The day the music dies: "American Pie" is final DLC for ROCK BAND

Today is a bittersweet occasion in the annals of video game history: Harmonix is releasing the final downloadable content for its Rock Band series.

Since the first Rock Band came out in late 2007 the studio had promised new songs weekly for downloadable purchase and play.  It kept that promise for 281 consecutive weeks: far, far longer than most players probably expected.  Maybe even longer than it has been profitable.  Hard to find that kind of reliability in any modern industry, much less the video game one.

Fittingly, the last tune that players can get for Rock Band is Don McLean's 1971 classic "American Pie".  And were I the sort I'd be drinking whiskey and rye...

I only played Rock Band and Rock Band 2, and I have to agree with what Brett Makedonski has beautifully written on Destructoid: this series had an immense impact on my life.  Not just for the fun I had playing it but also because it exposed me to a spectrum of music that until then, I had not experienced and might never have.  Indeed, because of Rock Band my wallet dropped dollars not just for the DLC but for the songs themselves on iTunes.  I am a far more musically educated and enlightened individual today for Rock Band... and that's something that'll never be forgotten or unappreciated.

Seeing as how this will be the final post that this blog is likely to see about Rock Band, let's have it go out in true style.  Here once again is that amazing opening title cinematic from the first game: "Highway Star" by Deep Purple!

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ROCK BAND: "WEIRD AL" YANKOVIC coming October 27th!

We already knew that ROCK BAND 3 is scheduled to retail later this year... but I am already drooling about this one even more: Rock Band: "Weird Al" Yankovic has just been announced by Harmonix and MTV Games! It'll publish on October 27th, just over seven months from now.

Here's the press release that IGN Games posted a short while ago...

ROCK BAND: "WEIRD AL" YANKOVIC WILL BRING PRINCE OF PARODY TO POPULAR PARTY GAME

Harmonix and MTV Games is proud to announce ROCK BAND: "WEIRD AL" YANKOVIC is in production for a release date of October 27th, 2010.

The latest in the popular Rock Band series of music and rhythm video games, ROCK BAND: "WEIRD AL" YANKOVIC is a homage to the unique character and career of "Weird Al" Yankovic: the best-selling comedy musical artist in history.

Much like last year's critically acclaimed and commercially successful ROCK BAND: THE BEATLES, ROCK BAND: "WEIRD AL" YANKOVIC will take the player on an interactive journey across Yankovic's phenomenal career which has spanned four decades and counting. The game begins with a seventeen-year old Alfred Yankovic recording original songs on a cassette player in his bedroom at the home of his parents in Lynwood, California to submit to Dr. Demento's radio show. Other stages of the game will take place in fully-rendered reproductions of the men's restroom across the hallway from the radio station at California Polytechnic State University, a Japanese variety show, and Al's now-infamous 1987 performance at the Cowcatcher Calamity Festival of Lizzard Lick, Nebraska.

ROCK BAND: "WEIRD AL" YANKOVIC will also include sections inspired by Weird Al's famous music videos, beginning with "Eat It" from his 1984 album "Weird Al" Yankovic: In 3-D. Reaching 1988 will give players the opportunity to perform in Weird Al's custom-tailored "Fat" costume within a reproduced virtual set of Michael Jackson's "Bad" video. There will also be playable songs with videos that have never been produced before. "'Albuquerque' will challenge the players' sanity like no song in ROCK BAND history," Weird Al confidently predicted, speaking of the nine-minute long song from his 1999 album Running With Scissors.

In addition to on-screen versions of Yankovic himself, ROCK BAND: "WEIRD AL" YANKOVIC will feature the likenesses and actual voices of Jon "Bermuda" Schwartz, Jay Levey, Jim West, Rubén Valtierra, Dr. Demento, Jay Levey, Victoria Jackson, Harvey the Wonder Hamster and several other legendary personalities from the Weird Al mythos.

As players work their way throughout Weird Al's career, they will be able to customize Al and his band with a variety of costume choices such as Hawaiian shirts and hundreds of pairs of Vans shoes. Among the game's many surprises, unlocking the "Jedi Knight" costume will enable players to perform the Yoda Chant at the end of the final concert.

In unprecedented collaboration with an original artist, Harmonix is working alongside Weird Al to create a special accordion peripheral for ROCK BAND: "WEIRD AL" YANKOVIC. Players will have to coordinate finger movements along with using the accordion controller's pneumatic system in order to produce the proper music. The game can also be played without the accordion controller.

