Rock Band Turns 4 Years Old! Post Your RB Memories

[SeattleSauve]

I was introduced to these games via Guitar Hero 2, I remember having such a hard time between medium and hard, then a hard time between hard and expert etc... When Rock Band 1 came out I actually don't know the first time I played it, but I'm sure it was at a party, then I started falling in love with the drums.

When Rock Band 2 came out, that's when I bough my Ions... It's also when I decided it'd be a good idea to do Bladder of Steel on Expert Bass... This is one of the most insane things I've done, I came within a note or two of failing out on Panic Attack (which I think was the second to last song), which would have invalidated my bladder of steel achievement. My guitar was full of sweat, my eyes were dry, it was like 3am.

I've had rock band parties for the last couple of years on my birthday which is around halloween, so I have a ton of memories and pictures to represent those times for sure.

When Rock Band 3 came out I decided to go all out and buy a Roland drum kit, lots of money, but worth every cent. I can't tell you the difference it makes to play on a real kit. I also decided that I was going to hit completionist, and waited paitently for the squier to come out in March. I did eventually hit completionist, but holy crap it wasn't easy (especially since I had almost no legacy DLC).

With the advent of pro guitar, and pro drums all of a sudden DLC felt worth it, so since RB3 came out I've bought a ton of DLC, I also bought Green Day, and Lego RB too - yes, after RB3 came out. Heck I even went to a motley crue/poison concert after downloading some DLC and being reminded of my hair metal days

I am eternally grateful for RB providing exports, at the time it wasn't something the other games were doing, but it was such a good idea, as was charting all the pro drums for songs the whole way through immediately enabling you to re-experience the songs in your library after exporting.

In terms of new music, RB has introduced me to a ton of new music, and even given me a more in depth appreciation for bands I already knew. I remember going through each setlist when they were announced and finding the related music videos to find out which were the hidden gems that I didn't know about. Heck I didn't know Rainbow in the Dark until RB came out, and I spent the whole week ahead of RB 3 release singing that in my car at full volume while simultaneously wondering how the guitar solo would be charted.

Another reason I'm thankful for RB is it actually has helped me get less sensitive about my singing. My voice isn't that great, but spending time singing in rock band has given me more confidence, and I'm pretty sure I wouldn't be singing to my child these days at all if it weren't for RB vox. So I thank harmonix for that.

Rock Band was the title that kept pushing the bounds, multiple players came out with RB1, the midi adapter, keys, pro drums, and the squier in RB3. Amazing.

I know not as many people are playing as were before, but I do hope that HMX doesn't stop pushing the bounds of what is possible in music gaming.

[MisterFurious67]

There have been a lot of good times since RB1 came out in 2007, so it's tough to choose just one. The intoxicating combination of music and gaming hooked me first, then pulled in my friends and family, too.

One of the most memorable times was a party just after I hooked up my stage kit and brought home a projector from work. We had the music cranked all the way up, lights and fog filling the room and we just went nuts with it. By the end of Won't Get Fooled Again, we felt like we were the WHO. Just an amazing time.

Thanks for all the great times HMX. Looking forward to even more with a revitalized RB4.

[iJoashFoo]

Unlike almost everyone here, my first introduction to the series was through Rock Band Unplugged for the PSP in 2009 as I did not own a console back then. Had a blast, going through the world tour on medium and finally progressing to expert on 'Painkiller'. Good times.. But I soon forgot about it as there were more hardcore rhythm games for the PSP (DJ Max) until this year.

A new friend that I'd made just this year introduced me to Rock Band 2 and effectively reintroduced me to the series.

By September, I'd successfully persuaded my father to get for me Rock Band 3 with the keyboard, microphone plus the legacy and pro-guitars. (My living room is too packed to have space for the drums) As I already am a pianist, I was able to jump straight into expert keys, and was able to take my first steps into learning guitar thanks to the pro-guitar trainer. Since my purchase of the game, I've not played any other games besides this due to how addictive it is.

Rock Band 3 was actually never officially released in Singapore, where I live, which meant I had to make do with the US version. Nevertheless, I still obtained US PSN cards to purchase DLC. I wouldn't have gone to such great lengths with another game. The feeling of playing in a band, the euphoria you get when you gold star one of the hardest songs in the game, is something I'd never experienced before prior to Rock Band, and keeps me coming back to play this game almost every single day.

My favourite memory? Probably playing 'Free Bird' on expert keys for the first time with a full band online. From the starting chord to the final Big Rock Ending, and seeing those nice gold stars on the screen, makes me smile to this day whenever I recall it.

Thank you, HMX, for creating such a wonderful gaming franchise.

