Buzzin Games

Well I’ll… tell you something… I hope you understand… that’s that the Beatles Rock Band game (y’know, the one that previously wasn’t just a Rock Band title) will be launching worldwide, across all formats on the 9th September 2009. I’m sure there’s a reason why the date 09/09/09 is significant, but I’m not familiar enough with The Beatles to know what it is. Any ideas?

Anyway, in some news which really shows up yesterday’s stale sounding Guitar Hero Greatest Hits cash in, gamers will be able to enjoy the music of the fab four in game for the first time, after Harmonix paid an obscene-yet-unknown amount of cash for the rights.

Y’know what else is likely to be obscene? The cost of the full instrument bundle, that’s what. Many of us (myself included) were left a little outraged by the price of Rock Band in Europe last time around (£180 for instruments plus game, significantly more than our US cousins), and if the early US RRPs are anything to go by, we UK gamers can look forward to being offended all over again.

With unique controllers based on the actual instruments played by John, Paul, George and Ringo, you can look forward to some stinging pricing: The game alone will be $60 (£43), the standalone guitars will be $100 (£70) and the full bundle (presumably with guitars, drums and game) will set you back an eye watering $250 (£175). You can expect a full UK mark-up on top of these straight currency conversions too with the usual excuses.

The Beatles aren’t the first band to get a rhythm action game devoted only to themselves: Guitar Hero has previously had an Aerosmith song disk, Rock Band have released the music of AC/DC and Guitar Hero: Metallica is on the way.

Aging PC gamers may also remember a first person shooter based on the band KISS – the only thing more unusual than the franchise being the fact that KISS Psycho Circus: The Nightmare Child was actually pretty good.

Will you be getting this? Fed up of rhythm-action games? Drop us a comment.