Rock Band Turns 4 Years Old! Post Your RB Memories

[Blasteroids]

Rut oh!
Has she ever attempted to sing?

Once, but thankfully I had a set of earplugs. Now I just hide the mics from her.

[Numskull]

You almost made me cry.

I'll have to try harder next time.

[queuemark]

Best memory: the first time that I successfully played a drums song without feeling like I was cognitively impaired.

I got into RB a few months after RB2 came out. My roommates had played a lot of RB1 while I was out of town, so I kind of felt like I had missed the boat on that one, since they all had their favorite instruments.

I decided to luck up the bundle, though, after seeing the umpteenth post on Joystiq about weekly DLC being released. I noticed that a lot of bands I really liked were being released around that time, and I remember in particular being shocked that they added the entire Pixies album.

The big decision, though, was whether to grab Rock Band or Guitar Hero. RB seemed to have better songs, but I wasn't so big on the gem style (seemed more important at the time). Eventually I decided I could get RB first since it seemed like the 4 pad drumset would work better on GH, than vice versa. I assumed I could eventually get GH and play them with the RB drums, but I never bothered. =)

I've gotta say, the thrill of getting good on the drums and (hopefully, eventually) competent on the keys and Squier has been an amazing thrill. My video game playing time is limited now that I have an 8 year old step-daughter (she sings and does keys with me, occasionally) and a 1 year old baby girl. Other video games have taken a bit of a backseat, save for the occasional Halo, Mario, or Zelda playthrough. But I feel the most positive about playing Rock Band, since it is teaching me actual skills.

I'm at over 1000 songs and I feel like every Thursday night is DLC-mas Eve. Thanks a ton, Harmonix. I hope for at least one more game release and years of great DLC to come (like, oh, say....Radiohead, Pavement, Beach Boys, Cure, Beck, Bjork, and everyone else on my personal itunes =) ).

[Numskull]

Now, since my first post in this thread was such a downer, here is my rousing tale of Rock Band triumph.

I remind all present that the target audience for this was a bunch of people who have very little or no experience with the Rock Band games. I originally included YouTube links for Spoonman and the Angry German Kid, but they are not duplicated here.

"Surprised? Yeah, me too" refers to the fact that anyone who knows me from a context other than Rock Band would be surprised to learn that I play it and very surprised to learn that I play it on vocals. And "This is what is known as _____" was sort of a running gag that I used in several other stories.

The shaky arrow plays a pivotal role in this story. To all at Harmonix: No hard feelings. Honest. And if the F-bomb substitutes I've used here are deemed too close to the genuine article, go ahead and replace them with a row of asterisks or something. I really don't give a ****.

And now, the thrilling narrative of how yours truly earned the...

Bladder…of STEEL!!!

When I was in high school, the teachers never let us go to the bathroom during classes. If you had to use the bathroom before lunch or the end of the day, you had to do it during the paltry four minutes between classes, and luck had to be on your side because three of the four bathrooms for your gender would always be locked, and there was no pattern which dictated which bathrooms would be locked on which days. And even if you did find that one unlocked bathroom, you would be so blinded by the cigarette smoke that you couldn’t find your way to the urinals.

I developed a Herculean bladder out of sheer necessity.

With the conclusion of that chapter in life came adulthood. The time for clinging to the customs and comforts of childhood and adolescence was over, and I had to forge a bold new path into the future as a grown man. With the dawn of this era came the ability to go tinkle in the little boys’ room any time I damn well pleased, and I went to town with it. The pure, glorious convenience of it was enough to bring tears to my eyes. I had never known such freedom.

It spoiled me. My once-Herculean bladder became pitifully average, and a source of great shame.

Thus, the Bladder of Steel became far more elusive.

Time for some boring exposition.

Rock Band 2 has something called the Endless Setlist, which requires you to play all 84 of the on-disc songs in a row on your instrument of choice (guitar, bass, drums, or vocals). You can choose medium, hard, or expert difficulty (easy is off limits for this particular gig), with correspondingly greater rewards. If you manage to do it without pausing the game or failing any songs…an endeavor which takes approximately six and a half hours of what could reasonably be called moderately strenuous activity…you get a ridiculous bonus added to your PSN account: The Bladder of Steel trophy.

