Rock fans rejoice!

On top of the recent news that The Doors will be included in Guitar Hero World Tour, management for The Doors have confirmed that we can expect to see The Doors in Rock Band as well.

This news came via a reply on The Doors official messageboard.

The Question was;

“My question are there any related tie-ins through either Rock Band or Guitar Hero 3 w/ Doors downloadable content to be released in & around the time Dick Wolf’s Doors’ doc. is released?

I know,you did mention that the Doors will be featured in both RB2 & GH4,but i am refering more or less to a seperate “special” release showcasing the Doors.And not in a “mixed bag” if you will of many other artisits,which,of course the ACTUAL vid. game will be.

You folks,having released the 5.1 mixes back in ‘06 would have the master recordings that are really all the rage now w/ these games.As opposed to “mad famous by”/

Here is hoping you guys can strike some sort of deal and have some special Doors content released soley to help bring more attention to the forthcoming Doors documentary..”

To which The Doors management replied;

“We’ll be in both”

The post was dated July 10/08, and there’s also a hint that they had previously mentioned inclusion in both Guitar Hero World Tour and Rock Band 2 somewhere on the forums.

Now we didn’t see The Doors on the official on-disk setlist for Rock Band 2, so maybe they will be part of the 20 free song downloads that will released when the game is released. Or perhaps there will be a special The Doors DLC.

Source: The Doors Messageboard via Rock Band Forums - The Doors To Be In Rock Band 2

This post comes as a request from one of our readers, plus it will give ZED something to read when he gets to work.

This list contains a total of 44 songs (out of the 85 songs that are supposed to be on the disc). We’ve comprised this list from various sources (and we absolutely did not use the “rumored” tracklist that was floating around, because it was wrong. You might also note that we never reported that “rumored” tracklist - that’s because we had inside info that proved it was wrong… but that will come to light soon enough).

Beside each Artist/Song Title is a link to the Console Hero story where we first reported it which will have more information about where the news came from.

So without further ado, here are the songs that we think will likely be in the game(they have pretty much been confirmed*). This list has 30 songs, plus an additional 4 artists whose song(s) has yet to be announced;

Airborne - “Too Much Too Young” [source]
At The Drive In - “One Armed Scissor” [source]
Billy Idol - “Rebel Yell” [source]
Black Label Society - “Stillborn” [source]
Black Rebel Motorcycle Club - “Weapon Of Choice” [source]
Blink 182 - “Damnit” [source]
Bob Seger - “Hollywood Nights” [source]
Dinosaur Jr. - “Feel The Pain” [source]
Foo Fighters - “Everlong” [source]
Interpol - “Obstacle 1″ [source]
Jimi Hendrix - “Wind Cries Mary”[source]
Jimi Hendrix - “Purple Haze” (live) [source]
Linkin Park - “In The End (If We Have To” [source]
Linkin Park - “What I’ve Done” [source] [source]
Metallica - “Trapped Under Ice” [source]
Michael Jackson - “Beat It” [source]
Ozzy Osbourne - “Crazy Train” [source]
Ozzy Osbourne - “Mr. Crowley” [source]
Paramore - “Misery Business” [source] [source] [source]
Silversun Pickups - “Lazy Eye” [source] [source]
Smashing Pumpkins - “Bullet With Butterfly Wings” [source]
Steve Miller Band - “The Joker” [source]
System Of A Down - “BYOB” [source]
Sublime - “Santeria” [source]
Survivor - “Eye Of The Tiger” [source]
The Answer - “Never Too Late” [source] [source]
The Doors - “Light My Fire” [source]
The Doors - “Love Me Two Times” [source]
The Eagles - “Hotel California” [source]
Van Halen - “Hot For Teacher” [source]

Beastie Boys [source]
Korn [source]
Muse [source] [source]
Nirvana [source]
*By confirmed, we mean songs that have pretty much been confirmed, either by Activision or Neversoft, or in reputable publications or websites.

Rumored Tracks/Artists:These songs or artists are labeled as strictly rumors at this point because the information has not been confirmed by Activision or Neversoft. You can choose to believe that these songs may or may not be in Guitar Hero World Tour based on the info in the links beside the artist/song.

