Rock Band Turns 4 Years Old! Post Your RB Memories

[lilbear78]

The first time I ever heard of a music game with instruments was my son mentioned GH3 and I was really curious but at that time not really interested then doing Christmas shopping in 2008 I came across a Rockband 2 bundle and I was like whoa what is that So I grabbed it for my son not thinking I would ever get into it.
Well I brought it home and wanted to try it out before I wrapped it all up and it was love at first sight...I was amazed how far gaming had come..And just kept saying man never thought this would be possible...This is so awesome...SO I wrapped it up and waited the 3 weeks before Christmas for my son to open it up...never the less he played it i think the first week and i kinda took over (what a horrible mother).
So time passed and I upgraded from the PS2 to the Wii (now i'm on xbox best decision ever) as I wanted DLC and a better system...There I met so many amazing people who i'm still friends...
But my best Rockband Memory is about a year and a half ago I started using skype to communicate with other rb players on wii (as there are no headsets) and I got to talking with this other player we had so much in common we played together skyped into the night together...Well eventually this did turn into a relationship and we have been going strong now for a year and a half...The love of my life
If it wasn't for rb I doubt we would have ever found eachother thank you guys HAPPY ANNIVERSARY ROCKBAND AND HOPING FOR MANY MORE NIGHTS OF LAUGHS AND AWESOME MUSIC....

[Numskull]

BORING INTRODUCTION (feel free to skip)

'Kay, so earlier this year I decided to subject myself to a sort of creative writing project that I would send out (unannounced, mostly) to a bunch of friends, mostly people who wouldn't know Rock Band from Guitar Hero if one gave them a foot massage and the other stabbed them in the eye. Just a (sort of) chronologically-arranged collection of (sort of) stories which ended up ranging from just two lines to several pages, all about 2010 events. Some funny, some not. Some about me, some just my take on something bigger. When you've been hovering near a suicidal level of depression (with a lowercase d) for a few years, you come up with weird ways to keep yourself occupied sometimes.

Anyway...Henry asked about friends we'd made through Rock Band, so here are the four I wrote about Bell, as I decided to call her. Remember, the target audience here is people who know nothing or almost nothing about the Rock Band games.

First one's from the April section.

Where’d You Go?

When video games with guitar-shaped controllers were in their infancy, not only did I not want to play them, I scoffed at the very idea that I would enjoy such a thing. Then came the dark days of 2008, when I found myself temporarily unable to enjoy much of anything. It turned out that firing up the PlayStation 3, putting my brain in neutral, and tapping buttons while looking at brightly-colored falling blocks and grinning like an idiot man-child provided a surprising amount of relief.

You play Rock Band 2 online as much as I did, you add some friends to your list. Some of them never become more to you than a user name and an avatar; others become friends in a far more meaningful sense. Though you may never learn some very basic facts about them, you may learn lots of other things. Quite unexpectedly, I stepped into the role of “keeper” for one such friend. Let’s call her Bell. (She knows why.)

Bell was going through an extremely difficult period, as I had not long before, though for very different reasons. After we’d built up a certain amount of rapport, she found it therapeutic to discuss it with me through the imperfect medium of the PlayStation Network (PSN) text message and the somewhat less imperfect medium of the Rock Band 2 in-game chat. She found me a good enough listener to keep this up for several months. She was sometimes compelled to apologize for taking up so much of my time, saying “You’re not my keeper” on one occasion. From that point on, “keeper” was a badge I wore with pride and which I used to needle her from time to time; “Your keeper bids you good night” and so forth. I had to have some fun.

Of course, we kept playing the game, too. Whenever the opportunity arose, I would assemble a group with her in it, and we would enjoy ourselves more than we would have with anyone else. We became each other’s primary means of forgetting our numerous woes, just by being there.

On it went as a matter of routine, until, all of a sudden…poof. No more Bell. Days, weeks, and eventually two months went by without her logging on to PSN. I kept checking like a faithful hound awaiting the return of its master, but to no avail.

First, the mental self-flagellation. Why hadn’t I learned more about her? Why hadn’t I asked for her name? Why hadn’t I made sure we could stay in touch through other means? Why hadn’t I told her how much I valued her friendship? On and on in that vein.

Then, the worrying, and lots of it. Bell didn’t provide me with explicit details and I didn’t ask for them, but based on the multiple trips to the hospital and the courthouse she’d had to make after the words “domestic violence” escaped her lips, it was pretty easy to piece together a couple of horrifying explanations for her disappearance. I drove myself (more) nuts pondering them, and could not shake the feeling that I had failed some vital task which fate had dropped into my lap.

