gamerDNA rocks out with Rock Band 2 and celebrates a legend

Monday, August 11th, 2008 | Behind the Scenes, gamerDNA Life

Last week some of the folks from gamerDNA went to August meeting for the Boston IGDA Chapter. Everyone was very excited because Ralph Baer was speaking, the man who invented the home video game system and is responsible for the creation of the industry that we all love and enjoy. Not only that, but Harmonix Music,the company who has created such great games as Guitar Hero 1 and 2 as well as Rock Band, sponsored the event with free food and drinks and we were told that they would bring some “games” to play on the projector screen.

The night started off with a great speech from Mr. Baer about the his work on creating the home video game system, many of them you may know of today. Ralph is credited with creating the Magnavox Odyssey, the light gun, and the Simon.

Steve “Fatty Chubs” Sopp was able to get his original Odyssey (complete with the box!) signed by Ralph Baer (Seen below)

After Ralph finished his speech, Harmonix rolled out the yet to be released Rock band 2 and allowed everyone in the crowd to go up and play the game with the new instruments and new tracks. Fatty Chubs and myself (Sam “QforQ” Houston) took the stage and rocked out to “Kids in America”, with Fatty Chubs on guitar and QforQ on bass. Click here for a picture, taken by Jon Radoff.

Click here for a link to a short video shot of the gamerDNA guys playing Rock Band 2, shot by Harmonix’s own Rob Humphrey.

The Rock Band 2 instruments felt great with a lot of small but significant improvements that make the game experience better than the original Rock Band. I’d say we’re definitely excited about Rock Band 2 which is set to release for the Xbox 360 next month.

That about wraps it up for today’s “gamerDNA Life” glimpse into the offices here at gamerDNA. In the future you can count on more posts about what games we’re playing at the office and news about what gamerDNA is up to these days. Stay tuned!

Wingman709

How did the strum bar feel on the new guitar? Does it give you any real feel this time? The original guitar was so mushy that I never used it. I prefer the harder feel of the GH guitars. But I love the size and shape of the RB guitars and am hoping the RB2 guitar has a strum bar more like those of GH series. So please let me know how it was. Thanks so much.

Sam

Steve had nothing but good stuff to say about the Rock Band 2 guitar. The buttons are a little bit wider, the strummer feels better, the back of the guitar neck felt like it had some texture to it, the start button has a plastic raise ring around it so you don't accidentally pause the game...all sorts of "small" stuff that add up to make it a big improvement.

wormy

Hey sam.. nice work droppin those sticks :)

Yeah... awesome time at that postmortem. Mr. Baer was amazing to listen to, and Rock Band 2... Yum!