your every action will be accompanied by the high-pitched hollering of an adoring crowd. It’s exhilarating initially, but after struggling to hear yourself sing for a few songs, you’ll understand why the band decided to call touring quits after playing Candlestick in August of 1966. Fortunately, rather than retiring, the band retreated to the studio, and that’s where you’ll head after completing the Budokan set in story mode. Beatles Rock Band’s selection of songs that the group never performed live is set in Studio Two at Abbey Road, where you’ll be treated to an intimate look at the Fab Four in some of their quieter moments. However, Studio Two merely serves as a launching pad for the centerpieces of Beatles Rock Band’s graphical gallantry: several song-specific “Dreamscapes” psychedelic landscapes through which the virtual Beatles meander in mid-performance. The Dreamscapes draw upon the band’s artistic endeavors, the imagery inherent in their lyrics, and the creativity of Harmonix’s design team to conduct a visual symphony which non-playing observers might appreciate more fully than the frenetic fretters locked in concentration beside them. Only when the Dreamscapes dissolve at each song’s conclusion to reveal oddly motionless Beatles sitting in Studio Two does the spell dissipate.

Harmonix went to great lengths to perfect the looks and animations of John, Paul, George, and Ringo in a slightly cartoony form, and for the most part, they succeeded. Motion-captured movements and extensive research yielded in-game models through which the essence of the Fab Four shines. Catching a glimpse mid-play of a merrily bobbing McCartney or a collectedly crooning Lennon undoubtedly enhances the excitement to be had.

Money Don’t Get Everything, It’s True

The original Rock Band shipped with 58 tracks (albeit with only 45 that anyone had ever heard of) while Rock Band 2 raised the bar by hitting the shelves with 75. More importantly, an ever-expanding catalogue of downloadable tracks awaits anyone who procures either title. If you purchase Rock Band 2 today (for less than the price of a fresh copy of Beatles Rock Band), you’ll have (at last count) as many as 832 songs at your fingertips. In contrast, Beatles Rock Band offers you the prospect of only 45 (46 if you count “All You Need is Love” available online on release day), with a relatively limited number of downloadable numbers in the pipeline. Of course, you could regard the package in another light: at an MSRP of $60, you’re paying only two thirds of the price of an imaginary 45-song Beatles downloadable track pack offered at the going rate of ~$2/song, and you’re receiving significantly more than the songs alone.

The Beatles weren’t given to writing songs of extraordinary length, so most of the 45 tracks supplied on the disc, which span the group’s career, will fly by. In essence, you can see all that Beatles Rock Band has to offer in a single evening (or, if you’re like me, you can see all that it has to offer three or four times, in three or four successive evenings). Harmonix is banking on the fact that you’ll want to revisit those offerings over and over again, just as any self-respecting Beatles fan regularly revisits the band’s oeuvre.

By the standards of previous band-specific offerings, Beatles Rock Band’s set list is an unqualified success. Guitar Hero Aerosmith and Guitar Hero Metallica padded their selections with tracks from related bands and included even fewer masters from the titular groups. However, Beatles Rock Band was not intended to be a greatest hits collection, and those expecting one might be slightly disappointed. Out of the box, the game features only 13 of the 27 mega-hits collected on the One compilation in 2000; instead of “Help!” “A Day in the Life” “Hey Jude” “Let it Be” or “Strawberry Fields Forever” you’ll find the likes of “Boys” “Good Morning Good Morning” and “Birthday.” The latter cuts add some musical variety and make up in playability what they might lack in renown, but it’s hard to escape the feeling that Harmonix decided to hold some of its most potent weapons in reserve to serve as the highlights of future downloadable offerings.

I Can’t Get Through, My Hands Are Tied

We took the Beatle-branded custom guitars for a test-drive at the Harmonix offices, but we haven’t yet gotten our mitts on the replica of Ringo’s Ludwig drum set, and we didn’t spend enough time with the replicas of Paul’s Hƒ¶fner bass, John’s Rickenbacker 325, or George’s Gretsch Duo to produce authoritative judgments.The new instruments have been modeled to give fans a heightened visual and tactile sense of being Beatles, but they play very similarly to the older Rock Band models.

Fortunately, Beatles Rock Band is compatible with a wide array of preexisting fake instruments, so you really only need to pick up the Beatles-branded gear if you just don’t feel fab enough without them (I don’t). Because the game’s servers hadn’t yet gone live, we also weren’t able to sample its online offerings, but Rock Band 2′s online quickplay, Tug of War, and Score Duel modes have all returned for another showing.

Come and Get It

In the end, the love you’ll take is equal to your affection for the music you’ll fake, so you might be wise to steer clear of Beatles Rock Band if you’ve already proven resistant to the band’s charms. However, the multiple generations of would-be Apple scruffs who have come to cherish the music of those four lads from Liverpool should greet the game with nothing less than the love with which Harmonix clearly labored. Best played with a bandmate or five, Beatles Rock Band is perfect for parties, but it’s also an ideal solution when you’re craving a more interactive alternative to yet another listen. Now, just wake me when I can mangle the medley.

The End

Now that you’ve read Blast’s review, be sure to peruse our previous coverage of one of this year’s most engaging games:

• Oct. 30, 2008: Blast reports Beatles Rock Band under development
• March 5: Beatles Rock Band gets 9/9/09 release date
• June 3: Blast interviews Harmonix CEO Alex Rigopulos at E3
• June 10: Blast ranks Beatles Rock Band among the best games seen at E3 2009
• Aug. 18: Most of the track list is revealed
• Aug. 25: TV Spot
• Sept. Issue: Harmonix lead artist Dare Matheson interviewed
• Sept. Issue: Harmonix audio lead Eric Brosius interviewed
• Sept. Issue: Harmonix creative director Josh Randall interviewed

The Beatles have been out of commission for decades but that won’t stop Harmonix from finally releasing the hotly hyped “The Beatles: Rock Band” on home consoles this Wednesday, 9-09-09. We’ve played the bejeezes out of it, loved it, and highly recommend it. Read our 9.0 review here.

Other notable titles debuting this week are Fallen Earth for PC and Dirt 2 for consoles. The former, a FPS/MMO hybrid, which we played and loved, and the latter a sequel to a fantasic racing title.

