Are you a rhythm game freak like we are (that is to say you love Guitar Hero, Rock Band, DDR, Singstar, Karaoke Revolution, Britneys Dance Beat, .. uh..  well may not Britneys Dance Beat)?

Have you ever wasted precious gaming minutes when trying to swap discs to find the song you really want but can’t remember what disk it’s on?

MTV has released the perfect solution - It’s their Rhythm Game Track Finder(RGTF).

Their RGTF will allow you to search for your songs by Artist, Song Title, Game, or even Platform.

You can check it out on the MTV website here, or click the link at the bottom of the post.

Now if only they allowed you to print out a list of all songs and organize by the available search methods.  That would make our rhythm game ‘karaoke’ nights smoother.

Related Links:
MTV Rhythm Game Track Finder

Kotaku has a story up today regarding a survey that one of their readers, “shroom”, took part in.  The first question of the survey hinted at the sequel, asked the survey takers if they would be interested in “purchasing Rock Band 2″. 

Also considered in the survey is Guitar Hero IV inclusion of “full band play” and the whether one would purchase Guitar Hero or Rock Band.

The survey also hinted at changing the pricing scheme of the current Rock Band, and possibly including new Guitars.

The questions included in the survey were;

• How interested would you be in purchasing Rock Band 2? 
• How likely would you be to consider Rock Band Special Edition if it is priced at $199, but included an extra guitar (two wireless guitars, drums and microphone included)? 
• How likely would you be to consider Rock Band Special Edition if it is priced at $169 (one wireless guitar, drums and microphone included)?
• How likely would you be to consider Rock Band Special Edition if it is priced at $149 (one wireless guitar, drums and microphone included)?
• If Guitar Hero released a new game with full band play (guitar, bass, drums, singing) similar to Rock Band, which game would you be most likely to purchase?
• Now, which game would you be most likely to choose if one were priced slightly lower than the other?

Including 2 guitar controllers would have been nice when the game first came out when they didn’t have an option to buy a standalone, but the move would be welcome.  Now if they wanted to include 2 different controllers, one shaped like a bass, that would be fantastic.

Related Links:
Kotaku - Rock Band Survey Hints at Sequel, New Pricing

Two Guitar Hero players rock out to Guns ‘n Roses’ ‘Welcome To The Jungle’ in front of 9,600 fans, setting a new Guiness record for “Largest Audience for a Videogame Performance”.

The new record was set at the Give It A Name festival in  Earls Court, London, England this past Sunday May 11.

The two gamers, Renos Georgiou, 16, and Lyndon Jones, 15, won the chance to perform while at the Atticus clothing stand earlier in the day.  They played a co-op of ‘Welcome To The Jungle’ on expert.

Renos and Lyndon performed on the main stage ahead of headliner 30 Seconds to Mars. 

Guinness World Records’ records manager Gareth Deaves was on hand to adjudicate and issue Guinness World Record certificates cementing the achievement.

“Seeing two Guitar Hero players, rocking the 9,600 plus people in Earls Court was a genuine jaw-on-the-floor moment, illustrating how far we’ve come as a franchise,” said Ian McClellan, senior brand manager, Guitar Hero

Now 9,600 is a lot of people, but could that really be a record?  We’re going to do some research to see if that number hasn’t been bested in the past at some Guitar Hero gaming competition.

Related Links:
Give It A Name Festival
Guinness World Records Gamer’s Edition 2008

We reported last week that PS2 and Wii gamers would finally be able to get additional song content for Rock Band in the form of a game disk that would be available through major retailers.

At yesterday’s Electronic Arts’ Spring Break event, an EA rep confirmed that the disk would not require the original game.  Rock Band’s ‘Track Pack Volume 1′ will be a standalone disk.

That means that you can’t swap the disks to load up the new songs, but at least you don’t have to have a copy of the original Rock Band disk.

EA and Harmonix have taken some heat for the late release of Rock Band for the Wii but Mike Quigley, Group VP of Global Marketing, EA Games touched on that telling the crowd at the EA spring break that “we may have given a certain someone a head start last Christmas on the Wii, but we’re gonna quickly make up for it“.

Related Links:
Console Hero - Rock Band DLC coming for Wii and PS2!

Aspyr Media has updated Guitar Hero III: Legends of Rock for the Mac with a new patch. 

This patch will update any previous versions of Guitar Hero III to version 1.3.

This patch is highly recommended as it contains an optimization fix.  This will allow for a ‘Front Row Cam’ option so that lower end Macs can have smoother gameplay.

Also, if you play on a laptop, the update contains a battery meter icon (within the game) so players can keep track of how much charge remains on their Mac while playing the game.

The update measures in at 296 MB and is a free download.

Related Links:
Aspyr Support - Guitar Hero III for Mac Update

Update: We’ve included an additional photo after the break below, it’s not as crisp but, it contains more of the drums. 

It looks like the upcoming issue of Game Informer also contains a picture of the new Guitar Hero IV drum kit, and someone at Demonoid was nice enough to upload a scan of the magazine page that the drums are on.

