Ronni and I played through six chapters (out of eight) in The Beatles: Rock Band game last night. We played 30 tracks out of the 45 that come on the disc (and 5 of them twice). The game play is much like the other Rock Band games, but there is a kind of pure joy at playing Beatles’ songs that it feels like a whole different game.
The animations, both the intro animation, and the dreamscape animations during the songs from the Abbey Road venue, seem to fit perfectly in with the look of the Beatles (think Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band and Magical Mystery Tour). And when we unlocked our first prize, after collecting enough photographs, we were blown away. It was the recording that was on the Christmas record they sent to members of their fan club in 1963. Very cool.
The game brought back some fun memories from my childhood. I think I’ve mentioned this before, but I don’t have many memories from my early years, but I do remember being a Beatles’ fan.
There were four boys on the block where we lived. One was roughly my age. Another one was a couple of years older. And one was significantly older, but he always played with us. We had club houses and set up obstacle courses. We raced matchbox cars down the driveway. And, most relevantly, we had a Beatles club.
We had a pouch with pennies inside. Each penny was from a year that the Beatles were in existence. We would draw out a penny and find out what the Beatles were doing that year, what songs came out, things like that. Playing through this game feels a bit like being back there in our Beatles club. We get to hear songs in order that they were released. We get to play venues where the band played.
And playing “Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band” reminds me of when the older boy we hung out with would imitate a record player being slowed down (by someone holding a hand on the album) and then speeding up to make the record faster and faster. He did it so well, we thought it hysterical. (I was five, what do you expect? Heck, I’d probably think it was funny even today.)
Of course, my being a Beatles fan ended – for a time – in a fire. It was a good, old record burning, to get rid of the evil, satanic records. My mom had become a fundamentalist Christian and became convinced that popular music was evil. She burned all her records and encouraged my sister and I to burn ours, as well. (My sister had been into the Monkees.) We did, and I didn’t listen to the Beatles again for almost a decade.
But this isn’t about bad memories, it’s about the good ones. And this game reminds me of the fun of discovering the Beatles as a kid in the early 70s. Definitely worth it.
Tags: PS3, The Beatles
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