[MourganDespana]

Hey gang,
When did you first play RB? When did you know you were hooked? Have any crazy RB party stories / photos / videos / mug shots? Meet any friends through RB? Discover any new bands through RB? We want to hear all about it, from your first exposure to what keeps you playing to this day.

I'll post some of my favorite / craziest RB stories in this thread as well, but I'll let you guys kick things off. Happy birthday Rock Band!

Here are a few of mine:

Walking with the RB I bundle through a mall to my car after just buying it. God that was unwieldy.

I remember the first time I had friends over playing Space Truckin' and during the drum solo my friends phone goes off unknown to all of us. We hear the Star Trek "red alert" sound in tune with the song.

Playing at Kumoricon 2009 with the folks from Ground Kontrol. Had a blast all weekend.

Last week getting to help with the videos. I enjoyed the hell out of it.

[WillDrum4Food]

I procedded to go to my local Futureshop and managed to find the Ion drum kit, bought it with my fiancee and drove the hour to go home.

I buy things with money but you engage in human trafficking?!

Well played, sir.

(ZING!! )

[BrutalBrian]

Happy birthday Rock Band! Still remember picking up my RB1 bundle after the preorder. Drum pedal didn't work out of the box, but otherwise was a pleasant experience. Then I found the RB forums and the rest was/is history.

*Proud to be a registered user since 11/11/07*

[hmxhenry]

HUGE thanks to everyone for sharing your RB memories here. We just posted a blog entry with a bunch of dev stories, and you'll see at least one more similar post in the next few days. It really means a lot to us to see so many people sharing such great stories so we're going to do everything we can to keep up with you guys on stories and videos!

I've shared a ton of stories in the most recent podcast and in the attached blog, but I've got a few short ones I can share here:

* Finding out that your heroes love something that you've been a part of is such an amazing thrill, so when we found out that Bryan Lee O'Malley, creator of Scott Pilgrim, was a fan of Rock Band, it absolutely melted my brain. We had a brief back and forth with him around the launch of RB2 and he actually seemed really put off by music games, but we offered to send him a bundle anyway on account of the fact that so much of Scott Pilgrim was centered around music. We only hoped that he'd give it a try. It was a few months before we heard back from him, but when we did he told us that SP Vol 5 was going to be late because he was playing so much RB that his hand hurt when he had to ink the comic. OOPS.

As if that wasn't cool enough, when SP Vol 5 did ship, the 2 page splash of the entire cast in the center of the book featured the main character in a RB bass logo shirt. And then Michael Cera ended up wearing the same shirt in the movie adaptation! It really meant a lot to play even a small role in a comic that means so much to me.

* I've met a lot of crazy people playing Rock Band. Tom Hanks, Tom Arnold, Dominic Monaghan, Monique, Paris Hilton, Perez Hilton, T Pain, Brooke Hogan, Sting, Andrew WK, John Cleese, Matthew Lillard, Tommy Davidson, Joan Rivers, Seth Green, JK Simmons, Jason Sudeikis, Elijah Wood, Aaron Douglass from Battlestar Galactica, Cat Cora from Iron Chef, Michael Sinterniklaas who voices Dean on the Venture Bros.... it's been pretty weird.

I think my favorite celebrity RB moment was with Rob McElhenney and Kaitlin Olson from It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia. Most people you meet at conventions, especially famous folks, will get up, play a song, snap a photo and head on to the next thing. It's always cool when people hang out after playing, but Rob and Kaitlin spent the better part of an hour with us shooting the breeze, shouting out requests, telling us about working with DeVito and generally being awesome. It really picked up our spirits at the end of a really long and exhausting week. We ended up connecting with them after the show and they were really excited about using RB as a plot point in a future holiday episode, and there was even a rough script floating around, but it just didn't come together. Still, one of my favorite RB meet ups of all time.

* Having the community build our booth at PAX 2010. There are few things that have ever made me more proud. Our event budget was pretty lean, but we are huge supporters of PAX and I would attend the show by myself, unpaid, with RB in my hotel room if need be. So when we were brainstorming ways to make PAX work on a limited budget, we started spit balling the idea of a BYOB / Build Your Own Booth situation. We put together a list of 50 things we wanted in our space, some functional, some decorative and some ridiculous, and we asked fans to bring them to our booth in exchange for RB3 software and instruments at launch.