Have a look at the week’s full release schedule below and let us know what you’re buying!

Monday (Sept. 7)
ColorZ (Wii)
War Leaders: Clash of Nations (PC)

Tuesday (September

Ant Nation (DS)
Arcade Zone (Wii)
Black College Football Experience – The Doug Williams Edition (360)
Darkest of Days (PC, 360)
Dirt 2 (DS, PC, PS3, PSP, Wii, 360)
Disgaea 2: Dark Hero Days (PSP)
Fallen Earth (PC)
Hardy Boys: Treasure on the Track (DS)
Heroes Over Europe (PC)
IL-2 Sturmovik: Birds of Prey (PS3, 360)
Imagine Detective (DS)
LittleBigPlanet: Game of the Year Edition (PS3)
Mini Ninjas (DS, PC, PS3, Wii, 360)
Obscure 2 (PSP)
Platinum Hits Triple Pack (360)
Qubed (360)
Raiden IV (360)
Time of Shadows (PC)
Trine (PS3)
Valhalla Knights: Eldar Saga (Wii)

Wednesday (Sept. 9)
The Beatles: Rock Band (PS3, Wii, 360)
My Virtual Tutor: Reading First to Second Grade (DS)
My Virtual Tutor: Reading Kindergarten to First (DS)
My Virtual Tutor: Reading Pre-K to Kindergarten (DS)
Sonic & Knuckles (360)

Thursday (Sept. 10)
Women’s Murder Club: Twice in a Blue Moon (PC)

CAMBRIDGE — In roughly a decade with Harmonix, during which he served first as the musical director of Frequency, and later as creative director of subsequent rhythm games, Josh Randall has never faced stiffer challenges nor greater rewards than those offered by his experiences with Beatles Rock Band.

Present during the first exploratory meetings between Harmonix and the Apple Corps. shareholders, as well the game’s final days in production, Randall possesses a unique perspective on the monumental effort put forth by the 300+ employees at the music/gaming company to render the Beatles properly in the video game medium. We sat down with Josh to discuss the need for secrecy, meeting with Macca, and the end of the affair.

Josh Randall: I’ve been working on the game since we first started talking about the idea of doing Beatles Rock Band. I was on the front lines between Harmonix and Apple Corps and the shareholders — the shareholders are Paul and Ringo, and Yoko, and Olivia Harrison. So, we had most of the company working on it — we’re about 300 people now, so most of us were focused on that.

Blast editor John Guilfoil: What was the first game you worked on here?

JR: Frequency. Before Harmonix, I was with Looking Glass Studios. We did Thief and System Shock.

Blast’s Ben Lindbergh: Now that you’re so close to release, are you looking back and reflecting on all the things that had to come to come together for this to become a reality? Does it seem like something you couldn’t have imagined happening a few years ago, with all the people and companies involved?

JR: There’s definitely been some reflection. Yeah, it’s been amazing. I still kind of — I have to say, I’m still waiting to see it on the shelves before I can actually relax. Because it was so secret for a really long time, that it was really tricky to sort of, every day — like, every email that I sent, I’d have to recheck all the people that that I was sending to, just to make sure. You know, like, “ËœAm I going to blow it today? Oh, I didn’t blow it today! All right, great, it’s good till tomorrow!’ But yeah, it’s been a pretty amazing journey for everyone involved.

BL: How receptive were the shareholders initially? I know it was an idea that came, at least in part, from George’s son. Was it something that they had to be convinced to do? Something that appealed to them immediately?

Beatles Rock Band has been Randall's biggest challenge in more than 10 years with Harmonix (Darcy Hofmann for Blast)

JR: It’s funny, Alex, our CEO, I remember talking with him years ago, and he was like, “ËœYeah, someday we’re going to do a Beatles game!’ I was like, “ËœHa ha ha, that’s hilarious.’ And then, I guess Dhani (Harrison) had been a fan of our earlier games, and somehow met the head of MTV, Van Toffler. And Van was like, “ËœOh, well we just acquired Harmonix, you should talk to Harmonix.’ So Dhani met with Alex, and they sort of kicked around a Beatles Game.

My interaction with all the shareholders was amazing. It was like they understood, just looking at what we showed them — you know, our first meetings were just showing them Rock Band and talking about our experience with Rock Band, and how we find that it’s encouraging people to play music, or to have a deeper understanding of the music they already love.

So I think they got that, and then once we started talking about some of the creative things we could do, I think they started getting excited, when they realized, “ËœOh, this is going to be like a new edition to the Beatles catalog, this is the real deal.’ So, with that in mind, they all really pushed us to do new stuff.

BL: You put a demo together for them initially, right? Did they play it, or did they just watch it?

JR: They watched us play it. It was basically, I think it was a few (Beatles) songs that you could play in Rock Band, and then there was a video, where we had spent a few months basically sculpting all the heads of the Beatles in 3-D, and sort of stuck them into the game, but didn’t have them animating, they were all just sort of posed. But our game engine used camera cuts and stuff to make it look almost like the Budokan concert, and we showed them that. They could use their imaginations to figure out where that was going to go.

JG: Obviously this game was a challenge, and every project you take on was difficult, but what was it like having Paul McCartney kind of correct you, and say, “ËœNo, that is not how I stand, this is how I stand!’ Did that, overall, make it a lot more difficult for you? What was that like?

JR: I think the biggest challenge for us on this project was really just the fact that most video games don’t look good until, really, the last month of production. And so, we were in a situation where we really wanted to show progress, and show that, like, “ËœYou guys are going to look amazing in the game, and the whole game is going to be fantastic and look gorgeous.

But, it was more like, “ËœRight now all we can show you is that we’ve got guys on stage, and they’re kind of goofy because we might not have perfected all the technology’ or whatever. And so what we wound up doing was basically having a lot of visual milestones, where we would have to, pretty early on in production, push to have a demo that would maybe show like 3 or 4 songs, but they would be sort of like proof of concepts. Like, “ËœHere’s what the guys look like in these outfits, here’s what they look like when they move, here are some of the venues’ and stuff like that.

