No, it isn't some quirky new band called SpongeBob Squarepants. It's three tracks from the animated sensation that's dumbed down a nation - "I Can't Keep My Eyes Off Of You", "Best Day Ever", and "Where's Gary?" Don't let the triple dose of kids music make you stop believing in Rock Band, however, because Journey says so. Their inspirational hit "Don't Stop Believing", announced at the Harmonix party at the Game Developers Conference this week, joins Pat Benatar's "Heartbreaker" in washing the taste of saltwater stupidity out of our mouths.

Also coming next week is Glasvegas' "Geraldine" and "C'Mon C'Mon" from the Von Bondies, the latter of which is one of my favorite songs, mainly due to its appearance in a Tribes 2 Video Mod from the short-lived MTV2 program. Ah, memories.

The new songs hit Xbox Live on March 31st and the PlayStation Network on April 2nd. Prices are $1.99 or 160 Microsoft points per song, with SpongeBob's tunes slightly lower at $.99 or 80 Microsoft points.

One individual who didn't think quite so highly of the Journey arcade game was Steve Perry, former vocalist of Journey. He says he was against it from the get go, in a not exactly new interview with GQ magazine.

"Everybody went against me on that issue," he tells GQ "‘Cause I thought it was silly. I’ve come to find out that there’s a generation of kids who think it’s classic and wish they could find the arcade version. But I personally thought it was dumb."

Perry's kind of an odd duck, but it sounds like the Journey video game was, to him, an unnecessary ego stroke.

"See, it’s funny [...] Because I thought that we were big already, that we didn’t need a video game," Perry adds. "But that’s how the world judges you. Like, 'Gee whiz, you have a Lamborghini, so you must’ve been big.' I didn’t understand that."

Okay, Steve. WHATEVER. Yes, we understand you have a Lamborghini and you're too good for a half-baked mini-game collection with your face slapped on, but some of us never had video games made about them. Kind of hard to empathize with your digitized plight. Hmph!

Foolish, Foolish Throat: A Q&A with Steve Perry [GQ]

Guitar Hero III Community Leaderboards [Activision - Thanks eddie200x!]

In 1982 Data Age created Journey Escape, based on the then hugely popular band Journey's album Escape. In the game, you have to help the band reach their "scarab escape vehicle" (from the album cover) after a concert, while avoiding "hordes of Love-Crazed Groupies, Sneaky Photographers, and Shifty-Eyed Promoters. For some reason the band manager looks like the Kool-Aid Man. A less successful Journey arcade game followed in 1983, from Bally Midway.

What's interesting to me about this game is that it is one of very few attempts to license and adapt bands or music to videogames.

Sure, we have Guitar Hero and Rock Band, but those are music performance games. There was Michael Jackson Moonwalker, a 1990 Sega arcade game. And a strange KISS-inspired Dreamcast game. And Peter Gabriel's EVE, which is more like an interacive CD-ROM than a game. And a Chemical Brothers Flash game for the single Galvanize, which now seems to be offline. And one of my former students, Rob Fitzpatrick, made a game adaptation of a single from the band The Most.

But really, music adaptation is a fairly unexplored avenue in videogames. Interesting, no?

Journey Escape for the Atari 2600 [Journey Tribute]

Can you help Journey escape from the arena of rock through hordes of love-crazed groupies? Affirmative. I like to think that the life system works on the principle that you can only collide with so many groupies until you are so drained that you ejaculate the spools of your intestines. Although I hope the health system works different when you collide with those "shifty-eyed promoters." Florian Eckhardt

A reader who goes by the name of Numlok has started a Flickr gallery of a bunch of old video game magazine scans. There s some excellent nostalgia buried in there. But nothing beats Journey.

I actually got that game from my Aunt and Uncle for my 12th birthday. The whole premise, if my aged-memory serves, was to make the band members through throngs of screaming fans without touching anyone. It was sort of like a linear Robotron without the firepower but I think you did occasional get a guitar that could shoot our electrified power chords.

Man, I miss those days.

Game Mag Scans [Flicr]