ROCK BAND: "WEIRD AL" YANKOVIC will be available as a single game, as a game with accordion controller, and as a special "Al and the Band" bundle with game, accordion controller and the standard ROCK BAND instruments. Pricing is not available at this time but is expected to be comparable to other ROCK BAND products.

I will gladly pay good money, sell my spleen, betray my Scoutmaster, do ANYTHING to get my hands on this game when it comes out. Heck, I might have to camp out a week in advance for it, just to show my devotion and lust for this! October 27th can NOT get here fast enough!!!

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THE BEATLES: ROCK BAND launches today

Today finally sees the release of the much-anticipated The Beatles: Rock Band from Harmonix and MTV Games. The latest installment in the popular Rock Band music game series lets you and up to three friends re-live the career of the Fab Four from Liverpool right in your living room!

I don't have the game yet (it's available for all three major consoles) although I am looking forward to getting it at some point. However, for those of you who have bought it already, I've been wondering about something ever since this game was first announced...

Does The Beatles: Rock Band let you play the "John has a girlfriend" concert? Does a digital avatar of Yoko appear onscreen and break up the band all over again? Will your game data get erased when the Beatles go their separate ways?

(Probably not, but that would be so funny if it did :-)

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ROCK BAND will allow indie artists to add own songs (and make $$$ from it!)

Are you an independent musician looking to promote your work? Might wanna check this out: you'll soon be able to add your own original music to the popular music game Rock Band! Indie artists and bands will use Microsoft's XNA Creator's Club to mesh the song's MIDI file to the format used by the game. The work will then be submitted to other Creator's Club programmers for critique and then must meet final approval by Harmonix and MTV Games. After they go live the songs will sell between 50 cents and 3 dollars, with the artists getting 30% of the cut! Not a bad business model at all, and there's the potential for some great publicity for indie musicians.

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Tons of details emerge about Rock Band 2

In the past few days lots of confirmed (and some not quite confirmed but it's looking good) info has come out about Rock Band 2, Harmonix and MTV Games' follow-up to last year's smash hit music game Rock Band.

According to a press release by Harmonix, Rock Band 2 is going to be completely backward compatible with the peripherals and downloaded songs from Rock Band. Which is good news for people like those of us in the Knight household who have been purchasing dozens of new tracks through Xbox Live Marketplace (speaking of which, Lisa and I have gotten pretty good at Jimmy Buffet's "Margaritaville").

And speaking of instruments, Ars Technica has word that Rock Band 2 is going to boast much improved hardware, like a wireless drum set (with metal-reinforced pedal) and a far better guitar - also wireless - than the one that came packaged with Rock Band. I've been using the controller from Guitar Hero III: Legends of Rock since my birthday: hopefully the strum bar on the Rock Band 2 guitar has been made sturdier than the original. I'm hearing mixed word about whether the microphone will be wireless but most likely it'll still connect via USB cable (so don't go too wild, unless you want to tear apart your entertainment center :-) There's also going to be a Drum Trainer mode that is being touted as something that can teach a person how to play the real thing.

The most-requested feature since Rock Band came out has been a World Tour mode that lets you play with friends in remote locations. Folks, Harmonix listened and Harmonix responded: Rock Band 2 will feature Online World Tour that lets you form a band with friends no matter how far away (so long as they're on Earth 'course) and challenge other groups to a virtual battle of the bands.

Here's a cool feature: player-created characters will now be able to play on more than just one kind of instrument. And... word is that you will be able to both play an instrument and sing at the same time! Time to get a mike stand (provided Harmonix doesn't pack one in the Rock Band 2 box, which it wouldn't surprise me if they did). There will also be pre-packaged characters, for those who want to jump in the game right out of the box... although as much fun as we have with our on-screen avatars in The Knight Shift (yeah that's the name of our band) I'm betting the desire to stay with the pre-configs will be fleeting. There will also be a lot more clothing, accessories, hairstyles and tattoos that you can deck your 'toon out with. Stuff.tv is also reporting that you'll be able to print up posters and other goodies of your band characters through the Rock Band website.

And then there are the songs. In addition to all the downloadable tracks from Rock Band (and I'm hearing that future tracks will be compatible with both Rock Band and Rock Band 2, not to mention the rumor going around that Harmonix is going to offer the entire tracklist from the original Rock Band disc as a free download) there will be more than 80 tracks - all master recordings - on the Rock Band 2 disc. The ones confirmed so far include "Give It Away" by the Red Hot Chili Peppers, "Pump It Up" by Elvis Costello (a performer that a lot of Rock Band players have wanted to be represented), "Anyway You Want It" by Journey, and a bunch others. And Harmonix is saying that plenty more tracks will be on the way via download.

