Remember when Billie Joe had really cool hair?

Harmonix is one of those developers that always seems to have made the right moves when it comes to their games. When they originally split from the Guitar Hero franchise and started Rock Band, they put a lot of thought into their product, introducing both the vocal and drum tracks into the music genre. They focused on bringing both quality and upcoming artists to their track lists, and built an expansive library of downloadable content that worked across multiple titles in the Rock Band series.

You’ve always been able to describe them as Guitar Hero‘s more mature older sibling. While Guitar Hero was releasing disc after disc of band or genre themed full retail titles, Rock Band continued to support it’s core titles with optional track packs and community events. And when Harmonix did decide to release a band-themed stand alone title, The Beatles: Rock Band, they put so much effort into making it a unique experience that the result was one of the most critically acclaimed music games of all time.

Which is why I’m a little bit disappointed this week as I play my way through Green Day: Rock Band, Harmonix’s second band-themed stand alone title, and surely the low-light of their development career to date.

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It's wall bustingly good!

It is with a sad heart that Matt and I must announce that our band, The Afternoon Frolics, is breaking up.  We had a whirlwind time recording 5 albums and doing countless world tours since the creation of the band in mid-January.  Unfortunately, when living in close proximity with one another certain facts cannot be overlooked.  For us, it was that Matt, as band leader, refused an octopus the right to be our drummer.  I found this unacceptable and we have agreed to go our separate ways.  However, more about the break up of what many people referred to as “a modern day Herman’s Hermits” later.  Now it’s time for me to talk to you about what made our career possible: LEGO Rock Band.

Let me start by saying that I am a huge fan of the Rock Band series.  Anyone that read what I wrote about it in our countdown of the best games of the previous decade would know my feelings about Harmonix and it’s rock creation.  From the outset they put out a strong product that showed that they were serious about what they were doing.  All the while LEGO had been turning it’s hand to games with the creation of the LEGO Star Wars and LEGO Indiana Jones thanks to the fine people at Traveller’s Tales. Harmonix, most likely to compete in the family friendly Wii market, teamed up with TT Fusion to create a LEGO rock spectacular.  Apparently only half of those at TT Fusion were on board with the concept, who wanted to make sure they “weren’t just skinning one franchise on another”.  Once their fears were allayed production was begun in late 2008, with release in November 2009.

And apparently we’re so lazy that we only bothered to pick it up in 2010.

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The singer just got to the scream in "Won't Get Fooled Again"

In 1967, The Jimi Hendrix Experience released their seminal album, Are You Experienced?.  With Hendrix’s in-your-face style of guitar playing the world was turned on it’s head, and the face of rock and roll was never the same.  Fast forward 40 years until the next great Guitar God was among us … me, when I picked up the guitar and played Rock Band for the first time!  It has been quite some time since the world was able to sup from the Rock Chalice so freely.  Being the modest rock “sex cauldron” that I am, I won’t take all the credit.  Some of it must go to Harmonix Music Systems.

In late 2006, the dominant team of Harmonix and RedOctane were split up due to each company being bought out by different competitors.  RedOctane teamed-up with Neversoft to continue the Guitar Hero franchise, whilst Harmonix struck out on it’s own.  Thank God, is all I have to say.  Much like a pair of divorcing parents, these two competitors worked harder to win our love … and we walked away the winners!  This game took what Guitar Hero had started and took it to a whole new level.  All of a sudden you weren’t just a lone guitarist working your way through this tough world.  You had your friends there to back you up with so-so bass playing, mistimed drumming and horrible screechy vocals.  Life was good.

Thanks to Rock Band, I'm as good as Jeff Buckley ...

Now the question is raised: why didn’t Guitar Hero make it in if it was the first?  The main reason is that Guitar Hero took what was an existing idea in the arcades and brought it to the consoles.  A great idea, but it lacked that true party quality.  At the end of the day, you were just a couple of dudes strumming yourself to ecstasy.  With Rock Band it had a true party quality to it.  Everybody was having a laugh.  A similar singing style to SingStar made the game a lot more fluid, and suddenly it had you thinking that you could actually do this.

