Following the announcement of Green Day: Rock Band at the VGAs last weekend, I came across this list at Techland featuring 10 bands that the writer thinks deserve their own Rock Band.
At first I thought the list was one of those jokey, snarky posts put together just to generate clicks — and to be sure, there are a few gag entries in there — but there’s actually some fairly reasoned argument, too. For example:
Grateful Dead
If the legendary jam band got their own game, there would be plenty of Deadheads lined up to buy it. Not only do they have the catalog to support a full title, but the imagery. Their iconic artwork — the dancing bears, skull and roses, the Jester, Uncle Sam Skeleton, etc. — would be perfect for the game’s backgrounds.
Take a look at the list and let me know if you agree with any of their choices.
[Read]
I’ll take Led Zep, U2 and Grateful Dead – I’d consider The Who, The Stones and Maiden. The rest? No thanks.
Led Zep I love, although I don’t know much of their music (I know – stop rolling your eyes), and I think a lot of their music would be perfect, as well as challanging as hell – I don’t really want Stairway, but there’s so much more that I would play.
U2 I kinda enjoy, they’re certainly the sort of band I would’ve expected to get the treatment (I really wasn’t expecting Green Day, and I still don’t know what I think about it) – afterall, they are an iconic band with a lot of fantastic tunes, although I can’t help but thinking of Bill Bailey doing the “massive technical failure at a U2 gig sketch – http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-1946423117058292213# – If you don’t know Bill Bailey, he’s probably the best British Comedian at the moment, and one hell of a musician – the U2 bit starts at 2:30 into the video, but watch the lot).
I’d not really heard of The Grateful Dead before RockBand, and I think I use to assume they were justanotherpunkband – imagine my shock when I first heard the ‘Dead pack the first time on my play through. The whole lot is amongst my favourites to play in the game, and I want the other 5 ‘dead tracks to come out.
The Who and The Stones both fall into the catagory of “some songs I love, some songs I loathe” so I’d have to consider it. Iron Maiden is slightly different in that although I love them, most of the tracks in RB I don’t like to play, with the exception of Fear Of The Dark, which has always been one of my favourite pieces of music.
Other bands I would like to see as RB games (sorry – GH don’t get the feel right for me!) – Killing Joke – one of the most influential British bands that few people know of. If we didn’t have Killing Joke, there’s a lot of bands out and about who wouldn’t do what they do now, and their backcatalogue is… huge. Dire Straits – this would be evil on the guitar, but there’s some truely epic tracks out there by the band, and I’d love for a large chunk of Alchemy to appear in RB, especially the Sultans of Swing – that solo sends shivers up my spine.
Ummmmm…. ok – I’m done!
Oh please. This is the kind of list that you would also find on the XBox forums “DLC Wishlist” threads. Everyone has their own take on who should have DLC, let alone their own game. After reading the list you linked to, I agree that Led Zeppelin and the Stones could pull off their own game. I’m not a huge fan of the Who, and I dont see that an entire game of just The Who is gonna have enough draw to make it worth anyones while. I mean, they already have quite a bit of DLC, why do we need more?
The request for Iron Maiden is a valid one, seeing how they influenced many of todays Heavy Metal bands. But enough for a whole game? I dont think so.
This all falls into whether or not they should just stick to DLC instead of making an entire game. I know if they made a Zeppelin game, I would buy it, but it better not have any damn “filler” songs, which is the plague of the Band Title games…
Led Zeppelin would be amazing. They have to convince Jimmy Page though. I’d love to see a Rock Band version of The Crunge, what with its whacky time signatures and all – http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Crunge#Time_signatures
Merry Christmas
I saw an interview with Jimmy Page (in Rolling Stone I believe) saying that he is fine with Rock Band/Guitar Hero but he isn’t giving up his masters is the real issue. It would be amazing and tiring. If they do any of the live treatment they have been doing for a lot of these bigger bands (Nirvana, The Who, Iron Maiden, AC/DC), 20 minutes into the live Communication Breakdown when you realize the song is just now half over, you may want to kill yourself .
Mostly good choices, but as for me, I’d say somewhere along the line you’d just have to have Queens of the Stone Age and Red Hot Chili Peppers. Both bands have been around fairly long enough and have gone through their share of evolution, especially our little friends the Chili Peppers. Time and time again my girlfriend has cursed Harmonix for not releasing more or all of Stadium Arcadium. It goes without saying that the imagery from these bands’ songs (as well as RHCP’s stage-presence alone) would flourish in the in-game visuals. Other artists I had more hope for some time ago compared to now were Tool and Them Crooked Vultures (to hold us over for Led Zeppelin at least!). However, Activision got their hands on Tool as well as APC and cranked out 3 pretty damn good visuals for World Tour, so I fear that may be it as far as hoping for a dedicated Tool game.