Can't wait to get this! Rock Band is the most-played game at our place, and every time we have guests visiting the guitars and drums inevitably get brought out for a jam session, sometimes lasting for hours! I think that Harmonix is definitely evolving the Rock Band brand in the right direction: not so much as a "franchise" but more of a platform on which to keep building and getting better. Hopefully by the time we have kids old enough, Rock Band 7 will be out :-)

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Rock Band coming to the Wii, BUT ...

... it won't have downloaded content or online play.

Harmonix announced today that the wildly popular music game will be released for the Nintendo Wii on June 22. It will have five "bonus" songs. This supposedly is in lieu of the online play feature and ability to download new songs that the Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3 versions already have.

A lot of people will be glad to know that Rock Band is getting ported to the Wii. But how long is that going to last when these details about the release become widely known? To exclude the downloadable content feature and online play is an insanely bad move by Harmonix. From a business standpoint, it makes no sense at all! Nintendo Wii is the best-selling video game system on the market today, consistently outpacing both the Xbox 360 and the PlayStation 3. Now bear in mind that for those two systems already, Harmonix has sold over 6 million copies of new tracks that have been made available since the game's launch in November.

Obviously, the downloadable content is one of Rock Band's most popular points. Harmonix is courting disaster by consciously stripping it from the Wii edition. They aren't just going to be losing millions of dollars in potential profit from lack of downloaded tracks, but a lot of Wii owners - and I'm one of them - are going to see this move as petty at best, and outright insulting at worst.

Besides, there is no reason at all why the Wii could not support either the downloaded content or online play for Rock Band. It can save tracks to an SD card, and I'm sure that some kind of encryption/encoding scheme is possible that would prevent tracks from being illegally copied. Technically, the online capabilities of Rock Band could certainly be shared with the Wii version. So why aren't they?

The suits at Harmonix had best reconsider, and announce that the downloaded content and online play are going to be in the Wii version too. Or else they're going to wind up with tons of unwanted Rock Band for Wii boxes that'll take up a hella lot more space in a landfill than those E.T. cartridges ever did.

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Rock Band massive update includes in-game music store

Give it up for Harmonix: they are definitely one software company that listens to its fan base. Yesterday they pushed a patch for their hit game Rock Band that addresses several issues that players have been having. And with the update comes one very cool innovation: Rock Band Store, an in-game way to purchase new songs without having to leave the game for Xbox Live Marketplace or the PlayStation Store.

I just installed the update and messed around with the game (the Xbox 360 version) and I am extremely pleased with what Harmonix has done with this update. The Rock Band Store even lets you preview songs that you might consider purchasing before doing so.

In addition to the Rock Band Store, the new patch fixes the random song lists bugs, tweaks the cap on fans in Band World Tour mode, improves some issues with the microphone (which was a big deal with the PlayStation 3 version), and the downloaded content is said to be much faster in loading 'cuz after this update it's now being cached.

The update is free. Just turn on your system with the Rock Band disc, and if you're on Xbox Live or PlayStation Store it should automatically ask if you want to install it.

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Most AWESOME video game intro sequence EVER!

Last week I got Rock Band - Special Edition for our new Xbox 360. We finally got it out of the box last night and after getting the instruments put together (without a doubt the first video game that I've ever bought that has "some assembly required") we started playing the game.

I can already tell that Rock Band is going to be one of our favorite video games for a long while to come: we're having a blast with it! Lisa is getting really good on drums, and for once I'm not getting booed off stage while singing ("Don't Fear the Reaper" is my best song so far). We haven't done anything with the guitar yet. I'm gonna study the instructions some more, figure out just what the heck we're doing here before we start really jamming with Rock Band.

And if you've ever played this before, you already know something: that Rock Band has the most mind-blowing title sequence for a video game... probably in the history of anything. Here it is courtesy of YouTube.

And turn up your speakers. Turn them way up!

EDIT 9:34 p.m. EST: I just found out that this song is called "Highway Star" by the legendary English hard rock band Deep Purple. They were once listed by the Guinness Book of World Records as being "the loudest band in the world". And supposedly those are the band members as they appeared in the 1970s who are riding atop those vehicles.

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