Now, I’d done the Endless Setlist once before, on expert vocals (surprised? yeah, me too), and hadn’t fared very well. Part of it was my fault for doing it too soon after making the jump to expert difficulty, but the lion’s share of the blame must be assigned to the shaky arrow glitch.

The way vocals work in the Rock Band games is, you have to use your voice to guide an arrow along a path that rises and falls in correspondence with the singing in the song you’re playing. The more steadily you make the arrow cling to the path, the greater your degree of success. If you fail to guide the arrow properly on too many occasions, you fail the song.

Now, the shaky arrow glitch is a random bug exclusive to the PS3 version of the game that causes the arrow to quiver, wiggle, or just jump all over the f---ing place, depending on the severity with which it decides to strike. In its milder incarnations, it’s no big deal if you know what you’re doing. But when it’s out in full force, all bets are off. No matter how on-pitch you are, just finishing a difficult song becomes a major ordeal, let alone achieving a respectable score.

My first attempt at the Endless Setlist was marred by the shaky arrow in a big, big way. It didn’t strike until the 26th song (Psycho Killer by Talking Heads), which I deemed too late in the proceedings to justify starting over, so I just dealt with it. I failed several songs, some of which I knew damn well I would have passed with a normal arrow. The biggest roadblock by far was Spoonman by Soundgarden, which is universally considered the most difficult song on vocals in Rock Band 2. (Here's a YouTube video of a guy doing it with a normal arrow. It may not look or sound challenging to unfamiliar eyes and ears, but it is in fact a beast, and pretty much any RB2 vocalist will tell you so. Rock Band players who don’t do vocals are often surprised at which songs cause trouble for vocalists and which ones don’t.) I failed that sumb-tch seven times before the arrow finally settled down enough to let me pass. I ended up with a meager 351 stars out of a possible 420. (You can get up to five stars per song depending on how well you do. I think it’s impossible to pass a song with just one, and it’s highly unlikely that you’ll pass with two. Spectacular performances on expert difficulty produce gold stars, but there are still only five of them.)

The fact that a random glitch that should have been eliminated during playtesting had cost me my precious Bladder of Steel trophy had long been a source of irritation. So, one fine day in June when I probably had a dozen better things to do but didn’t feel like doing them, I devoted my waking hours to another crack at the Endless Setlist. I was better prepared by now, having five-starred each of the 84 songs on expert vocals at least once. Yes, even Spoonman. Do or die, now or never, blah blah blah.

Hour one: Easy stuff. Five stars all the way. No shaky arrow.

Hour two: More easy stuff, but I miss the fifth star on Today by Smashing Pumpkins. Damn you, Billy Corgan. Oh, well. No shaky arrow.

Hour three: Missed the fifth star on American Woman by The Guess Who thanks to those damn bye-byyy-yyyes at the end, but this was the first song I failed last time, so I’m glad just to get past it. No shaky arrow.

Hour four: Four stars on Tangled Up in Blue. For a guy who sounds like a mental patient muttering at his own reflection at three o’clock in the morning, Bob Dylan sure has a tricky voice. No shaky arrow.

Hour five: Four stars for Alive, which is no surprise since I have one of the worst Pearl Jam voices imaginable, but gold stars for Shackler’s Revenge by Guns N’ Roses, and that one gives most people fits. Yay me. No shaky arrow.

Hour six: This is the hour with Spoonman in it.

You will never guess where this is going.

After 69 glitch-free songs, I had practically forgotten that the shaky arrow existed. It had been extraordinarily smooth sailing for 300 minutes or so.

Then, song number 70, the dreaded Spoonman. Deep breaths, now. No worries, Eric. You can do this.

“Oh.”

Huh?

“MMM-mmmm-MM-mmm.”

What the…

“Feel the rhythm with yaw HA-AAAANDS…”

Oh. My. F--k.

Do me a favor. Put the tip of your thumb as close to the tip of your index finger as you can without the two of them touching each other.

That’s how close I was to putting my fist through the TV when I saw the arrow jumping everywhere of its own accord.

