Beatlemania gets interactive

The Beatles: Rock Band is scheduled to be released on September 9 along with The Beatles' remastered catalog. Photo Illustration by Eric Loy

Today, we’re going to talk about games that have a heavy focus on music. Two of them are out now, one won’t be out until later this year, but each of them is (or will likely be) worth your time and money.

First, there’s “PixelJunk Eden: Encore” on the Playstation 3. This is an add-on to the already-existing “PixelJunk Eden,” an unclassifiable little gem that PS3 owners have been enjoying for a while now.

“Encore” picks up where “Eden” left off. Well, not that it really left off anywhere. This game exists pretty much to help you chill out, and “Encore” keeps that ball rolling with five new levels and a couple gameplay tweaks to make things a bit easier than they were in “Eden.” If you’re just getting home after a long day and need to unwind, check out “PixelJunk Eden” and its “Encore” expansion. The whole set will run you under twenty dollars.

I spoke a bit about “Rhythm Heaven” for Nintendo DS here in The Yell a few weeks ago, but now that I’ve had a chance to play through it I think it deserves a proper review.

The American “Rhythm Heaven” is a port of the latest in the Japanese “Rhythm Tengoku” series, “Rhythm Tengoku Gold.”

The game focuses on… well, it doesn’t really focus on much. Think about the “WarioWare” games, but with a musical tint to them. You play short (usually less than two minutes) games that have you tapping out a beat, in order to accomplish various goals. Some tasks you’ll find yourself responsible for are filling up robots with fuel, helping a monk eat as many dumplings as possible and getting three birds through boot camp.

Played after each four-stage set, the remix levels are the highlight of the game. In most cases, they take the last four stages you played, change them up slightly and mix them all together into one challenging event.

“Rhythm Heaven” is something everyone who owns a DS (or the newly-released DSi) should check out. It’s the perfect game for those short little bursts of gaming you want to squeeze in while doing other things.

Harmonix, the godfathers of the American music-game industry, have struck a gold mine with Rock Band, and they’re looking to step their game up this September with “The Beatles: Rock Band,” to be released on Xbox 360, PS3 and Wii.

Beatles fans will know how protective Apple Corps is with anything regarding the band, so it comes as quite a surprise that they are allowing a game to be made about the Fab Four, much less one that will let drunken college kids “reinterpret” their songs at parties. It’s a testament to Harmonix that they are trusted with the task of making a game worthy of the Beatles name.

There aren’t a lot of details out there about The Beatles: Rock Band yet, but we do know that it will feature the same basic formula as previous “Rock Band” titles. That is, you play along with music by hitting notes that scroll toward you on the screen, using plastic instruments made to look like the real thing. One rumor floating around (which I pray is true), says that the game will feature vocal harmonization, using multiple microphones. This would make sense for a Beatles game, and would have the potential for either awesome renditions of the group’s songs, or a massacre the likes of which has never been seen. Either way, great for parties.

“The Beatles: Rock Band” is set to be released on Sept. 9, the same day their remastered catalog is set to be released. One thing this tells us is that we can expect nothing else to be released on that day, due to the impossibility of marketing against The Beatles. Henceforth, 9-9-9 will be known as “Beatles Day.”