All posts tagged: Rock Band

Japanese rock in Rock Band

Published by Ali Watson

Why Rock Band? Get ready for a little tl;dr. Since Rock Band came out in 2007, it has been a pioneer of the music video game genre. Other titles have come and gone with varying degrees of popularity. What made Rock Band great was its ability to license great songs by great artists for inclusion in the game. They also listened to fans on who else they could ask to be included in the game. In 2008, Harmonix announced a Rock Band: Japan game. In association with Q Entertainment, a developer in Japan, the game would feature Japan venues and include Japanese artists and their songs. Ultimately, issues with licensing prevented the game from being produced. What this means is that the rights holders for those songs would not, or perhaps were leery of, licensing their songs internationally, which is the license required with Rock Band. Thus, those songs would be able to be played or downloaded anywhere in the world. Back in 2008, this was a very major concern. Not everyone knows that not …

Dir en grey in Rock Band

Published by Ali Watson

2012. Some time following the Jrock in Rock Band poll on JrockRevolution.com in 2010, Harmonix asked if we could link them to any of the top ten bands as part of a special invitation to be included in the fairly new Rock Band Network. As the site was not set up as a broker for bands to opportunities, it was not possible. Working outside of JrockRevolution.com, however, I approached a select number of established contacts to gauge interest in this epic opportunity. With many ups and downs, bands and artists interested yet unable to follow through due to a number of situations, time was running out. The limited invitation had a finite window and with some good luck, Dir en grey agreed to be in the video game. Dir en grey submitted Dozing Green (English) and Hageshisa to, Kono Mune no Naka de Karamitsuita Shakunetsu no Yami (Japanese) for conversion into the game. Once the process started, Harmonix underwent numerous changes and I was instrumental in maintaining open communication throughout those changes as well as following the tracks in …

Jrock and Rock Band

Published by Ali Watson

[Graphic by the JrockRevolution.com graphics team] March 2010. Harmonix invited JrockRevolution.com to submit opinion on what Japanese rock bands would be a good addition to the popular video game Rock Band. Rather than gather information from staff, we asked fans what bands they’d like to see. In a two part process, we polled fans to discover the top ten bands of who they wanted to see in the video game to generate this list: 1. the GazettE 2. Dir en grey 3. X JAPAN 4. MIYAVI 5. GACKT 6. An Café 7. D’espairsRay 8. Nightmare 9. L’Arc~en~Ciel 10. Versailles ~Philharmonic Quintent~ For article information, please check out the following links: Initial article and Final poll results After our results were submitted back to Harmonix, we, as well as other fans, were hopeful that one or more of our top ten selections would make it to the game. Ah, but that was just the beginning…