I was enraged beyond measure. If this had happened during ANY other song, or, hell, EVERY other song, I could have dealt with it. But this was not any other song; this was F---ING SPOONMAN, by far the easiest song to fail out of EIGHTY-FOUR, and this was one of the shakiest arrows I had ever seen. This wasn’t a mere matter of not getting precisely what I wanted out of some silly game; this was a matter of five and a half hours completely wasted. This was a matter of a great deal of effort on my part coming to absolutely nothing due to a random element over which I had no control.

No, scratch that. This was not “random.” God sent that shaky arrow during Spoonman just to f--k with me. For millennia, mankind has wondered if there are higher powers in the universe, divine forces that impact our lives in ways we cannot fully comprehend. As far as I was concerned, that question had just been definitively answered. My shaky arrow during Spoonman, and ONLY Spoonman, was incontrovertible proof that God existed, He hated me, and He was deriving a great deal of pleasure from keeping that Bladder of Steel trophy just beyond my grasp.

All of this went through my head in a fraction of a second. With the remainder of that second, I decided not to take this lying down. To spite the dark forces aligned against me, I would pour every ounce of energy I had into Spoonman. I would get through it without failing or die in the attempt.

“…steal the rhythm while you can. SPOON-maaaaaan…”

One of the biggest reasons why Spoonman is such a challenge is that almost all of the difficulty is concentrated in the first half of the song, before you get a chance to amass enough overdrive (the game’s “bailout” mechanism) to save yourself from failure. Get past the “…with yaw HAAAAAAAAANDS!!!” part and into the comparatively easy “Come on while I get OFF” part without losing your nerve and you’re golden.

“…AH’M to-GETH-er with yaw plan. SAVE meeeee…”

Won’t…let…arrow…stop me!

“All mah friends are IND-i-AAAAANS…”

The first two minutes of that song seemed interminable. My heart rate doubled. Rivulets of sweat poured down my face. The in-game audience jeered me without mercy.

“…all mah friends are brown and red…”

My eyes kept jumping over to the success meter as it sank and sank, hovering in the red zone, coming an eyelash away from failure on several occasions.

“SAVE meeeee, SAVE me, yeeeeaaahhh…”

Unh! Unh! Unh!

“SAVE meeeee…”

UNH! UNH! UNH!

“…with yaw HAAAAAAAAANDS!!!”

Gasp, pant, wheeze, et cetera. Could it be? Had I just cleared the biggest possible obstacle in this whole 400-minute affair? Had I slain the dragon, vanquished the demon, defied the will of God Himself?

“Come on while I get OFF…come on while I get OFF…”

Why, yes. Yes, I had.

And all I lost was about ten years of my life due to the strain of suppressing enough video-game-based fury to make the Angry German Kid look like the Dalai Lama. This is what is known as collateral damage.

I finished Spoonman and collapsed onto the couch. It would be a while before my pulse returned to normal, but the remaining thirteen songs were no trouble at all. The shaky arrow stuck around in a milder form for the next two, then disappeared entirely. The 84th song, Painkiller by Judas Priest, which I considered a brilliant choice by the game designers for a grand finale, was anticlimactic in the extreme. I finished the setlist with 411 stars, a Bladder of Steel trophy, and a sense of relief so overwhelming that I forgot to give God the finger.

Oh, and I finally got to go potty.

The moral of this story is that you should never let anyone stand in the way of your dream, even if that dream is to earn an utterly meaningless virtual accolade about which not one other person on Earth gives a damn.

The Bladder of Steel, baby.

Worthless…but mine.

[AshtrayHeart]

-Christmas of 2007. That was when I first got the HUEG Rock Band bundle. It was either this or Guitar Hero III. Considering I did my research, I was more than content with the choice before I even started playing. I first played Maps by The Yeah Yeah Yeahs before anything else once I got the game on (loved the band since I was in middle school).

I was playing Hard on guitar. I was still learning the ropes before I started tearing it up on Expert! The first experience was quite amazing. The rest of the playlist and other wonderful delights (such as character creator) only made the experience better. Oh, and how can we forget the irritating World Tour Mode that constantly asked you to replay the same songs time and time again?

