It’s well known that Rock Band is the best party game around. There’s a reason why my local bar has a packed night every week. But longtime fans of developer Harmonix knew about their musical genius long ago, when Frequency and Amplitude knocked us all on our asses. The games had you pressing buttons in time to the music, laying down multiple tracks for all different genres of music to create a full song. They were incredibly fun for music lovers, and even though this was before peripherals became mandatory they controlled perfectly well with just a controller.
So when it came time to make Rock Band Unplugged for the PSP, a single player game with nothing extra required, it was no surprise to see them turn it back to the old format. Check out the various instrument tracks on this screen!
Today MTV, Harmonix and EA announced that Rock Band Unplugged will be hitting stores in North America and Europe on June 9th, and priced for 39.99 over here. It will have the some familiar returning features like the World Tour mode and a character creator, as well as Band Survival and Warm Up modes. The game will come with over 40 master recordings and feature nine exclusive songs that won’t be available anywhere else.
It might be a bit of a bummer to only have nine- that means there will be a whole lot of songs we’ve played to death already- but hopefully the new gameplay can keep things fresh. Here are the exclusive tracks (which will be made available for download on consoles in the future)-
3 Doors Down- “Kryptonite”
AFI- “Miss Murder”
Alice in Chains- “Would?”
Audioslave- “Gasoline”
Black Tide- “Show Me the Way”
Blink 182- “What’s My Age Again”
Freezepop- “Less Talk More Rokk”
Jackson 5- “ABC”
Tenacious D- “Rock Your Socks”
As you can see, it’s skewed a little yonger, although Alice in Chains, Freezepop and Jackson 5 will be great. There will also be downloadable songs made available, a system first.
Along with this they’ll also be releasing a special $200 PSP bundle that contains the game, a 4gig pro duo memory stick, a voucher to download School of Rock, and a black PSP.
Really, all they needed to say was that it’s a return to Frequency and everyone would have been all over it.