We thought we'd be lucky to have all 50 items reserved in the 6 weeks leading up to PAX, and realistically figured we'd get about half of that. Turns out the entire list was claimed in less than an hour. And sure enough, every single person showed up at PAX as promised, hauling sneakers, boom boxes, inflatable kiddie pools, doughnuts, a suit of armor, balloons, a VHS copy of Road House and a lifesize Han Solo in carbonite and dozens of other nonsense items. It was unbelievable, a sublime mix of DIY / community ingenuity and absolutely bananas booth design. What started as an act of necessity became one of the greatest community projects of all time and I will be forever grateful to the RB / DC community for saving that PAX for us.

You can check out a ton of photos of our crazy booth over on our Flickr page.

[frisbeesteve]

Wow, thinking back...

My best friend doesn't have any video game consoles, but he had told me about how much fun he had on Guitar Hero games at his family's get-togethers. I pretty much blew him off since I didn't have access to play anyways thinking "oh, that's cute for little kids to pretend they're playing guitars" and that's the extent to which I cared.

In August 2008, I was attending a surprise 80th birthday for my grandmother being hosted by my cousin 800 miles from home. While there, he whipped out Rock Band on his PS3 (this was just a short while before Rock Band 2 was released) and started handing out guitars, the drums and mic. I obliged, not wanting to be rude and figured I'd go along with it for a bit to make him a happy host. As soon as the game was loaded up and he's scrolling through the library, I'm hearing clips of songs I know and love... AND THEY ARE STUDIO VERSIONS OF THOSE SONGS! I immediately became a little more interested, and we began to play Say It Ain't So, I Think I'm Paranoid amongst others. I was playing easy guitar, and immediately realized that when I would miss a note, the song was "missing" too, which I thought was super neat, although embarrasing. I was getting 98-99% right away, so my cousin told me to bump it up to medium, to which I refused, stating "Do you want to hear the song the way it's supposed to be heard or not?" Anyways, he got my dad to sing Margaritaville (which still to this day blows my mind, my dad will not touch the mic normally, but loves to play some medium bass when he's over for holidays now). Finally after I played Enter Sandman, he got his online friend to join us and show off a bit on expert guitar, getting about 93% on Enter Sandman that visually just BLEW MY MIND!

I came back home constantly thinking about Rock Band, as well as the fact that I had thought I was done with video games... but I couldn't stop thinking about it! Finally, I told my wife that I wanted a PS3 and the RB2 complete band kit for my birthday/Christmas combo. I picked up the original Rock Band used on eBay, got everything early (around Thanksgiving time, just like now) and the rest is history.

Oh yeah... I began playing my RB1 and RB2 on medium straight away, no longer concerned about messing the sound of songs up for others!

I'm about 1,550 songs deep into the games, play a little of everything (though I'm a master of nothing, haha) and have sooooo much fun still to this day. I've met some of the most awesome and incredible online friends, several of which I've been able to meet in person, a couple of which have come 200+ miles to rock out!

My musical interests prior to the game were already very broad, spanning almost every genre I can think of (although not too big on traditional jazz and that hasn't changed much), but they have gotten broader yet as I have learned about more artists and songs because of RB. Thanks to RB, I now consider Iron Maiden and Dream Theater a couple of my favorite all-time bands!!!

Finally, I must admit that RB has become one of my favorite hobbies, and a definite stress reliever and escape from real life sometimes (barring excessive XMB boots, heh). I love the game, love the friends I've made online, love being able to interact with music I've always loved as well as learn about more artists/songs that I didn't already know, and love competing against myself... always trying to take another step and improve.

Whew... GOOD TIMES!!!

[Quigby]

Getting a new RB game is fun but there's nothing that compares with getting a complete bundle. I knew I wouldn't be getting RB2 on Wii for Xmas that year (released on the 22nd or so) so I went out and picked up the bundle making it the most outrageous present I'll likely ever give myself. Assembling all the new stuff and getting accustomed to what would become one of my favorite series of all time was the best kind of overwhelming.

[The Rumsfeld]

I came to RB via GH1 and GH2. I'm a bit of karaoke fan, so I thought the ultimate would be to crack out some Hendrix or something, playing and singing at the same time.

I saw a video of someone doing just that with Singstar and GH, and eventually I got around to hiring an extra PS2 and trying to voxtar along to Smoke on the Water and Take Me Out, which we had on Singstar discs and on GH. There was a lot of cabling and picture in picture juggling on the TV, and I had to have the girlfriend pausing and unpausing each system trying to get the timing right, but it never quite worked. It made for a fun afternoon though.

And then - Harmonix made exactly the game I was looking for, and you could drum as well!

Unfortunately they tortured me by not releasing it in NZ until RB2 came out, and only gave us RB1 hardware, but I was stoked when I was finally able to walk out of a store with my enormous bundle of rock goodness.

Thanks HMX.