To this day, I still get feelings of sheer nostalgia whenever I play a Rock Band 1 track in the game.

[Hogan2000]

My first Rock Band memory Bruther. There I was in 2008 pal, I just got my 300 dollar check pal. For about 3 months I went over to my neighbors house and played Rock Band with him bruther. He had is all. Guitar Hero 3 pal and Rock Band bundle set bruther, it was the ultimate experience pal. I was so impressed bruther I had to buy the Rock Band bundle bruther. When I got my paycheck pal, I went up to Wal Mart and they had one Rock Band bundle for PS3. IT was 168 bucks bruther. I took it home and my family was wow'd by it bruther. We played it until 1 in the morning that day bruther. We had no work the next day so we played it late pal. It was one of the greatest days in my life. Back before my ex cheated on me for the 3rd time bruther. It was awesome. Thanks for the memories Harmonix. You are my bruthers

[Happy Dragon]

Late 2007 I was at a friends place for a Christmas party and was exposed to rhythm games for the first time in the form of Guitar Hero II. Didn't play at the time, and only watched with mild curiosity and amusement as the plastic guitar got passed back and forth between songs. I wish I could say I was wowed by it, but there were too many things about it that rubbed me the wrong way. Wasn't a fan of the aesthetic design in software or hardware, hardly any original tracks and the biggest issue was the lack of synching between audio and visual presentation.

But despite all that, when someone started playing "Killing in the Name", (a long time favourite song of mine), on a high difficulty I was intrigued by the enjoyment this genre could offer.

Fast-forward to mid January 2008 and my husband and I had a very rare day off together. It was cold but generally sunny and a nice day outside so we decided to walk downtown on a search for some good fresh baked cupcakes, (whole other story of why it was cupcakes....). Walking through the mall downtown, the husband of course wanted to check out EB where lo and behold they had a stack of quickly dwindling Rock Band full band bundles. I had heard that there had been problems getting stock in Canada and here it was....but 200 bucks, yikes! It didn't help that there were also copies of Guitar Hero III bundles as well, only convoluting the issue more.

I waffled for about a half hour. Should I get it, shouldn't I. It is awfully expensive and if I did get a game why not get the cheaper and better known quantity in Guitar Hero? But this one also has vocals and drums and an original version of "Don't Fear the Reaper"!

I think my husband knew I was going to buy it before I did.

Took the bus back home with the large box in tow. Never did find a good cupcake place.

All reservations I had about the game completely evaporated from the moment I tried strumming my first notes on "Say it Ain't So". It was on easy guitar, I was failing horribly, but yet had the stupidest, biggest grin on my face for the rest of the day stumbling through the setlist. I was hooked and hooked good.

Thank you Harmonix for this fantastic new way to interact with music I have always loved while also introducing me to so much more new music I have come to love. From working my way through all difficulties on all instruments, unreal moments of joy playing "Wont Get Fooled Again" on drums not even aware I was playing a 'game' just getting lost in the experience, Friday announcement surprises and shenanigans, the awesomeness of the RBN, and your dedication to progressing forward while retaining dedication to your fan base, it has been an amazing 4 years and Rock Band has been an unforgettable part of my life.

Happy Birthday Rock Band and keep rocking!

[silurfer007]

So what's the deal playing online?
Why do people join and then quit?
Really?... make an 8 song set then quit? WTH
if there's a song YOU want to play... Choose IT!

[bjyaritz]

My favorite RB moment would have to be my very first gold star performance. I remember not knowing exacly what gold starring a song meant. Faith No Mores "Epic" was it. Ya just never forget your first.

[SheSaidSheSaid]

I forgot the other band I really discovered through RB - Rise Against. Maybe it sounds silly, since they're obviously much, much bigger than Drugstore Fanatics or Neonfly, but I had never heard of them prior to RB2. Really, I didn't even give "Give It All" a second glance. When there was that DLC sale that coincided with the release of Guitar Hero 6, Rise Against 01 was one of the included packs. I thought hey, cheap DLC, why not. LOVED IT. Bought Rise Against 02 as soon as it came out. Now, they're among my most-played songs.