And every time we would get to one of those milestones, me and some of the team would get on a plane over to Abbey Road, or go to New York, or wherever we had to go, to basically sit with the Apple Corps shareholders, get their feedback, and discuss it. And then we’d get their feedback and be like, “ËœOkay, we’ll see you guys in a few weeks’ and then we’d iterate it and come back. So, trying to sort of push the visual quality earlier in the pipeline is really tricky. Sometimes you just need that time to get all the little nuances right. So, we would have certain meetings where we’d go, “ËœHey, it’s Shea Stadium, and it’s huge, and it’s awesome, and there’s a crowd, and there’s all this stuff’ and Apple’s like, “ËœYeah, but they’re not singing into their microphones.’ And we were like, “ËœOh, yeah yeah yeah. Next milestone, next milestone!’ And they’re like, “ËœYeah, but”"’ and we’re like, “ËœNo, it’ll be good!’

Before Harmonix, Randall was with Looking Glass Studios working on Thief and System Shock. (Darcy Hofmann for Blast)

And after a while, those guys started to trust us. When I said, “ËœAll right, trust me, next month you’ll see all this stuff’ and then we would deliver, and then they’d be like, “ËœOkay.’

JG: Was there a specific nuance that really stuck out that one of the shareholders made happen, and said, “ËœNo, this is how you’re going to do this, this is how this is going to look?’ Was there one particular thing that one of the shareholders kind of walked you through?

JR: No, I think it was more like helping us find our way through stuff. I think that just meeting with any of them, they could sort of help, like’ Oh, actually, if you really want to capture the spirit of this particular Beatle, you should do this and this and this.’ Or sometimes they didn’t know the technical terms to be able to guide us to where we should go, but they would be able to say, “ËœOh, well”¦’ Like, our John model wasn’t that good for a while, because he was slightly stooped over a little bit, and talking like Yoko, she was like, “ËœNo, he was way more powerful-looking than that, he should look better than that.’ And we were like, “ËœOkay, what is it, what does she mean by that?’ And we went back and looked at all the footage, and you watch John when he plays, and he’s just like (mimics John Lennon). Just totally owning 50,000 people. And it was like, “ËœOh, okay, I get it.’

So we basically just took his skeleton and bent him back, and made him always sort of look down his nose, and it was like, “ËœHey, it’s John.’ It was just stuff like that that they sort of pushed to capture that spirit. Paul sat with Chris Foster, and I think we had written a few things, and he was just like, “ËœNo, actually that’s not how it happened.’ I think Paul realized, “ËœOh, now I can finally clear the air on a lot of this stuff, or I can put down how I remember it.’

It’s weird, because that’s one guy out of four, and he remembers it that way. So we had to sort of talk to him, then basically I think what Chris did was have all of his facts straight from a bunch of different books, and when he walked in or when he talked with Paul, he could be like, “ËœAll right, well this guy reports that it was this way, and this guy reports that it was this way.’ And Paul would be like, “ËœOh, well maybe it was this way.’ It was a long time ago.

JG: You mentioned kind of being part of the Beatles catalog with this game. With all the previous music games, both of the major competitors, there are dozens of dozens of bands poured into the game, there are hundreds of songs now, and it’s a game. How do you feel about how now you have all the Beatles albums — and Beatles Rock Band? It’s got all the intimate details, and their outtakes and stuff. How do you feel about this game not being just a collection of songs, but actually part of Beatlemania?

JR: It’s amazing. For us to be a part of that is really like a dream come true. And I think that when we were showing it to the shareholders, they sort of realized, “ËœOh, this is the new Anthology.’ That’s what they were saying. And “ËœThis is the way that kids are going to be introduced to us now.’ And so, they were like, “ËœMake sure this is right!’ And we were like, “ËœOkay!’ So I think what we tried to do is really sort of make the game feel like it came through them. We wanted it to feel like the Beatles in-game. It hasn’t totally hit me yet, but I’m sure in a few years, I’ll look back at this time and think, “ËœWhoa, that was really cool.’

JG: What do you think is the most epic part of the game? The one that’s really going to capture new fans, and make our moms scream and cry when they see it?

One of the challenges Harmonix faced was showing the Beatles shareholders their progress over months and months of building the game. They created milestones to show specific aspects of development.

JR: Oh, yeah. Well, I think there are a few dreamscapes in there that have really had an emotional impact on people. I think it depends on what your relationship is to the Beatles. For my mom, she was more into the early pop stuff, and so when she’s seen the stuff in the Sullivan show, she actually remembers watching that on TV, or seeing the Shea Stadium concert. She gets caught up in the sort of Beatlemania, fan aspect of it. But I’ve seen other people really respond to dreamscapes. “ËœHere Comes the Sun’ that one in particular is really moving. And I think that for me, the most moving one is either “ËœHere Comes the Sun’ which still makes me smile every time I play it — I’ll get like halfway through the song, and think “ËœThis is cool’ and then something will happen on-screen, like the guys will look at me or the sun will come up or something, and I’m like, “ËœOh, this is awesome.’ The one that’s probably most epic is “ËœSgt. Pepper’ just because that was our biggest one. That one took a long time, and you’re sort of going from one place to another, and all this stuff. Another one that, for me, is pretty moving, is the “ËœWithin You Without You/Tomorrow Never Knows’ that’s another that’s really trippy and has some good shots of George looking at you, and the drums are really awesome.

BL: Does the fact that you’re dealing with such an iconic band, and the fact that most people will be coming into it knowing not only the music, but the visuals, the way these guys acted, and some of the history, did that make your job easier, knowing that there would be some currency among the players, or did it make it more difficult because you had to conform to those expectations?

JR: I think it was basically like, “ËœOh, great, everyone’s going to know these songs already. That’s awesome.’ And I think that happened with the whole vocal harmony feature, where it’s like, people already know how to sing the main part, so if they want to reach and try to sing the harmony parts, they at least have that foundation there. So, there was that. But more than that, it was the challenge of like, “ËœOkay, we now have to make four of the most recognizable people in the world, and make their 3-D avatars look good.’ And that’s incredibly daunting. And then with the dreamscapes, that was another one where people have had this music in their heads for their whole lives, and every time they hear this music, they get a certain image in their head of what this song looks like. And so, we were pressed with coming up with these, basically interactive music videos, that somehow meet or exceed the visuals that they have in their heads. Which was like, “ËœI hope we don’t screw this up’ you know?

