The full list of eighty-five bands to be featured in the fifth installment of Guitar Hero, due Sep 1, is available at the Official Guitar Hero 5 website, and Neversoft has started to disclose some of the specific tracks that will appear in the game.
Guitar Hero 5 will include classics like Deep Purple, Bob Dylan and Santana, as well as some heavier rock such as Iggy Pop, The Bronx, Darkest Hour and Children of Bodom. Check out the 24 revealed tracks:
“As you mosh on, you can change the individual volume levels of the four instruments through your headbanging style and intensity. You can see how far you have pushed the level of each instrument on the four MoshMeters.”
Activision Blizzard is releasing a total of four new music-based video games later this year. We had already guessed that DJ Hero, Guitar Hero 5 and Band Hero were on their way, but now the company has also confirmed the existence of Guitar Hero: Van Halen to videogame blog Joystiq.
Guitar Hero: Van Halen will feature some of Van Halen’s greatest hits as well as music from Queen, Weezer, Blink-182, The Offspring and Queens of the Stone Age. Also, the first screens of the DJ Hero peripheral have been revealed. It’s a turntable controller, with three buttons to press while spinning a “record”, check out the photos after the cut:
Are there any video game fans out there? Any Guitar Hero fans? Have you ever heard of Xbox Game with Fame? If you haven’t, it is actually a cool idea, basically you are able to play Guitar Hero with a famous band. The next event will take place on Thursday, May 14, with The Silversun Pickups.
It is pretty easy to play, but you have to be an Xbox Live Gold Member. If you aren’t, don’t worry, you have enough time to upgrade your subscription. Then you need to send a friend request to the Gamertag “Silversun GWF”. You need to download the track pack for the Silversun Pickups. The game begins at 10:00 EST, but you should sign on 30 minutes before the game starts.
Besides the cool new Nintendo DSi video with Jamie Lidell, other music game tidbits include Guns N’ Roses latest album Chinese Democracy in its entirety on Rock Band as downloadable content on April 14, and the release of Guitar Hero: Smash Hits in June, which will be a “best of” collection of the Guitar Hero series’ most popular songs.
RedOctane, the company that publishes the Guitar Hero franchise, is tackling the Hip Hop genre next with DJ Hero, which they believe will expand the audience for music games. Co-founder Kai Huangsaid that music games are “not a fad”, and that what the company has achieved so far is just “the beginning of a huge category.”
Check out some of the announced tracks for Guitar Hero: Smash Hits after the jump:
The wireless-capable microphones that shipped with Microsoft’s singing video game, Lips, will be compatible with Guitar Hero: Metallica, and Rock Band 2. Being hooked up to a video game console by a short cord impedes many of the more enthusiastic vocalist moves, so singers can revel in this forthcoming freedom.
Today, Microsoft officially announced that Guitar Hero: Metallica supports the wireless microphones, and Rock Band 2 will be updated this summer to add the feature. Microsoft also stated that “additional titles” will support the Lips microphone, which probably includes Harmonix’s upcoming Rock Band: Beatles.
Online social networking site Myspace, has launched a karaoke service in Japan, expanding its musical reach to the nation loaded with lovers of the sing-along entertainment. MySpace Karaoke has logged more than eight million visitors since it launched in May of last year in Canada and the United States, and lets users post videos of themselves singing on the site.
“If you had told me years ago we would launch an online karaoke site in Japan, I would have told you it is like selling ice to the Eskimos,” said MySpace Karaoke general manager Nimrod Lev. “Boy was I wrong. It seems like the land of karaoke has nothing even close to that. We met with all the leading companies there and they loved what they saw.”
Electronic Arts, video game publisher of popular titles like The Sims and Spore, is currently helping MTV distribute the music video game Rock Band, but at the Goldman Sachs Technology and Internet Conference, EA’s Chief Operating Officer John Pleasants indicated that the company might be developing a their own music game in the near future by commenting:
“There are lots of other things you can do with music, and we’re working on interesting things, and we know our competition is working on interesting things.”
Singstar Queen to be released in March, GDC Awards go to music video game designers, and the Slayer track on Guitar Hero: Metallica looks pretty complex. All in today’s round up:
Queen fans can rejoice! Out in March, Sony’s SingStar Queen will feature 25 tracks on the Playstation 3, including Somebody to Love, Bohemian Rhapsody and I Want to Break Free. Given Queen’s wide range of style and eccentric fanbase, it’s a difficult task reducing the band’s catalogue to 25. Check out the full track list, have they done a good job? [Kotaku]
The Game Developers Choice Awards at the San Francisco’s Moscone Center March 25th will be honoring Harmonix Co-Founders Alex Rigopulos and Eran Egozy, co-developers of a groundbreaking decade-plus long line of music games including Guitar Hero and culminating in the Rock Band franchise, with the Pioneer Award for their work; and Tommy Tallarico, co-founder of the Video Games Live concert series and founder of the Game Audio Network Guild (G.A.N.G.), with the Ambassador Award for helping to advance the game audio community. [Video Games Live]
Slayer’s contribution to Guitar Hero: Metallica is War Ensemble off their album Seasons of the Abyss. This video, from Pelit, shows Neversoft staff playing the difficult song. You can see some quick double pedaling, complex guitar solos and screaming vocals. Check the video out, pure awesome:
