One November 20, 2007, Harmonix, EA and MTV Games released the first Rock Band, a four-player, instrument-driven rhythm game that briefly changed the face of social multiplayer gaming. Where are your plastic instruments now?
Titles like Puyo Puyo Tetris and Street Fighter X Tekken prove that bringing two successful franchises together can yield a match made in heaven. But every now and then two brazenly different intellectual properties form an unholy union that manages to get things right.
Rock Band was great, but Rock Band was also awkward and cumbersome. Now here comes Rock Band VR, a few years after most of us got rid of our last plastic instrument. It’s also cumbersome, and it’s also great. In fact, it’s the most fun I’ve had with Rock Band in years.
Rock Band 4 is getting an expansion called Rivals this fall. It’ll include “really big, new modes” that Harmonix isn’t saying anything about for some reason. They also announced a Fender Jaguar guitar controller that’ll be foldable. Convenient! Now it’ll gather dust in your closet even more efficiently. (I kid.)
On top of a major expansion coming in fall, Harmonix is adding online multiplayer to Rock Band 4 later this year for owners of said expansion. Hooray for things that should have been in the game at launch coming to the game!
Harmonix’s latest crowdfunding attempt didn’t get anywhere close to fully funded, making it unclear if Rock Band 4 will ever come to the PC.
In the cut-throat music industry, you’ve gotta do anything you can to stay ahead of the curve. So it is with the plastic music industry, too.
Harmonix has announced the final slate of songs for next month’s Rock Band 4, including Mumford & Son’s “The Wolf,” R.E.M.’s “The One I Love,” Gin Blossoms’ “Follow You Down,” Imagine Dragon’s “I Bet My Life,” and more. The whole tracklist list is available right here.
If you’re buying the standalone disc for Rock Band 4, it’ll cost you $20 more on Xbox One—$80 instead of $60. How come? You need a special device for your Xbox 360 hardware to to work on your Xbox One. The bundles, however, are the same price.
The next generation of Rock Band launches October 6, and instrument bundles now up for preorder—$130 for the guitar and $250 for guitar, mic and drums. Sounds like a good time to hunt for used instruments!
Rock Band 4 is coming out on October 6th. It’s got freestyle guitar solos, which let you make your own cool “reeeeer” and “waaaaah” sounds even if you’ve never touched an actual guitar and/or do not have a mouth.
Between flood damage and the inconvenience of moving dust-collecting plastic instruments to a new home on short notice, every piece of Rock Band or Guitar Hero equipment I once owned has been trashed, save one. Oh yeah, Baby and I are ready for Rock Band 4.
It's been rumored for a long time now, but today the news is finally official: Rock Band is coming back.
Huh, so this is pretty cool. After 21 months of silence, the PS3 and Xbox 360 versions of Rock Band 3 are getting some new songs, developer Harmonix announced today. It might seem strange for a game released in 2010 to get new content so late in the game. But then again: it's not like people have stopped making music!
First, one intrepid player tackled Dark Souls with a Rock Band guitar controller. Now the same guy is taking the notoriously difficult title on with a drum set from the rhythm game. AKA "It's got a good beat and you can die to it." Seriously, though: this fight looks a lot harder when you're pounding it out on a bunch…
Long gone from the retail side of things, Harmonix's Rock Band has nevertheless lived on for the past few years thanks to the studio's maintenance of the Rock Band Network, the online community where people could buy, create and share music. Sadly, that service is now winding down.
Sean Baptiste, like a great many people, often turns to humor as a means to cope. Learning that a sample of his cerebrospinal fluid featured traces of P. acnes (or propionibacterium acnes) was no different. He joked to his doctor, 'Oh, I'm going to have brain zits?' The doctor didn't think it was too funny.
Before they made people boogie in living rooms with Dance Central or shred plastic guitars with Rock Band, the people at Harmonix made Amplitude, a fantastic, underappreciated rhythm game for the PS2. Folks have been asking for more Amplitude for a long, long time now. Those fans might be getting their wish.
Two hours earlier, I bought Rock Band.