Here are 14 more songs for ya;

Aerosmith - “I Don’t Want To Miss a Thing” [source]
Bad Religion - “Sorrow” [source]
Beastie Boys - “No Sleep Till Brooklyn” [source]
Flo Rida - “Low” (Travis Barker Remix) [source]
Gavin Rossdale - “Frontline” [source]
Grand Funk Railroad - “We’re An American Band” [source]
Joe Satriani - “Satch Boogie” [source]
Lenny Kravitz - “Are You Gonna Go My Way” [source]
NOFX - “Soul Doubt” [source]
Sammy Hagar - “I Can’t Drive 55″ [source]
Ted Nugent - “Stranglehold” [source]
Tool - “Parabola”, “Vicarious”, and “Schism” [source]

Sting or The Police [source]
Buckethead [source]

Some confirmation in this list and some speculation but from what we’re seeing so far, Guitar Hero World Tour is shaping up to have a very nice looking tracklist.

Related Links:
Console Hero - Guitar Hero World Tour Information Page

Along with the news that Guitar Hero World Tour will have Ozzy Osbourne and 2 of his songs, we’re also happy to bring you this latest trailer for Guitar Hero World Tour featuring none other than Ozzy himself.

Guitar Hero World Tour `Ozzy` Trailer

Related Links:
Console Hero - Guitar Hero World Tour Hops On The Crazy Train

Crispy Gamer journalist Scott Jones is starting a series where he “interns” for a day at various game development companies and shares his experiences.

The first stop on his tour are the offices of Rock Band developer Harmonix.

Scott tours the Harmonix premises with Helen McWilliams, Harmonix Producer and Spokesperson.

He talks about the atmosphere of Harmonix, the “wheelies”, and the QA testers.

“When they were testing ‘Psycho Killer’ was the absolute worst,” Helen says. “You know the ‘Oh-oh-OH-OHHHH-ya-ya-yaiiii’ part? You could hear it everywhere you went in the office for days. It was awful.”

But it’s not all business at Harmonix as Scott offers us a glimpse at Netflix picks, the “Scribble” room, and smoking monkeys.

View his wonderful article over at Crispy Gamer

Source: Crispy Gamer - Intern For A Day Vol. 1 - Harmonix Music Systems

IGN just announced the achievements for Rock Band 2.

View the achievements after the break, or head on over to IGN.

Read the rest »

Next week’s Rock Band DLC has been announced and it is the Roadrunner 6 Pack. This pack features bands off of the Roadrunner Records label.

The good news: Metalheads, you may now rejoice.
The bad news: Roadrunner Records parent company is Warner Music Group

The full list of songs are;

Airbourne – “Runnin’ Wild”
DevilDriver – “Clouds Over California”
Dream Theater – “Constant Motion”
Killswitch Engage – “My Curse”
Machine Head – “Aesthetics Of Hate”
Megadeth – “Sleepwalker”

The full track pack is available for $5.99 (480 Microsoft Points), while individual tracks are available for $0.99 (80 Microsoft Points). The songs will be available on Tuesday at the Xbox Live Marketplace, and on Thursday at the Playstation Store.

Just to refresh… Both Guitar Hero and Rock Band have been hugely successful games. The success of these games has also translated in to plenty of exposure and success for artists whose songs appear in the game (and/or for the labels) through increased sales of the music.

Now that Guitar Hero and Rock Band have proven successful, the game developers and publishers have a bigger budget to use and throw around more cash to musicians and music publishers so that they can license the tracks for use in the game and to get the masters.

So, music publishers don’t really have to do more work, and they get a brand new and successful revenue stream. Sounds wonderful for music publishers.

Warner Music, however, seems to think that they’re not getting what’s due. During their most recent investors conference call they complained that they “do not get compensated properly”.

Warner Music Group CEO Edgar Bronfman Jr. is suggesting that unless they get more money they “will not license to those games”.

If the music companies did decide to refuse to license the songs the games companies could still use the songs, only they would have to be cover versions (and then they would still have to pay some royalties, but not much relatively speaking). Yes it is nice to have all of the songs in the games be “master” tracks from the original artists, but both the Guitar Hero and Rock Band series have covers of songs that sound genuine to the original recordings. The games became massive successes even with cover versions of songs.

Does playing a cover song make it less fun for me? No. Would I refuse to buy a game just because it doesn’t feature all master tracks? No. Would I now go out an buy a game that has all master tracks except for songs owned by Warner Music Company just to spite Warner? Yes.

Yes, I understand that they’re trying to make a profit, but as far as I’m concerned the music companies should be more appreciative at the increase in exposure and revenue that they’re already getting.

Source: Silicon Alley Insider - WMG Rock Band, Guitar Hero Very Exciting But We Want To Get Paid via Kotaku - Warner Wants More Money From Rock Band, Guitar Hero

Read the rest »

IGN had a more in depth article about the Ozzy Osbourne news we mentioned earlier, confirming that Ozzy will be a playable character, OZZFest will be an official venue, and that some bands from OZZFest will be in the game. They even listed a few more songs that were previously unannounced.