BL: Was there every any consideration of going with a hyper-realistic look, or was it always sort of a toned-down, Rock Band, cartoony version?

JR: I think that we very early on realized that the closer you get to hyper-real, the closer you get to the Uncanny Valley, where it’s like the closer it gets to human, but is not, your brain is like, “ËœHey, that’s not a human!’ and instantly picks it out. So, we were all really concerned about that. We didn’t want these guys to be creepy. We wanted them to be cute and lovable and have all the charisma that the real guys do. If you watch these guys play live, there’s just so much joy that pours out of these guys, and they’re so clever. They always seemed like they had some sort of inside joke while they were playing, little smirks and things like that. So we really tried to go in and identify that stuff, and sort of put that into our characters. But I think if we had gone for a more realistic thing, it just would’ve come off creepy. You just can’t do it yet. Maybe at some point your brain will not care, but right now, it’s like”"especially if there are still movies that are kind of creepy in that way when they try to make 3-D humans, trying to do it on a game console is really hard.

BL: Was there any consideration ever given to trying to cram a second guitar note chart onto the screen, or did you always know that you were going to try to compress them into one?

JR: Yeah, I think that early on, we sort of realized that doing our standard Rock Band thing of taking all the guitars and putting it on one track was going to be more fun, because then you’d have, you know, when you design a Rock Band “level” when you’re looking at a song, you want to make sure that each player has enough note content to last the entire song. So, if there are these big, long pauses while you’re waiting for someone else to play something, then it gets kind of boring. So I think if we had two guitar tracks, then that’s probably what would happen. Each person would have a track that was kind of spotty. So I think we all just kind of quickly were like, “ËœYeah, just put it all on one track to make it fun to play all the way through.’

BL: Did you ever worry that maybe the Beatles, despite their popularity, weren’t the band best-suited for a game like this, because of their experimentation, the unusual instruments, the fact that they don’t really fit into the “rock god” paradigm?

JR: Well, they don’t shred, right? That was one thing that was just like, “ËœOh, well, there aren’t a million insane guitar solos’ so just from a difficulty standpoint, in the beginning I was like “ËœWell, how is this going to work?’ And then once we added vocal harmonies and were basically having people play an instrument and sing in harmony like the Beatles did, it’s really challenging. So I think for people who want a challenge out of this game, it’s like, “ËœHey, the Beatles could do it — can you do it?’ That sort of thing.

JG: What’s your favorite song on the list so far?

JR: It kind of changes, you know? I think I’m still psyched about “Sgt. Pepper” because that’s my favorite Beatles song, going back to when I was a kid, and favorite album. But it depends on my mood. We definitely play the game around here a lot. When we were making the game, we’d play the game just to sort of blow off steam, which was great. I’d sort of go between, if I needed to chill out, I’d play “ËœHere Comes the Sun’ if I needed to blow off steam, I’d play “ËœHelter Skelter’ or some of the early tracks that are pretty fast and fun, and we’d sort of clear our minds to go back and finish working. But I think probably “ËœSgt. Pepper.’

JG: On the question of the two major music games out there: Guitar Hero was a phenomenon that Harmonix brought into the world, really introduced everyone to. And for the last couple of years, Guitar Hero has still been — when people think of music games, the first thing they think of is Guitar Hero. With Rock Band, you really turned a corner, and really got people thinking about the multiplayer aspect of this. Do you think Beatles Rock Band finally kind of comes full circle for Harmonix, that now you’ve kind of taken back the throne of the music gaming world?

JR: I don’t know. I guess for me, I’m still surprised that there are other people making music games besides us. When I started, there was Harmonix, and then these Japanese companies, whose games didn’t really come over to the States. So, now I think that it’s a really interesting time, that there are all these people making music games. And I think for people that love music, it’s a fantastic time. As far as the throne, or the king or whatever, I don’t really have a comment on that. I’m just really amazingly psyched that the Beatles chose to work with us, and I’m so proud of my team for what they were able to accomplish. And I really hope people will love it when it comes out. I think it’s an amazing game, and I think pairing the music and story of the Beatles with our gameplay is — well, it’s really fun.

BL: Could you see yourself doing another band-centric game in the future, or would it just be all downhill from here?

JR: Oh, it’s all downhill. (jokes) I don’t know. I’m taking a vacation. (laughs) It would be cool to work with other bands if they were cool and creative and wanted to engage with us on a creative level. I’m kind of up for anything.

JG: Is there a band that’s not been in a Rock Band game that you’d really like to work with?

JR: I don’t know. I’m actually a big techno guy, so there are a bunch of bands or types of music that I’d like to see in our games again, but I already got to make a bunch of those games ten years ago, so I’m not complaining.

BL: How much more effort goes into prepping one track for this game, as compared to one track for Rock Band, where you’re not necessarily having to tailor the video to a specific band, and maybe you’re not having to deal with audio that’s from 45-year-old two-track sources? How much more effort goes into a single track of this game than would go into downloadable content for Rock Band 2?

JR: Right. Well, Rock Band is made in a pretty modular way, that allows you to”"talking about offering stuff. Our venues are set up in a way that basically for any song, it’ll sort of look good in any venue. For the Beatles Rock Band, since we have this concept of dreamscapes, we wound up making a bunch of graphical assets that are really specific to that one song, which is just a mammoth undertaking. Also, we had never done that stuff before. You know, we’d never had guys walking through a field or anything like that. So, from that standpoint, that’s a huge production difference, custom-crafting all the graphics for each individual song.

BL: Does that limit the scope of what you’re looking to do with the DLC at all?

JR: Actually, no. What we did, which was tricky, was we made, for songs that are going to wind up in dreamscapes in DLC, there’s actually stuff that’s on the disk that you haven’t seen yet. So when new DLC songs come out, that’ll help conserve new custom assets for that. And then some stuff is going to be, almost doing a mash-up of the stuff that you’ve seen before. So you might revisit certain dreamscapes that have been tweaked out or changed in different ways. We tried to come up with a modular system that would work for these dreamscape elements as well. If there were time, it would be cool to like, for every single song, go really deep and make it totally custom for every DLC song. But I think the level of customization that you’ll see is actually really good.