When the pesky little voice of optimism told me that a mere broken PS3 was by far the most likely cause of all this, I told it to shut up. After all, it’s wrong 99% of the time.

Exhale. Here's the next one, from June. "Math is still fun" is a reference to an earlier, unrelated entry.

*DING*

After countless hours spent with nerve-wracking what-if scenarios gnawing at my mind, I have a brilliant idea. Since YouTube is a dumping ground for Rock Band gameplay videos, I can probably do a search for Bell’s PSN username there and get in touch with her that way.

I can. And I do.

Hey, it only took me, like, nine weeks.

One private message to her YouTube account is all it takes. I get e-mail from her later the same day. (Subject line: “Eric!!!!!” I warrant five exclamation marks.) She is very pleased that I have found her and informs me that…drum roll, please…she hasn’t used her PS3 in two months because it broke down and she hasn’t gotten it fixed yet.

When the pesky little voice of optimism is wrong 99% of the time, it’s right 1% of the time.

Math is still fun.

Now, here's a "filler" entry from July. I put this after the big, long "centerpiece" story to change the tempo but retain the crappy mood.

Anything

Question from Bell during one of our e-mail exchanges about whatever comes to mind:

“Hey, if you could do anything in the world, what would it be??? Just as a normal person, what would you want to do? Visit somewhere exciting, jump out of an airplane, take dancing lessons? What I mean is if you had everything you needed to do that which you want to do, what would it be?”

Damn. I don’t know.

Keeping my rut from becoming a bigger rut has been my primary focus for a while. I’m not yet at the point of wanting to actually do things, or to devote any serious thought to the idea.

I don’t have an answer, and I tell her so.

She doesn’t mind. She knows me well enough.

And now, the sad return to the subject after a whole bunch of other stuff. This was the first December entry. (Note: The very first sentence in the introduction to this whole thing was "I hate introductions.")

No Encore

One last Bell story.

On the first day of the last month of the year, she sends me an e-mail.

This has become an event of some significance. The flow of communication between us, strong at first, had steadily diminished after the first few weeks. With the…intensity of her life having decreased so sharply, she had less to tell me. And nothing I’d ever told her was really interesting, although she was nice enough to pretend otherwise most of the time.

So, I read the e-mail. It is mercifully brief. Her legal and medical expenses being largely a thing of the past, she can once again afford indulgences like video games. But, rather than revive her PlayStation 3, she has opted for the rival Xbox360 console, which means our days of being bestest Rock Band friends are over.

It was the next logical step, really.

Mattering to somebody was nice while it lasted, but it was time to swallow my little speck of pride and deal with the fact that she didn’t need a keeper anymore.

In a rare display of sentimentality, I had saved several of Bell’s PSN messages to me from the days when we would sit for hours and exchange dozens at a time. Ergo, they don’t get erased when I periodically clean out my inbox. One about this, one about that, and one that simply reads “You have been a bright spot when I needed it.”

Bell’s username still sits at the bottom of my PSN friend list. It tells me that her last login was nine months ago. Soon, it’ll be ten. Then eleven. And so forth. Offline status, always, from now on, unless I delete it.

I guess I’ll leave it there.

I hate introductions, but I hate goodbyes even more.

.........

What, you still there?

I do have one more Rock Band story to add, but it belongs in a separate post. Stay tuned.

[sinobeetle]

I only had a ps2 system when the game started, but I bought the ps3 bundle, loving the fact that all of the instruments worked on the ps2 system. This has been a great thing in my life, seeing all the songs of my misspent youth manifested in wonderful dlc and imported tracks! At gatherings with perfect strangers, you can read much into a person by the selections of their setlist!!

My best time was betting my significant other that I could get her folks to play RB with us. They are in their late 50's, I think. I smiled my way to the piggy bank that night, thanks to "Black Magic Woman", "Break on Through", and "Bohemian Rhapsody", among others!

[milesrose]

About 2 1/2 months ago, I asked a guy who I had known for a couple months and pretty much fallen head over heals in love with, who also lived a long distance away from me to be my boyfriend. We click in many ways, especially with video games and music. We have similar tastes (and he's even more varied in his tastes then I am, seeing as he's older then me and also a Music major and teacher). We are both big fans of the RB series, but he hadn't gotten RB3 yet. A few days, out of nowhere he told me he had it. We booted up Rock Band 3 and we played for a few hours. We had a blast! Talking about music, flirting, commenting on the charting and the difficulty (we both play expert). Now we play it regularly together and we've discovered quite a bit about each other, just talking while playing it. It brings such a distance of New York City and Portland Oregon a little closer. I love you Psi!