Unsurprisingly, Zakk Wylde was confirmed as a character in the game, and a Black Label Society song was announced. If you have been reading Console Hero, neither of those should be real news to you.

On top of Metallica’s upcoming album ‘Death Magnetic’ being available for download when Guitar Hero World Tour comes out, fans will also be able to play the Metallica song ‘Trapped Under Ice’ which will be included on the disk.

In total, the IGN article announced 10 songs that were previously unconfirmed for Guitar Hero World Tour. Those songs were;

Airbourne – “Too Much Too young…”
At the Drive-in – “One Armed Scissor”
Black Label Society - “Stillborn”
Black Rebel Motorcycle Club – “Weapon of Choice”
Bob Seger – “Hollywood Nights”
Dinosaur Jr. – “Feel the pain”
Metallica - “Trapped Under Ice”
Silversun Pickups – “Lazy Eye”
System Of A Down - “BYOB”
Survivor – “Eye of the Tiger”

The confusion we mentioned? The Stuff article that we reported on yesterday has the Linkin Park song being ‘In The End (If We Have To)’, while IGN says it will be ‘What I’ve Done’. The Stuff Magazine article also says that The Doors song will be ‘Light My Fire’, while IGN has it listed as ‘Love Me Two Times’.

Could both articles be right with both Linkin Park and The Doors having more than 1 song each in the game? We now know that Ozzy Osbourne has at least 2 songs in the game, as does Jimi Hendrix, and Tool is rumored to have 3, so other bands having more than 1 song isn’t a stretch.

The article also states The Eagles “Hotel California” as a previously confirmed song.  We knew they were rumored to be in the game, but were not aware that “Hotel California” had been confirmed.  We’re not complaining.  Other songs it mentions that were previously confirmed for Guitar Hero World Tour that we only had as rumored were Blink 182’s ‘Damnit’ and Paramore’s “Misery Business”.

Source: IGN -Guitar Hero World Tour Rides The Crazy Train

Related Links:
Console Hero - Guitar Hero World Tour Information Page
Console Hero - Guitar Hero World Tour Hops On The Crazy Train
Console Hero - More Guitar Hero World Tour Songs Including Michael Jackson
Console Hero - Black Label Society To Feature In Guitar Hero World Tour
Console Hero - More Guitar Hero World Tour Playable Characters

Guitar Hero World Tour is getting a taste of Ozzy Osbourne, with 2 Ozzy songs coming off of his first solo album, 1980’s ‘Blizzard of Ozz’.

The two Ozzy songs on Guitar Hero World Tour will be ‘Crazy Train’ and ‘Mr. Crowley’ .

Fun Facts:
The solo for Crazy Train came in at #9 on Guitar World Magazine’s top 100 solos, voted on by over 25 Million readers.

The title of Mr. Crowley is in reference to Aleister Crowley, a famed occultist.

Source: G4TV - Ozzy Joins Guitar Hero World Tour

The latest issue of Stuff Magazine gives us some more information for Guitar Hero World Tour in the form of new songs and characters.

Stuff confirms some songs and artists we already knew about, so we’re just going to cut down the info and share with you here what we didn’t know previously.

The newly announced songs are;

Steve Miller Band - “The Joker”
The Answer - “Never Too Late”
Smashing Pumpkins - “Bullet With Butterfly Wings”
Interpol - “Obstacle 1″
Michael Jackson - “Beat It”
The Doors - “Light My Fire”
Linkin Park - “In The End (If We Have To)”

The magazine also confirms The Beastie Boys (which we alluded to at an earlier date), but does not confirm a song. We have to guess it’s “No Sleep ‘Till Brooklyn” as the guitar solo is sweet.

It also confirms Muse as being a part of the game, as well as Nirvana.

Now given that Guitar Hero World Tour is getting reviewed in a UK title, should we conclude that the launch date will be the same as North America? Activision has already mentioned “a multi territory launch of Guitar Hero World Tour“.

Something that amused us was Stuff UK’s timeline of Guitar Hero, especially the “June 2008 - GH:Aerosmith For You Steve Perry Fans” bit. Joe Perry is the guitarist for Aerosmith, Steve Perry was the vocalist for Journey.

Hey, this gives us a chance to tell Activision that Guitar Hero: Journey needs to happen. Like, yesterday.

If you’re in the UK, this magazine is on newstands now. If you’re not in the U.K., find a bigger bookstore/magazine shop to locate a copy.

Related Links:
Console Hero - Guitar Hero Highlights From Activision’s Investors Conference Call