BL: Are you looking at making the whole catalogue available eventually, or is that a little ambitious?

JR: Yeah, it’s a little ambitious. I think right now we’ve got three albums that we’ve announced, plus the “All You Need is Love” single. It would be cool to keep going.

John M. Guilfoil and Marc Normandin of the Blast staff and Blast correspondents Steve Bagley and Darcy Hofmann contributed to this report.

CAMBRIDGE — Lead Artist Dare Matheson’s job isn’t easy: as the man in charge of digitizing the Beatles’ likenesses, he’s steering clear of the Uncanny Valley while treading lightly over four decades of popular culture, the visual legacy of the world’s most famous band, and most importantly, the power of the imagination. We sat down with Dare to discuss 21st-century psychedelia, the liability of literality, and the wonders of Paul McCartney’s eyebrow.

Blast editor John Guilfoil: Well, we’ve talked to the audio guys already, and the project lead on the game. You had to kind of take the audio and the concept and all the orders from the shareholders and crew and make it look good. What was part of the challenge of doing that?

Dare Matheson: What wasn’t part of the challenge of doing that? Obviously, it’s like you’re taking some of the most iconic popular music, and everybody who likes the Beatles, and who’s listened to the Beatles, has their own sort of connection with it. People listen to the lyrics, and have their own interpretations and visualizations that go along with it.

It’s sort of like, with the historical venues, that’s sort of one thing, and that’s really tied up in our interpretation of the characters and the settings. Maybe I’ll just speak to that really quickly and then go to the dreamscapes, because I think that’s really where things get crazy, and that’s really where the biggest challenge for us in the game was. So, with the characters, we really wanted to get something that felt”"you know, there’s a whole range of ways that the band has been depicted in terms of art. Everybody’s familiar with their likenesses and their personalities, and the emotions that they show on their face, so we really wanted to get the emotional side across. They’ve been depicted in, for example, the Yellow Submarine movie, which is a great reductive approach to them that could represent the furthest extreme of what we could’ve done. And we like that style, we like that look. But it felt like that would be too limited for the majority of the experience, for a total experience of the band in this medium. So we kind of looked at that possibility.

What we wanted to do was get something that immediately was familiar as the Beatles, had all of their unique identity and personality that could show through for the four guys, that people could pick up on and really connect with, and have it be a bit stylized. Because on the one extreme would be going too cartoony, and you wouldn’t get enough of the identity and richness of connection — you’ve seen photos and footage and all that, so it could be sort of like you go too far in that direction. The other danger would be to go sort of too realistic, and you know how it is in games where it’s like, you see something where somebody’s trying to make a real person, and it just looks creepy, and it just looks kind of scary and kind of gross, so we wanted to avoid that.

The dreamscapes Matheson helped create add to the Beatles experience in the game.

So that was the key, and that’s the thing that stands true whether you’re talking about the historical venues or the dreamscapes. With the historical venues, we really just looked at a lot of the archival footage, and we really tried to get a sense of the atmosphere, and that’s the thing that we went for, we went for the atmosphere and tried to find, for each one of the five historical venues, that each one of them had a distinctive atmosphere from each other, and it so happened that we did. In some cases, we exaggerated a little bit.

For example, Budokan was — you know, typically in these games we go from a smaller venue setting to a bigger one, showing a sort of career arc there. And in this case, Budokan was a smaller place than Shea Stadium, and Budokan happened afterwards. So in the case of Budokan, we didn’t want it to feel like a letdown, so we exaggerated the verticality of Budokan, and really had it feel like this sort of compressed version of a giant arena. And the stage in Budokan is — I think the real stage was something like 12 or 15 feet, really tall, just this giant blue plan box — so we even exaggerated that a little bit further, and just made everything feel like it was going “Ëœup.’

From the beginning, with the psychedelic dreamscapes, when we showed an early prototype of a dreamscape — it wasn’t even a prototype, it was just a storyboard, an animatic — to Giles Martin, it was this idea that the band would depart from Abbey Road, and they would change into more psychedelic outfits, and they’d be in a magical land. And Giles was like, “ËœOkay, that’s cool. Looks good. I just want to make sure that you guys don’t hold back.’ And he’s like, “ËœMake sure this is as psychedelic as you can make it.’ Because, going to a magical land — I think the land in our animatic looked a little bit like the Yellow Submarine movie, and he basically said, ‘Okay, that was psychedelic in the sixties, but what’s psychedelic now? You guys have to bridge the gap, because something that is truly psychedelic is something that is a new experience.’

You're taking some of the most iconic popular music, and everybody who likes the Beatles, and who's listened to the Beatles, has their own sort of connection with it, Matheson said. (Darcy Hoffman for Blast)

So, that was our big call for ourselves, that in the dreamscapes, and in the style of the game generally, we wanted to find something that — you know, the Beatles’ music, the most amazing music, happened forty years ago. So, we’re trying to find something that will feel authentic and connect clearly and well with that time, for people now, so that people who were there then and saw the Beatles will immediately connect with it, and yet people who have never heard of the Beatles, who see this game and will be able to experience them for the first time, it will feel connective for them, as well.

Blast’s Ben Lindbergh: How much of a help or hindrance was it that the Beatles have this legacy of visual creativity themselves? We didn’t get to see your dreamscape for “I Am the Walrus” but I’ve read that it sort of mimics the Magical Mystery Tour ethos that they created. Is that something that made you feel constrained by what they had done in that area already, or did that free you to be even more creative?

DM: No, it was awesome. First of all, they set the bar high, and so there’s a ton of rich material there. There’s all the album art, there’s their movies, their crazy clothes, their avant garde look, the music itself. It’s like they shot for the skies, so there’s a ton of rich material to draw from, for one thing. For the second thing, they — Apple Corps, and the shareholders themselves and everybody we worked with — were very encouraging of us to not hold back. So, basically, as opposed to what you might think could happen with sort of a “Ëœbrand’ that is from that far away of an era, there’s a chance that it could have become rigid, and only presented to the world in a certain way that’s comfortable for them. But no, they totally wanted”"once we gained their trust, once they saw that we had people that could interpret the Beatles, and they were comfortable with that”"they really encouraged us to go nuts. You know, they told us what they thought, we had weekly calls with them, and we worked through everything together, but they were very encouraging of that. So, again, on another level, it was not constraining. And I thought there was a third thing, but, there’s only two.

