Quite simply, I am a Beatles fan because of video games – before I discovered a certain game, I didn’t give a damn about one of the most influential acts in modern music history. But this week, the only reason for my fandom was The Beatles: Rock bandturns 15. Harmonix’s masterpiece among rhythm games seems to be forgotten despite the miraculous circumstances that made its creation possible.
It remains by far the greatest tribute the band has ever received, and deserves to be remembered both as the pinnacle of a forgotten genre and as a prime example of how games can introduce new, younger audiences to things they would otherwise have missed.
The long and winding road
The existence of a Beatles Video game was announced by MTV Games, Apple (no, not that Apple, This one) and Harmonix in October 2008. In the media landscape at the time, this was a huge deal, as both Games And mainstream Media outlets reported on the new, untitled project. At the time, there were two dominant franchises in the absurdly successful rhythm game genre, and every few months the biggest bands in the world would choose sides.
Guitar Heroowned by Activision and developed by Neversoft, managed to tie groups like Aerosmith, Metallica and Van Halen to exclusive contracts that eventually led to their own standalone titles. In the meantime Rock bandthe franchise from Harmonix (the original creators of Guitar Hero, Co-published by MTV Games and EA, the confusing game managed to get bands like U2, AC/DC and The Pixies to include entire albums in its ever-growing and always forward-compatible music library.
Two bands were widely considered the holy grail of this ongoing Cold War: Led Zeppelin (one of the few rock bands whose music was not heard in either series) and the Beatles. Both groups have always placed great importance on how and where their music was licensed.
So when one of these holdouts announced that they were going to jump on the biggest trend in gaming, it was a big deal. But there was one caveat: players couldn’t import those songs into the others. Rock band Games, one of the main advantages of the Harmonix series over the competition. Still, it was the damn Beatles. That was big news for everyone.
Everyone except me.
Nowhere, man
As a fanboy who browses the Harmonix forums daily, with hundreds of Rock band songs on his Xbox 360 hard drive, I was not exactly thrilled. I knew very little about the Liverpool quartet. Aside from a few late-night infomercials touting box sets of their old music, the Beatles were about as far away from me, a black teenager from New York City who grew up mostly into hip-hop, 80s pop and the Tony Hawk Pro Skater Soundtrack as humanly possible.
Thanks to my parents, I had a fondness for a handful of older rock bands like The Police and Jimi Hendrix. But the Beatles, who split up before any of them could speak complete sentences, weren’t something Mom and Dad liked in their formative years either.
It was the Xbox E3 press conference 2009, of all thingsthat changed my mind. In a brilliant marketing move, Microsoft opened the show with the world premiere of The Beatles: Rock band. Six merry members of the Harmonix team played “Day Tripper,” followed by Giles Martin, the son of the legendary Beatles producer, who explained that the Beatles catalog was “carefully reworked specifically for this game.” The resulting work was also the basis for the Remastered from 2009 will be released along with the release of the game.
Then, in a moment that seems like a fever dream today, Era without sauce of Summer Games Fests, Giles was came on stage Paul McCartney, Ringo Starr, Olivia Harrison (wife of George) and real badass Yoko Ono-Lennon. This was a rare moment where the living Beatles and their surviving loved ones came together under one roof (heh), and the mainstream media duly covered it.
The significance of this was of course completely lost on me as a 16-year-old writing stupid E3 blogs for his 300 Tumblr followers. But I was fascinated. I finally understood that this was not just a Rock band Game with Beatles avatars and some extra chrysanthemums in the main menu UI. Sure, that wasn’t my band. But that was clearly something Harmonix to make excitedThe team’s enthusiasm was infectious enough to make me, a fan of their work since frequency And amplitudecurious about the final product.
A few weeks after the release date on September 9, 2009, I picked up my copy and quickly discovered my new musical obsession. The Beatles: Rock band was obviously a great game. But it was also a deep, lovingly crafted history lesson, told through 45 songs, dozens of archival videos and photos, loading screen fun facts, and original movie sequences, aimed squarely at a complete Beatles newbie. Harmonix has painstakingly recreated the sets, stages, stadiums, and imaginary landscapes of the band’s entire career, and it made me immediately understand why they were important.
Repair a hole
Sure, this was one of the most sugarcoated history lessons you can get about the Beatles, a band with no shortage of Controversies And Shit. And since music (and games) are subjective, not everyone would get the same result from it. But like the Wii, which simplified the hobby for working parents and retirees just a few years earlier, The Beatles: Rock band was undeniable proof of how video games can re-access and re-contextualise a point of cultural significance for all ages.
One year earlier The Beatles: Rock bandI would have cynically dismissed them as a bunch of old white guys who don’t have any real classics like a Reasonable doubt or a Late registration. Within a month of the credits rolling, I bought 70 percent of those 2009 remasters. I even learned to play some of their songs on bass.
Harmonix has now separated from the Rock band series to create unsung treasures like the experimental turntable simulator Fixing unitThen, in 2021, the company was bought by Epic Games and has since developed the successful Fortnite Festival. But it’s a pity that the Beatles game only received a handful of DLC releases (the rest of Abbey Road, rubber core, Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Bandand the free single All you need is love). An even greater tragedy is that Harmonix couldn’t renew those licenses so the game remained playable on modern hardware (I’d love it if Epic used their near-infinite war chest of V-Bucks to change that, but I digress).
About 15 years after its publication The Beatles: Rock band represents one of gaming’s finest moments: the tasteful and respectful preservation of groundbreaking works from another medium in a new and interesting way. The rhythm game bubble may have burst shortly after its release in 2009. But The Beatles: Rock band is paramount to the industry trend that gave birth to it. It is a gold standard in a larger phenomenon that makes the entire medium so unique and so compelling.
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