PAX East is nearly upon us. And if all goes well with my flight tomorrow (oh please go well, flight) I’ll have an opportunity to sit down with some Harmonix peeps tomorrow evening for a little Q-and-A about Green Day: Rock Band and the Rock Band Network.

So: Got anything in particular you’d like to know about either or both of those topics? Post your questions here, and I’ll pass the best ones on to the folks who are in a position to answer. It’ll be like you’re interviewing Harmonix yourself! Except, you know, through me. I’m sort of like your mouth.

Ew. Wait, no, I’m nothing like your mouth. Gross.

Anyway, ask away!

It’s St. Patrick’s Day, which means green beer, corned beef, and talking up the latest endeavors of you and your friends.

St. Patrick’s Day isn’t about talking up the latest endeavors of you and your friends, you say? Well, it is now. Behold! The first-ever Plastic Axe Thread of Wanton Pimpage, wherein I invite you to share with the rest of us something you’ve done, or something your friends or family have done — or even something you’ve just heard about — that you think deserves a little extra attention. Obviously I’d love to hear most about musical exploits, but hey, it says “Open Thread” there up at the top, so anything’s fair game. (Well, keep it work-safe, OK?)

I’ll start. In spite of the fact that I can’t seem to gather the time and motivation to get a new musical project going, a ton of friends and family have been chugging along in various musical directions. For example, my friends Pete and Ken have put together a nifty, hard-edged pop-punk-ish project called Restless Habs. My nephew Jon recently joined the Cleveland indie/punk outfit Sun God. And my other nephews Jeff and Steve are in the studio finishing up a new EP for their Christian alternative-rock band Like Jonathan. And of course my brother Matthew continues to tear up New York — nay, the world — with his mad jazz bass chops.

How about you?

Yup, it’s RBNapalooza still. Now that the service has been live for a few days, what’s your favorite track so far?

I haven’t tried out all the songs — not remotely — but so far I’m partial to Jonathan Coulton’s “Code Monkey,” mainly for the great beat, fun and simple guitar, and ridiculously catchy chorus. On a less well-known note, I’ve also been pretty impressed with “The Heist” from DnA’s Evolution, mainly because of that ridiculous drum track. No, I’m not remotely close to passing it on Expert, but I’m having fun trying.

How about you?

The last few weeks I’ve been putting up some fairly chin-strokey questions, so let’s do something more direct today:

Have you ever had to replace or repair any of your music game controllers?

I’ve been fairly lucky in this regard: My original Rock Band instruments started getting a little wonky right when Rock Band 2 came out, and I was planning on upgrading anyway. My Guitar Hero World Tour guitar got squeaky and sticky, but WD-40 fixed that pretty easily. (Oh, and my World Tour drum kit was one of those with messed up sensitivity, but the tuning software fixed that right up.)

The only real problem I’ve had so far where I considered outright replacing the instrument was when a couple buttons on my RB2 guitar started losing sensitivity. But this thread in the Rock Band forums helped me make the guitar stronger, faster, smarter. Well, not smarter.  But the other two.

How about you?

There’s a lot of fun speculation going around lately about a potential shared future for the Rock Band and Guitar Hero franchises. Bill at Dubious Quality kicked off this latest round by linking together a number of comments from higher-ups at the big players in the music game genre, like MTV Games’ Paul DeGooyer mentioning that the Guitar Hero-v.-Rock Band “format war” isn’t good for consumers, and Activision’s Bobby Kotick saying he regrets not buying Harmonix.

Bill’s conclusion is that either:

1. Activision wants to be the distributor for Rock Band games when the EA agreement expires, or
2. Activision wants to buy Harmonix from Viacom/MTV Games.

Personally I find the first option to be the worst of all worlds; what does Activision gain from distributing a competing product to their own Guitar Hero? Seems like it’s all loss, no win for them. The second option, on the other hand, seems a lot more plausible to me. Not likely, mind you — just plausible.

Tommy at RockBandAide, meanwhile, proposes a different theory to link all these things together:

Is it possible that in the future, Rock Band DLC could be cross-platform compatible?  To take it a step further, could both franchises create exclusive, yet cross-compatible content? … If you could buy Guitar Hero games (which had exclusive content to the franchise) and export them to Rock Band, and vice versa, it’s a win-win for all parties involved.

This one has the benefit of being a bit more plausible in that it doesn’t cause the destruction of one of the two big franchises. But it still leads to the question of why Activision slashed its Guitar Hero development, and why Bobby Kotick talked up Harmonix.

We’ve also got similar theories from Kotaku and The Escapist. So here’s the question I have for you today. It’s a two-parter. Well, two and a half.  First, do you buy any of these theories — or do you have one of your own? And second, do you think this kind of consolidation would be good for music games?

Let’s figure this out!

Have you ever groaned and rolled your eyes at the next song in a playlist in a music game, only to discover after playing that it’s actually a hell of a lot of fun?

I have. It actually happens fairly frequently, but the one that really sticks out in my memory is Ratt’s “Round and Round” from Guitar Hero: Smash Hits. I remember this song from when it was on the radio, and I always found it boring as hell to listen to. Naturally I expected the same from playing it.

Turns out it’s a blast. I mean, seriously: a total blast. At least on guitar and drums, it’s right in that sweet spot for me: It’s predictable enough that I can play it well after just a couple verses, but there’s enough fun little flourishes going on that it’s not a boring chore to slog through.

Honorable mention goes to — and I still can’t believe I’m saying this — Taylor Swift’s “Picture to Burn” in Band Hero. This is for one reason and one reason only: The guitar part which, thanks to some banjo interludes, is a hell of a lot more active and entertaining than you’d think from such an insipid-sounding song.

How about you?

I was looking back through The Vault the other day, and I realized there’s a bunch of tunes from the early Guitar Hero games that I’d love to be able to play with a full band. Some of them are already available, via DLC (on Guitar Hero or Rock Band) or Smash Hits, but there are a bunch more than aren’t.

So I was wondering, what songs from the guitar-only games would you like to see refreshed with full-band action? (Or with more recent gameplay introductions like open notes?)

Here are a few of my choices, in order of game, though this is by no means an exhaustive list.

Sum 41: “Fat Lip” — I find the band obnoxious, but man was this song fun to play on the first Guitar Hero. The constantly changing rhythms would make this entertaining as hell on the drums.

Guns n’ Roses: “Sweet Child O’ Mine” — Guitar Hero II included the fun bass line, but I’d love to be able to screech along to the vocals, and I suspect the low-key drum track would be fun for those of us who hover between Hard and Expert.

Primus: “John the Fisherman” — Really, I’d love any Primus song with a full band; every part (except vocals) on pretty much every song would be a spectacular challenge. I felt inhuman when I beat this one on Expert bass in Guitar Hero II.

Muse: “Knights of Cydonia” — I continue to be surprised that this Guitar Hero III track hasn’t arrived on Rock Band yet. Seems like every part would be fun…though I suppose there’s that long intro with no vocals.

I’ll pop a playlist of these tracks after the break in case you’re not familiar with them, but I also want to hear your choices. (To easily see which songs were featured on those early games, just head to The Vault and click on the Released column — it’ll sort by ascending release date.) So, your picks: let’s hear them. Continue reading →