JG: Building the characters themselves, the four guys on the stages, were there specific things that the shareholders would insist on, or were there things that you really wanted to make sure you captured, like the way someone stood, or the way someone strummed the guitar, or the way Ringo banged the drums? Were there certain things about the Beatles, when building the characters, that you were encouraged not to miss?

DM: Well, first of all, we absolutely set that challenge for ourselves. We knew that we wanted to make the characters look, visually, a little bit reductive — you know, they don’t have skin pores, and we sort of buffed out certain areas of detail to try to find the distilled version of Paul McCartney’s face. But we really wanted the animation to feel very much like them. So we really tried to nail the movements and the little nuances. We tried to pick up everything little nuance. Generally, peoples’ faces are much more expressive than you find in videogames, and much more nuanced. And we tried to get that. Somebody told me recently — maybe it was a cover band or something — got a hold of one of the demos and was like, “ËœOh, this will be the acid test for this game — did they pick up on Paul’s crazy, weird, extra eyebrow motion on one side? They got it, they got it!’ We concentrated on Paul’s eyebrow for like a week straight.

One of Matheson's challenges was capturing the essense of The Beatles without crafting creepy, hyper-realistic computer people.

But in answer to your question, we had our own bar set very high. And we actually got feedback directly from the shareholders. Most intensely, actually, from Olivia and Yoko. I think Paul and Ringo gave us feedback, but they were kind of like, “ËœYeah, I look awesome in that!’ I think Yoko and Olivia have a legacy to maintain that goes beyond their own selves, so we got a lot of direct feedback from both of them, and it was super-helpful, incredibly useful.

A few of us went out to meet with Olivia in Friar Park out in England, and we brought the George model that we had at that point. And she opened up her private photo albums and showed us a bunch of pictures of George. And we earmarked some, and she had her assistant scan it and send it to us. And Yoko visited here, visited the office, and we looked at the game together. And she gave us a lot of detailed feedback on, specifically, “ËœWell, there’s something going on here, there’s a way that John is nodding his head that he just doesn’t do that, he wouldn’t do that.’

So somewhere along the way, we may have added in a little of our own thing, or a motion capture actor added in something extra, and that was something that Yoko didn’t find to be authentic, so we stripped that out. We had pages of notes. She was here for about four hours, and we had pages and pages of notes, and we just responded to that feedback. Super, super helpful.

JG: What was it like being that hands-on with the band and the shareholders? Usually you’re dealing with dozens of bands, and you’re never really putting that much detail into what specific members of bands look like, like in Rock Band or Rock Band 2. What was it like having this level of detail, focusing on this one particular band?

DM: For me, it was great. I love it. I mean, I love Rock Band, and it’s sort of a platform, and that’s its purpose. But because of that, you’re automatically, things get more sort of dispersed. So it’s great for me. This game has been my favorite version of this type of game to work on, because the music — there’s something already that roots it and makes it consistent, and that is that it’s based on a real band that had an artistic legacy. And it was such an artistic legacy that, like with your question, it basically, we had the world to go after with this one.

Blast got to play Beatles Rock Band at the Harmonix Studios in Cambridge (Darcy Hofmann for Blast)

BL: Do you feel that some of the customization options that were present in Rock Band or Rock Band 2, do you think that’s something that will be missed? As a fan, I don’t think it would be for me, but if there are players who take a lot of pleasure in dressing up their characters, or making them personalized, putting their stamp on them somehow, do you feel like that’s something that will be lacking here?

DM: Well, I think that the idea of a Beatles dress-up shop would be fun for some people, because obviously they had this very exciting, avant-garde fashion sense. But really, the choices that we made in terms of the design, and what we exposed to the player, we tried to keep everything to the core experience of the Beatles. And I think that that might be a fun novelty, but I don’t think that it would add to the game, and in fact, it kind of would subtract from it. And there are other places that we had to make concessions like that, but I think that with every choice we made, we tried to always go towards advancing this very core, Beatles-centric experience.

BL: Do you feel that in the in-studio portions of the game, does the fact that the band was, at least by modern standards, pretty restrained in terms of their movements and actions on stage — obviously with the dreamscapes, you can kind of get away with it, but with those actual segments in a live setting, was there less for you to focus, less going on on the screen, less action?

DM: Well, the Beatles had a ton of energy on stage. I mean, they weren’t kicking over props or spewing fire or anything, but they had a tremendous amount of live energy. But yeah, in the studio, the great thing about the studio is, so, right, they’re not performing for an audience, they’re not performing for the camera, they’re performing for the audio track. In the studio parts, every time they’re in the studio, and you see that in the game, the song ends up expanding out into a visual dreamscape. So it’s actually really cool, and this is something that we haven’t seen in these games before, where it’s a much more intimate feeling. So rather than having it be about, “ËœI’m performing to a million people’ or whatever, it’s more about, you really do feel like you’re sitting there watching John Lennon close his eyes and rock his head back and just sing into the microphone, and you get this much more emotional thing that just sort of bravado and antics. Which is fine, too, but this is something a little bit nice to have in a Beatles game.

BL: How much research did you do even before you put anything on paper?

DM: Well, I’ve been researching this band since I was six years old. As a team, we did a ton of research, and in addition to other planning meetings and design meetings, we had, a couple times a week, we would spend an hour or two together. We spent, probably, several hours a week, just as a whole team, watching the Anthology, watching the movies, watching whatever we could get our hands on that would expand our knowledge. We were sending around emails with links to anything we could find. It was crucial. On the team, it goes from people who have been mega-Beatles fans since they were born because of their parents’ record collections, to people who, it’s newer for them and they’re learning a lot about it. But it’s crucial for everybody to be experts, Beatles experts, so that’s what we went for.

BL: Have you gotten a chance to see in person any of Paul’s recent concerts, where he had the footage playing behind him? Because for me, certainly, that would be pretty awesome.