I also think that a major quality of Rock Band, and it’s subsequent series, is that it hasn’t turned it’s customers into shills.  Where Guitar Hero went overboard giving almost any two bit band it’s own game and leaving some crying in the shower eating short bread, Rock Band stayed pure.  Rock Band: The Beatles is an example of what can be done when real love is shown for the genre and the game itself.

Add to this a developer who cared about their community, who added multi-title song compatibility and fostered a DLC regime that has been bringing new songs to the game every week since it’s release.  A library of DLC songs that, I should add, has recently grown to be over 1000 tracks strong too.

At the end of the day, this game is here because it is an enduring series that honestly has the public excited about each new title that is coming out.  They have shown innovation at each new release and are continuing to push to bring new concepts and not fall into the pitfalls that their Neversoft-driven competitors have.  Harmonix are obviously the true innovators of the music game genre.  Rock Band has proven that it has what it takes to be played on your own, in a party, sober or drunk, and because of all this and more, we here at Armchair Diplomat have deemed it to be the No. 1 Game of the Decade!  Kudos to you, Harmonix, we’re raising our glasses right now!

Here's some potential cover art

And you just know they could never be whack!

I did intend to start off my posts today with other subjects, but upon loading my Twitter for the morning I just couldn’t help but stop scrolling at this particular tidbit:

TheFatBoys: Harmonix is my friend and now you know that … We may have to get in the studio and make Harmonix a Rock Band Fat Boys track in honor of our 25th Anniversary … Um…I’m thinking “The Fat Boys: Rock Band / Beatboxing” hmmmmm oh yeah, my stomach is growling now!

-Kool Rock-Ski … I assume

That’s right, beatbox rappers and overeating enthusiasts The Fat Boys are apparently considering recording some tracks for release on Harmonix’s Rock Band.  There’s no telling if this could be a regular release or something facilitated by the upcoming Rock Band Network, but there’s one thing you can be sure of: if you’re not eating while you’re singing, you’re doing it wrong!

Personally, I think Activision would give an opportunity like this a full retail stand-alone release, so it’s a “real shame” that Harmonix will probably just make it available for everyone as DLC.  Bet your ass I’ll post if we hear any more about this.  Just not enough old school hip-hop played on plastic guitars at the moment!

Oh, and in case your interested, here’s Prince Markie Dee calling out the Iron Sheik via YouTube.  He’s presumably challenging him to some variety of wrestling match.  Hopefully Sergent Slaughter is backing his play on this one?

Now all he needs is four LEGO crystal balls

Just to pack a little bit more plastic rock into your day, the LEGO®-fication of David Bowie for inclusion into LEGO® Rock Band was made official today.

It seems only fair that if Guitar Hero 5 could gloat about the inclusion of the Man In Black, then Rock Band can get some PR love from the Thin White Duke.  Here’s some delicious press release:

Warner Bros. Interactive Entertainment and MTV Games today revealed that LEGO® Rock Band™ will feature the likeness of David Bowie, pop music icon and best-selling music artist, as a LEGO® minifigure.

Fans can play as Bowie while singing his song “Let’s Dance,” which will be included in the play list.

LEGO® Rock Band puts the power of Rock into the hands of tweens, teens, families and gamers of all ages as they go on a wild journey to rock stardom to “Build a Band and Rock the Universe”.

Notice how it basically says Bowie is song-locked to “Let’s Dance”?  I love how, even in LEGO (which is ®, by the way) form, Harmonix shows their guest charaters more respect than Activision.  You can check out a collection of LEGO Bowie screenshots over at GoNintendo, while Gaming Bits has posted up the video preview.

Not that I’d know, considering that I lent my copy of Rock Band 2 to Mark a long time ago and now his housemates won’t let me have it back, but Harmonix has released a new software patch for the simu-rock title.  The patch fixes a fixes a few compatibility issues, a couple of gameplay tweaks and gets the game ready for the upcoming Rock Band Network.  Here’s the details as Harmonix designer Dan Teasdale tells them:

• Rock Band Network Audition Mode. Available from the “Extras” menu on Xbox 360 versions of Rock Band 2, members of the Rock Band Network can now upload songs from their PC’s and audition their songs using our suite of song audition and testing tools. Currently in closed beta, the Rock Band Network will welcome authors to open beta in the coming weeks!
• “Sort by Stars” in Quickplay. If you hit the “Sort” button on the Song Select screen, you’ll come to a brand new sort that orders songs by the star ratings that you’ve achieved on each song.
• Background Downloading in the Music Store. Purchasing songs from the Rock Band Music Store now no longer requires you to wait for a song to download before you can download another song. You can now queue up downloads to your heart’s content, which is going to be incredibly handy with some of the amazing DLC that’s coming out over the next few weeks and months.
• Xbox 360 Wireless Microphone Support. Rock Band 2 now supports Xbox 360 Wireless Microphones, like the Lips microphone.
• Chord HOPO improvements: If you’ve played The Beatles: Rock Band, you’ll notice much more robust handling of chord hammer-ons and pull-offs. This patch implements those changes in Rock Band 2 to provide a more natural chord hammer-on/pull-off experience.
• Velocity Sensitivity on Ion Drum Kits: Ion Drum kits now support velocity sensitivity in both drum fills and Drum Freestyle mode.

All of this sounds great, especially the DLC background downloading.  It’s no problem on my new internet connection, but on the old connection I’d invariably download all my new tracks through the Xbox console just so I could actually use my console in the proceeding hours.

The patch will be downloaded the next time you boot up Rock Band 2 and connect to Xbox Live.  The PlayStation 3 is also getting the same upgrade as soon as the patch makes it’s way through the PlayStation Network certification.  You can check out the detailed forum post here.

Guitar Hero would have made itself top of the bill

Let’s face it. Rhythm games are over-saturated and, if you’ll excuse the pun, played-out. There is never really much new gameplay-wise to enjoy in a new release, long time players have lost most of the challenge by practicing too much, and the song catalogues accompanying most new titles are uninspiring at best. Drop on top of this a full retail price every time a developer feels like grinding out a new game, and it’s not really very hard to see why many gamers are over the entire music game trend.

Which is why, amongst this slowly composting genre, it’s lovely to recieve the breath of fresh air that is provided by The Beatles: Rock Band.

Now, before I gush (and gush I will, trust me), let’s do a little checklist on my list of gripes above.

Technically, there isn’t much new gameplay-wise in TB:RB. There are a few new mechanics that I’ll get to in a second, but overall there isn’t much changed here since Rock Band 2.

The difficulty also won’t exactly challenge any experienced player, with the exception of maybe a few of the trickier songs. If a player is comfortable alternating 3-button chords, then there isn’t much to seperate them from 5 starring every track.

And yes, you will be slugged (at least initially) full retail price for your copy of The Beatles: Rock Band.

But all that can be easily forgiven when you play the game, and discover the beautiful way in which Harmonix has collaborated with Apple Corps to make such a brilliant tribute to the life and times of the Beatles.

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Good news out of an interview by MCV UK with the head of MTV Games, Scott Guthrie, who has announced that Rock Band 3 is currently under development by Harmonix.  Here’s the important slice:

MCV: So for those tent pole releases, what happens after The Beatles game – what’s coming in 2010? Another major artist game? Or Rock Band 3?

Guthrie: We’re exploring both – and possibly will do both. The Harmonix development team are working on what is effectively the next game, or ‘Rock Band 3’. We aren’t standing still – we will keep moving into new areas and look at new technologies that our platform holder partners are also developing, such as Project Natal from Microsoft. We’re working with them to pull some things together.

Front men sometimes skip 3 and go straight to 4

This is fantastic news for fans of the series although, when you think about it, if Rock Band 3 is coming in 2010, will it be another example of how the sequel will be released before the prior game sees retail in Australia?  Rock Band 2 still hasn’t officially touched Australian shores, and I think MTV Games should really be lifting their game on this one (preferably lifting it into cargo containers and shipping it Down Under).  The interview even mentions how they’re attempting to get away from the hardware sales now and just into software and DLC, so what’s the big problem?

Eh, doesn’t matter, I’ve already got my copy.

Anyway, anyone who is a fan of the music genre should really check this interview out.  Not only for the obvious big news, but also to take a look at the comparison that Guthrie makes between the GH and RB series.  If you ask me, it’s obvious that Harmonix have got their heads screwed on straight, preferring to work with flexible DLC rather than just release a band themed disc every three weeks and expect people to pay full price.  It’s a very interesting contrast.