“Now if you wanna step, you gotta play it by the rules. You gotta do what I do when I do, what I do. Step to the left, step to the right, spin around and bring it down tonight. Bring it on up, move in close. Let me see you and your partner stroll.” — R. Kelly
Ever have a phone conversation that would make a great geeky podcast? Apparently, AZM ally Mike Dent and his friend Card Captor Will have such conversations all the time. So this time they decided to record their conversation and unleash, Conversations With Will.
The boys discuss the meh that is this year’s Sentai show, Go-Onger, and Mike issues another challenge. Along with Mike’s standing challenge to Soulja Boy, Mike challenges Rain to DDR. And not just any song. Mike challenges Rain to Max 300 at this year’s Otakon! I’d pay good money to see that.
The creators of Rock Band knew that not everyone wants to be a guitar hero, so they added in drums and vocals (okay, so technically the guys who invented Guitar Hero left to do Rock Band while Activision retained the title and released Guitar Hero III). Not content to lose their foothold on a genre they helped reinvigorate, Activision kicks up the rock fantasy up a few notches with their upcoming Guitar Hero World Tour which adds a velocity sensing drum kit, a mic, online battle of the bands, backing tracks from the original singles, and the ability to compose your own tasty jams.
Though we only have the four flavors of Guitar Hero at home, I’ve had the opportunity to embarrass myself as a vocalist and drummer in addition to shredding tasty solos in Rock Band at various parties and I must say, it kicks quite a lot of ass. World Tour has the advantage of building on what Rock Band does right and tweaking it just enough to be different. Velocity sensing for the drums is a big plus. Writing your own tracks could be fun for musicians and bands to play with, also giving them an excuse to play games instead of practicing. But I doubt it will be much of an attraction for non musicians.
The real key will be the tracks. No amount of gadgetry awesome will win players over if their favorite jams are on the other game.
Of course, if you can play Travis Barker’s version of Crank Dat Solja Boy, World Tour wins!
Thanks to AZM bad movie guru Mikey D for helping us keep rock alive!
Rain is a Korean pop star who beat out Stephen Colbert in Time magazine’s list of most influential people. So Colbert challenged Rain to a dance off and awesome occurred! Who knew Colbert could step it up!
How do you make a fucking ROCKING song rock less? Observe:
Looks like you get power-ups in head-to-head rocking in Guitar Hero III. It’s gotta be more fun than it looks because that Whammy shit looks like it could start some fist fights. Still, that is Living Color singing “Cult of Personality!” FUCK YEAH!
That was “My Name is Jeremy.” No idea what system this is demo is on, but the check is already in the mail! Game play looks pretty much the same. The updates to the HUD are pretty nice. I really appreciate the vacuum tubes for the star power indicator. Nothing screams “Rock out with your cock out!” like a face-melter blasting through a tube-powered Marshall stack!
Fuck yeah! Here’s some dude rocking out on “Slow Ride”!
Make fun of West Virginia all you want to, but they care about their kids. West Virginia reportedly has some of the highest rates of child obesity in the United States. To combat the rise of the little fatties, they’ve called on Konami’s “Dance Dance Revolution.” The state plans to put a machine in every public school and form after-school DDR clubs for dancing the pounds away.
That almost makes me want to move to West Virginia when I have kids. Almost. I have to say, this is a great idea. I’m sure that once the program gets implemented, they’ll meet with tremendous success. I hope other states follow suit. Hell, this would be a good idea at the office. I know I could use the exercise and I’m pretty sure a lot of people in the corporate workplace could use a little dancing to blow off some steam. Hmm… I think I have a quarterly initiatve for myself!
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