DM: Yeah, I did, actually. It was cool, yeah. It was great. I saw him at Fenway Park a couple weeks ago, and yeah, he had two songs where he played footage from the game. One song he had dreamscape footage, and another one, he used some of the Passion Pictures intro footage. Yeah, it was great. He talked about the game on stage, and it was really, really cool.

John M. Guilfoil and Marc Normandin of the Blast staff and Blast correspondents Steve Bagley and Darcy Hofmann contributed to this report.

CAMBRIDGE — Harmonix Music Systems audio lead Eric Brosius makes his living playing with the soundtrack to your life, and he’s never had more fun than with Beatles Rock Band.

We talked to Eric about crossing Abbey Road, the fleeting nature of fame and the tyranny of two-track recordings.

Blast’s Ben Lindbergh: When you sat down to select the songs initially — I don’t know exactly who was involved in that — how much weight was assigned to the popularity of the song of the song or the success of the song, versus how much fun you thought it would be to play, or how easy it would be to represent with the notes?

Eric Brosius: We definitely considered both of those things, like we always do. Actually, that’s pretty much what we do in all of Rock Band, there’s always this balance between playability and how popular it is, and some songs are in there for different reasons. But yeah, we wanted to find”"pretty much all the Beatles songs are famous, outside of just a few. They’re one of the rare bands where like 80 percent of the catalog is completely famous, and 20 percent is lesser known. So, it was pretty easy to find songs that we thought everyone would just love playing, but that were also giant hits.

But we definitely looked at that, for sure. We also looked out for — you know, we wanted to grab songs from their entire career. From the beginning, and have roughly an equal number of songs from the different periods, just to make sure we hit all of their major albums and all of the time periods, and stuff like that. So it was just balancing those things together. There were some tricky things in the early songs, because some early songs were maybe harder to get, just because of the limited number of tracks that they had. So, we were always balancing that, and then we were talking to Giles Martin, who did all the actual mixing for us, because he knew the track layouts for every single song they’ve ever done, and he would always go, “ËœOh yeah, that’s problematic because of this, but this one I think we could do instead, because there’s some an extra tape of other stuff on here that we can use to make the song work.’

BL: So he had some sort of software that would be able to pick out the instruments individually when there was only a two-track recording, and then separate them somehow?

Harmonix Music Systems audio lead Eric Brosius makes his living playing with the soundtrack to your life, and he's never had more fun than with Beatles Rock Band. (Darcy Hofmann for Blast)

EB: Yeah. And sometimes with a two-track recording, it also depends on even what was on the tracks, because some things are easier to separate, and some things are not, just depending on how it was mixed. If it’s a two-track recording, and they had some things panned to one side, that’s easy to separate from stuff that’s in the middle or on the other side. If it was a two-track recording where the whole thing was a stereo wash right down the center, that makes it a lot harder. So he kind of knew, not just the number of tracks of each song, but kind of where things were, and whether we would have an easier time separating them. Because yes, you can separate stuff, but it’s not a perfect solution. Some songs are kind of easy to get nice, clean separation, and some songs are harder, so we used all of that knowledge together.

BL: So then he would do all the work in Abbey Road, with some assistants, and then someone would come over here with a briefcase chained to his arm?

Sometimes with a two-track recording, it also depends on even what was on the tracks, because some things are easier to separate, and some things are not

EB: Well, he knew all about the Beatles stuff and mixing, so he and his guy, Paul Hicks, were in charge of actually recreating the mixes. Because the first step is just to like bring up the tapes, transfer them to digital, and then recreate the mix. Because what’s on the raw tape doesn’t usually sound like the raw mix in music. So, they spent a lot of time doing that, just making sure it came out, and they can recreate all the effects if there weren’t effects. Because sometimes effects weren’t printed to tape, right, they were this old gear, so they spent a lot of time doing that. And then we would usually fly over there and spend like five days there when we were going to pick up a batch of songs, and where they would bring up the mixes they had, and we would do some further editing, deciding which parts are going to be our playable guitar part, and which parts are not.

And then while we were at the studio, we’d bounce out the actual stems we needed for the game, and then we’d encode them into the final version that the game ships with right there, which was encrypted and high-security and all that kind of stuff. So we did everything there, and then we just brought the finished game assets back with us, because they were pretty keen on leaving all the original assets at Abbey Road, because they’re somewhat protective, as they should be.

BL: Was the fact that the remasters were being developed simultaneously, was there any work that was able to be saved or shared there, or was it just two separate processes?

EB: It was pretty much two separate processes, because on things that we’re doing, we’re going back to the multi-tracks. I’m not sure what was done in the mastering process, but usually remasterings are just, you go back to the two-track mixes, and then you use modern mastering techniques. So it was kind of separate, what they were doing was totally separate. I mean, it’s nice that they’re going to release them at the same time, which kind of shows how enthusiastic Apple and the Beatles are, which is cool, but it was really two separate processes.

Blast editor John Guilfoil: Can you kind of run our readers through the process of taking a song and putting it into Rock Band?

EB: Sure. So, for old songs like this, a lot of them are stored on magnetic tape. So the first thing to do is to transfer them to a digital format like Pro Tools, which is the standard that everyone uses. So you digitize all the tracks, and then the next step would be to take those and remix the song so it sounds like the original. Once the song is sounding good, with all the effects and levels balanced, then we bounce out stems, according to our specific needs, the ones we need in the game. Because we have one guitar player in the game, so if there are several guitars playing, at every given moment through the song, we decide which one is going to be the part you’re going to play. And that ends up being a composite of, maybe a little of John’s guitar here, maybe a little of George’s here, and that kind of thing.

And we bounce out the stems that we actually need for the game, then we basically encrypt them, interleave them into a single file that our game reads. So we have that, and that’s the audio part of it, it’s fairly straightforward. And then we have a team of people here that kind of transcribe all the music, putting down all the gems that you see, laying down all the tracks and putting the lyrics in. And that’s basically kind of like transcription using MIDI files, basically.

BL: So for someone who grew up listening to the ’80s pressings of the CDs, or compressed .mp3 versions of the songs and hasn’t heard the remasters yet, would this be the cleanest and the best they’ve ever heard the Beatles, even though it’s meant for playing as well as listening, and so there are compromises that have to be made there?