[sa_nick]

MEMORY HIGHLIGHTS

The forums pre-game release were awesome. Seeing all the dev blogs (Dan Teasdale/DanT/HMXspraynwipe/Delcious Bees inparticular, he loved letting the juicy details slip out) and having so much interaction with all the devs on the forums was just awesome, especially since I was already a huge GH 1 and 2 fan.

Finally getting the game a couple weeks after release thanks to international shipping times and the drums being awesome as I'd hoped. The progression of starting off on easy and building up to expert was just so damn fun.

After that came the pedal mods and cymbal mods, all before any online companies or madcatz started releasing their more professional solutions. I skipped all them and went the more expensive route, buying a Roland kit and one of Seth's magic little adapters. It's now setup out in my RB themed shed.

Over the years my friend Simon and I have setup some really cool RB stages both here in South Australia and even travelled interstate to do it at bigger conventions (see video and pics below). They have definitely been a highlight of my RB life. It's just so awesome seeing all these different people get up on stage and rock out with the full lighting setup and smoke machine pumping behind them.

These days I don't have as much time for Rock Band as I used to, but I still whip out some pro drums, bass or keyboard whenever I can. It's really the only game I constantly go back to. I'm not as connected to the online community as I used to be either, which is kind of a shame (maybe not considering how much bickering goes on here now), but I still have the memories of the original crew here on the forums, who will probably forever be the best group of online friends I ever had, even if I only talk to a few of them to this day.


MEDIA!!

Way back before the game dropped a few of us were talking on the forums about the recently released first trailer for RB1 and HMXSean said it should have ended like this...
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f4JoxmII4UI

Rock Band party nights every fortnight for almost a year...
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fIuMe29V1Uo

Getting into FoF and making my own drum charts...
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Dfp5B75PQ4o

Putting on huge Rock Band stages at AVCon, the big videogame convention here in South Australia....
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3Yt4umiKLcM
http://www.flickr.com/photos/sa_nick...212835/detail/

This kickass RB guitar case was sent to me from the HMX community team for my services as a moderator here on the forums...
http://i96.photobucket.com/albums/l1...guitarcase.jpg

And then there's these unexplained images...
http://i96.photobucket.com/albums/l1.../moderzord.jpg
http://i96.photobucket.com/albums/l1...albumcover.jpg
http://i96.photobucket.com/albums/l1...allthetime.png

[Scythemaster 37]

BORING INTRODUCTION (feel free to skip)

'Kay, so earlier this year I decided to subject myself to a sort of creative writing project that I would send out (unannounced, mostly) to a bunch of friends, mostly people who wouldn't know Rock Band from Guitar Hero if one gave them a foot massage and the other stabbed them in the eye. Just a (sort of) chronologically-arranged collection of (sort of) stories which ended up ranging from just two lines to several pages, all about 2010 events. Some funny, some not. Some about me, some just my take on something bigger. When you've been hovering near a suicidial level of depression (with a lowercase d) for a few years, you come up with weird ways to keep yourself occupied sometimes.

Anyway...Henry asked about friends we'd made through Rock Band, so here are the four I wrote about Bell, as I decided to call her. Remember, the target audience here is people who know nothing or almost nothing about the Rock Band games.

First one's from the April section.



Exhale. Here's the next one, from June. "Math is still fun" is a reference to an earlier, unrelated entry.



Now, here's a "filler" entry from July. I put this after the big, long "centerpiece" story to change the tempo but retain the crappy mood.



And now, the sad return to the subject after a whole bunch of other stuff. This was the first December entry. (Note: The very first sentence in the introduction to this whole thing was "I hate introductions.")






.........

What, you still there?

I do have one more Rock Band story to add, but it belongs in a separate post. Stay tuned.

You almost made me cry.

[GRRRUMBLE]

for 7 years I never had a television.
I haven't had a game system since commodore 64.
Then Rockband put out Pro with the mustang and speedofthought and kareokeefreak put up you tube vids.
I bought a tv a ps3 and Rockband 3 and a mustang pro immediatley.
I knew what Rockband was about from watching others on legacy. But Pro was a game changer.
4 years some may say you've grown up well.