The interview with the development team also had them talking about how the Guitar Hero IV drum kit differs from the Rock Band drum kit.

Activision hired John Devecka to help create the drum kit.  Devecka Enterprises created the first arcade drum simulation, MTV Drumscape, back in 1996 before DrumMania, and held patents for “method and apparatus for simulating a jam session and instructing a user in how to play the drums”. These patents are now held by Activision. 

The most significant difference with Guitar Hero IV’s drum set is that instead of 4 drum ‘heads’, it will have 5, with 2 representing dedicated cymbals(plus a bass drum pedal).  This is modeled after MIDI type electronic drum sets where the ‘cymbals’ are raised.

Like MIDI drums, the Guitar Hero IV kit also features velocity detection.  While the article did not specify exactly how this would come into play, the velocity detection on the MIDI kits will allow the drums to tell how hard they were hit and the sound is produced accordingly.  Harder hits will be louder, while softer hits will be quieter.

The development team also said they wanted to make a drum kit that was more durable and quieter as well.  Game Informer playtested the drums and said that the Guitar Hero IV drum kit was in fact quieter.

Did we mention it’s wireless?  More info and an additional photo after the break Read the rest

Guitar Hero IV

Apparently next week’s issue of Game Informer has a Guitar Hero IV cover story and guess who got an advance copy? No, not us, but rather a reader at the NeoGaf forums and she was kind enough to give some details which we mention here.

Extra Instruments

Unsurprisingly, Guitar Hero IV will be like Rock Band in the sense that it will contain not only the guitar, but a bass part, vocals, and drums. It wasn’t mentioned on the forum, but we read elsewhere that the Guitar Hero drums will have 4 ‘drum heads’ and 6 ‘cymbals’ (and a bass drum too we suspect - but will you need a 2nd TV just to fit all of the drum notes in?).

Create Your Own Music

What did come as a surprise is the news that Guitar Hero IV will feature a ‘create a song’ mode. Not a lot of in depth details were mentioned about this but it appears as though you will be able to compose tracks (guitar, bass, and drum parts). After composing a song you’ll be able to name it, create album art, and then upload it to ‘Guitar Hero Tunes’ where anyone can download it.

The create a song feature will not have vocals, possibly due to copyright or storage issues.

Song uploads will be limited to 5 at first but, depending on the ratings that your songs receive, you may be able to upload 10 (or more).

While the Wii and PS2 tend to get shafted when it comes to access to online features, it is said that these platforms will be able to utilize the ‘create a song’ feature as well (but Game Informer says that it will likely not be as robust as the PS3 and 360 versions.

Tracklisting

It was mentioned that all of the songs for Guitar Hero IV will be master tracks which is certainly welcome news. Activision was reluctant to mention specific songs (they don’t want to be scooped on those tracks by competition) but they did confirm 4 bands that will be included. The bands that were mentioned were Van Halen, The Eagles, Linkin Park and Sublime

Guitar Controller

As Gibson is no longer partnering with Red Octane and Activision to make the guitar controllers for the Guitar Hero series, Guitar Hero IV will see a new guitar designed by Red Octane. This new guitar will feature a new input mechanic that will “impact the way you play [Guitar Hero] in the future”. What the new mechanic is we can’t say, but Game Informer mentions that they saw ’see through’ note while playing and that Neversoft said this was a new input feature they were trying to patent.

This has to be the best Rock Band Drum Kit mod we have seen to date.

We’re most impressed with the mesh heads on the drums, but the quality of construction looks top notch as well.  I really wish there was someone over at edrums.info to give the credit to.

The tutorials are up for the drum heads and drum stands, and the tutorial to build the controller should be up soon.

The author of the post has provided step by step instructions with a number of pictures just in case you wanted to follow along and build one yourself.

Related Links:
EDrums - DIY Rock Band Drum Kit

The Rock Band Stage Kit is a a product that has been known about for a while.  Back in January some sharp viewers noticed that GameStop had a product listing on their website with a box shot that was quickly removed.

It appears as though the page has been updated with this product shot showing a smoke machine with the Rock Band logo, as well as a funky looking disc shaped object which appears to be the ‘lighting’ portion of the stage kit.

The product release date also appears to have been pushed back from June 23 2008 to August 15 2008.

The retail price on the Rock Band Stage Kit is $99.99, which is pretty pricey for a smoke machine and some lighting, but it’s got the Rock Band logo at least.  This will make a nice addition to our game room.

If you would like to pre-order this product, head on over to the product page at GameStop.com

We’ve included a screenshot of the original listing below.

Related Links:
GameStop.com - Xbox 360 Rock Band Stage Kit

In a previous post, we reported that an upcoming South Park DVD release, of the complete 11th season, would feature bonus content including 3 songs for Rock Band.

This information has been reported as false. 

TVShowsOnDVD.com, who we picked up the story from annouced that “Late yesterday a studio spokesperson contacted us with bad news: this won’t be happening after all.  When we questioned further about the cause of this, we were told that the information we received from retailers was incorrect”.

Related Links:
TVShowsOnDVD - Important Update about Rock Band Bonus