Blast spent the day at Harmonix learning about the game and its development. (Darcy Hofmann for Blast)

EB: I think so. And the thing that’s going to — yes, because part of the thing with Rock Band is, we’ll sometimes make some changes to the mixes. Sometimes, if there was a guitar part that was pretty buried in the original mix, but we want that to be the playable one, sometimes we’ll boost it a little bit so you can hear it more, because you want to hear the notes that you’re actually playing. So we always try to walk this line between — we don’t want to change history or anything like that, but with Giles’ approval, we would sometimes alter things. You know, “ËœLet’s bring that up a little bit, because that’s going to be the playable part.’ So there are some things like that.

And the other really cool thing about the game is that, because most of our game is kind of featured around live stuff, most of the songs, we don’t have fadeouts in them, usually. And many times they went back to the way they actually played it in the studio, that usually had a proper ending. Because they’ll usually do the fade-out later, right in the mix. So in our game, a lot of times you get to hear the proper endings, which is really cool. So it’s like a little bit of extra material in most songs. And probably the biggest one is in “ËœHelter Skelter’ we don’t do the big fade back in, so you get to hear the way they played it through, which is pretty cool, and I think Beatles fanatics will love that stuff.

BL: Did you sit down initially and say, “ËœWe know we’re going to have forty-five songs’ and then get a list of the catalog and cross things out, or did you start with a blank page, and say, “ËœWe have to have this one, and we have to have that one?’

EB: Well, we knew that we were going to have roughly forty to fifty songs, but we didn’t know exactly until the whole deal was worked out. So basically, everyone wrote down sixty or seventy of their favorite songs, and it was a bunch of the higher-ups at Harmonix, and the people at Apple, and Giles, and everyone, and we all kind of got together and came up with about forty-five, and then once in a while Giles would say, “ËœOh, I know this one can’t work, because this was actually just recorded on one track’ and we would just kind of work it out.

And then there would be a little bit of back-and-forth, of course, about, “ËœLet’s make sure that we have a good balance of Paul and John songs, so that we don’t just by accident have too many John songs and too many Paul songs’ and “ËœMake sure that we include the important George songs’ and all this balancing. Same thing we do when we select songs for Rock Band. You balance out a bunch of things”"we want to have songs from different decades, different styles, different things, so the same kind of process went through. And then we presented what we thought was our song list to the shareholders, who were Yoko and Paul and Ringo and Olivia Harrison, and they would give us their two cents on it, and we would make some adjustments. The song list was fairly easy to do.

BL: So they weren’t dictating anything, like “ËœThis song has to be in there, this one’s off-limits.’

EB: No. And the good thing is that Giles has worked with them before. He did the “Love” show, which is the big Cirque du Soleil thing in Las Vegas, he’s already kind of gone through this process with them, and he knows them very well, and they trust him. So that was one of the best things. Because we could kind of make all of our musical decisions, and if we got them blessed by Giles, then we were pretty confident that he could get them blessed by the important people. So, it made things very smooth.

Three-part vocal harmony is part of what makes Beatles Rock Band different from all other music games

BL: Were there any specific challenges that you faced as a result of the Beatles’ experimentation in the studio, or using somewhat exotic instruments that might not conform to the four-instrument mold? I know you have songs like “ËœBecause’ or “ËœShe’s Leaving Home’ coming out soon”"how do you face those challenges, or how do you conform to this set-up?

EB: Well, in some songs”"in the Beatles game, one of the cool things is we’re doing the harmonies, so that’s a big thing, because there’s so much importance on that. On other things where they had, maybe not a prominent guitar, but they had different instruments, we would probably swap them around, which we do in Rock Band once in a while. Like in, I think in “ËœStrawberry Fields’ you might end up playing the string parts a little bit on the guitar. And in a song like “ËœBecause’ which has no drums, right, that would be a song where the drummer just kind of sits out and relaxes for a while. We’re not going to add anything to it, because we don’t want to change the song.

BL: I know you wanted to span the whole career and represent each part accurately”"was there any thought that maybe the early Beatles or the late Beatles would appeal or connect to the modern audience more? Your first three downloadable albums coming out are from the middle-to-late period”"is there any consideration given to emphasizing that period?

EB: We didn’t really think about that too much. I think that we wanted to”"different fans have their different favorites, of course. So we really just wanted to tell the whole story of their career, so we wanted to just do that. As far as the downloads go, we know that technically we have an easier time with the later albums, because they tend to be cleaner, on four-track, where it’s easier, and harder times on the earlier albums. So it would be difficult to do Please Please Me as a full album, because while we could probably do a lot of the songs, it might be difficult, there might be some there that we’re just like, “ËœI don’t know how we’re going to get the separation.’

But that being said, if we choose to do more albums, I’m sure we’ll do some early ones too, because we want to do as much as we can. It just also happened that I think the first three albums that we picked are three of the pretty big, iconic ones”"Abbey Road, Sgt. Pepper’s. And we were going back and forth between Rubber Soul and Revolver, because we wanted something from that period, but we were debating back and forth.

BL: Would most of the team working on the game have described themselves as Beatles fans coming into it, or just sort of passionate music fans who came to appreciate the Beatles more during the process?

EB: Well, everyone’s a passionate music fan. I don’t think we had everyone was a passionate Beatles fan — certainly a fan in some ways — but we have a few people who were just obsessive. And so we set those guys on all the research. They’re the ones who spent hours poring over things, and making sure that the right person was playing the right guitar part, and they would look up, “ËœOkay, is John playing this lick, or is George playing this lick?’ And they would try to figure it out to make sure the animations looked right, because we can kind of control that. So we had at least a half a dozen Beatles fanatics, which was really good.

John M. Guilfoil and Marc Normandin of the Blast staff and Blast correspondents Steve Bagley and Darcy Hofmann contributed to this report.

The Beatles: Rock Band, already pegged as the epitome of genuineness, releases next week for Wii, PS3, and Xbox 360, but today we’ve got the first TV spot for the game, and we like it alot.

The clip is only 30 seconds, but that’s really all you need to “Come Together” and enjoy it.