[Sukergod]

What a great topic!!!

Without getting to much into the history of things, I started playing RB as soon as RB1 came out for the PS2 in Canada. It was delayed quite a while but I was still in GH mode so i didnt mind to much. I got the game and while I liked it I still prefered GH and subsequently buried my RB1 disc underneath my other plethora of games.

When Rock Band 2 came out I decided to pick up an Xbox simply cause there was so much cool DLC that was available and I wanted to get a next gen console. I had RB2 for about a year focusing on guitar and bass and wanted a new challenge, drums!! 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. She was acting strange the whole trip home wanting to stop here and there for this and that. I was so pissed cause I wanted to go home and try out these drums. We get home and I open my front door and there are like 50 people in my house for a suprise party for me finishing Education in University. I was shocked and secretly pissed cause I knew I wasnt going to get to play my drums for at least a few more hours. Once everyone left i rushed upstairs to try them out and I was in heaven.

About a month later I was trying to beat Green Grass and High Tides on Expert Drums and I would get to that really long blue streak I believe. I used to fail that all the time but one day I finally managed to get it and flew right through it. I was so ecstatic that I was fin ally going to be able to finhish the song that I never noticed that the one of the crosspoles was starting to come undone and bam, the whole left side of my kit just falls off onto the floor. I watched as I went for green to yellow to red. I couldnt believe it, but i managed not to be pissed, put the bloody thing back together again and restarted again to pass the very next time.

Anyways thanks for reading and sharing others everyone, and most all thanks HMX for making such a great game for us all to play.

[Blasteroids]

I was not going to buy Rock Band because of the huge EU release delay! So I played GHIII and then GHIV before I found RB1 cheap one day. I fancied some new songs so purchased it, but once I put it in I never went back to GH because it just felt better to play. I purchased a cheap set of RB1 drums to give it a go and hated it! There was no way I could get comfortable playing drums, so I played Medium-Hard 5 button guitar.

Along came TB:RB and I liked the idea of having cymbals on the drums, since this was the first kit in the EU that would support cymbals. So I picked up the Limited Edition set plus the cymbal addons to give drums another go. So glad I did because now it felt better to play, but the MadCatz cymbal addons were noisy! I opened them up and created a gasket between the lower section and the top section, which reduced the noise considerably. Managed to get up to Medium/Hard drums in little time, and then online one day a friend said to try Expert drums.

For a laugh I did, and I actually found it easier to play! This was then a turning point for me because I started to listen and play to the sound rather than just the chart. It took me a while to GS a song, but glad I kept at it because I am bad at 5 button guitar!

After a couple of months the pedal broke on my TB:RB drumkit and I was pretty sad. Phoned up EA and they were really helpful in getting a replacement out to me, but they did not want the broken one back. So instead of waiting for the new pedal to arrive, I ripped the broken pedal apart and took out the magnet+reed switch. Popped into a local music shop and purchased a real pedal. With a little bit of fiddling of the magnet and reed switch onto the pedal, I was back playing. And thus my addiction was formed.

Once RB3 was released with the Pro-Drum support looming I just had to upgrade in preperation of the MPA. So I purchased a 2nd hand e-kit to see how I got on. Loved the freedom of having more room to play and being able to adjust certain parts to different locations. Hated the plastic pad toms, so I then modded them to meshheads which was surprisingly easy to do. Loved the bounce from them. The cymbals were a little battered and needed to be replaced. Found someone on ebay selling Pintech Hi-Hat & 2 Pintech Cymbals and having read about them on this forum I put a bid on. Turns out that it is an unknown name in the UK so I managed to get them pretty cheaply

The final purchase was then a Trigger IO so I can adjust much more freely than the cheap e-kit brain I had. Now I try to play exclusively Expert Pro-Drums but I have a very long way to go before I start getting good scores on anything above Tier 4.

Looks like I just rambled about me. My kids also love RB, with my son on 5 button guitar and my daughter on vocals. They love it when I put on my Stage Kit light mods and fire up the fog machine, as can be seen in this video.

However HMX, I think my wife is not as amused. She would probably have a few words for you if she ever found out how much I spent on the kits and DLC. So we will keep that between you, me and MS

[Dangimarocker]

However HMX, I think my wife is not as amused. She would probably have a few words for you if she ever found out how much I spent on the kits and DLC. So we will keep that between you, me and MS

Rut oh!
Has she ever attempted to sing?