Characters Get Tattooed by Brooklyn Heights Artist for MTV Video Game Rock Band

Suerte’s Designs Featured in ‘Rock Band’

The blood and the ink were still fresh, and a paper towel was taped to his chest, when Adam Suerte sat down for the interview.
He was sipping on a Jack Daniels-and-Coke to relieve some of the pain. For nearly three hours, the tattoo gun was in someone else’s hand, for a change -- and it was Suerte’s skin that was getting pounded and pierced with needles.

The local tattoo artist, who works out of his shop at 99 Atlantic Ave., got his chest tattooed with a drawing he had sketched over the summer. A cartoon rendering of a streetlamp with sneakers hanging from it, it is the exact same design that millions of video-game enthusiasts from around the world are getting “tattooed” on them this month.

The streetlamp tattoo is just one of Suerte’s designs that appear on the “skin” of the video-game characters in “Rock Band.” The new hit game, which was released several weeks ago, as a more complex successor to the popular “Guitar Hero” games, allows several players to play instruments in a rock band, rather than just play guitar.

“It replaces karaoke for the most part,” Suerte, said. “Before the game was even finished being designed, there was five million pre-sold.”

The “Rock Band” video game, available for PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360, was designed by Harmonix Music Systems, which is now owned by MTV Networks, having acquired the corporation after the worldwide success of the “Guitar Hero” games.

Suerte, 38, who admittedly doesn’t play video games, knew of the “Guitar Hero” craze from local neighborhood bars, such as Camp on Smith Street, which actually hosts weekly competitions. So when Suerte was approached this summer by one of the game’s designers who was familiar with his artwork, Suerte immediately agreed to illustrate the fictional tattoos.

More from: Brooklyn Eagle

MTV Games and Harmonix Unveil Set List for Rock Band

Video Game to Feature 58 Tracks Including Songs from Mega Rock Artists Rolling Stones, Metallica, The Police, The Clash, Foo Fighters, Radiohead and More

Harmonix, the leading developer of music-based games, and MTV Games, a division of Viacom’s MTV Networks, along with distribution partner Electronic Arts, announced today the final song list for its highly anticipated music videogame Rock Band™. Featuring the most master recordings of any music game ever by the world’s biggest rock artists, Rock Band includes 58 tracks and spans every genre of rock ranging from alternative and classic rock to heavy metal and punk. With multiple instruments and an impressive selection of online and offline game modes to choose from to play as a band or individually, Rock Band offers players an infinite number of ways to play each song and live out their ultimate rock and roll fantasies.

“Our goal with Rock Band was to give players the chance to experience an amazing cross section of music from the last four decades, and our final list of tracks includes everything from emerging bands to iconic artists,“ stated Paul DeGooyer, MTV’s Senior Vice President of Home Entertainment, Music and Games. “The overwhelmingly positive response from artists, music publishers and record labels made the final selection process challenging, but extremely exciting. As a result, 51 out of 58 of the final selections are based on original masters, giving fans an unprecedented way to get closer to the music they love.”

Eric Brosius, Harmonix audio lead stated, “Now that the disc track list is locked and Rock Band is being prepped for manufacture, we are working with our music partners to set an exciting download schedule, both for launch and beyond. Through DLC, players will have the ability to take a deeper dive into the music of the artists featured on the Rock Band disc, or further explore different genres of rock or additional bands if they choose.”


Rock Band Set List:
In addition to the 45 tracks listed below, Rock Band will also feature 13 songs ranging from a variety of established bands to up-and-coming independent artists that can be unlocked as you play through the game.

1960s
Rolling Stones "Gimme Shelter"

1970s
Aerosmith “Train Kept a Rollin’”*
The Who "Won't Get Fooled Again"
Boston “Foreplay/Long Time”
Mountain "Mississippi Queen"*
The Police “Next to You”
David Bowie "Suffragette City"
Black Sabbath "Paranoid"*
Blue Oyster Cult "Don't Fear the Reaper"
The Ramones "Blitzkrieg Bop"
Deep Purple "Highway Star"
KISS "Detroit Rock City"
Molly Hatchet “Flirtin’ With Disaster”
The Outlaws “Green Grass & High Tides”*
Sweet “Ballroom Blitz”*

1980s
Rush "Tom Sawyer"*
Bon Jovi "Wanted Dead or Alive"
The Clash "Should I Stay or Should I Go"
Faith No More "Epic"
R.E.M. “Orange Crush”
Iron Maiden “Run to the Hills”*

1990s
Foo Fighters "Learn to Fly"
Metallica "Enter Sandman"
Nirvana "In Bloom"
Stone Temple Pilots "Vasoline"
Weezer "Say It Ain't So"
Smashing Pumpkins "Cherub Rock"
Radiohead "Creep"
Beastie Boys "Sabotage"
Hole "Celebrity Skin"
Garbage "I Think I'm Paranoid"
Soundgarden "Black Hole Sun"

2000s
The Hives "Main Offender"
Queens of the Stone Age "Go With the Flow"
The Strokes "Reptilia"
Jet "Are You Gonna Be My Girl"
OK Go "Here It Goes Again"
Nine Inch Nails "The Hand That Feeds"
Pixies "Wave of Mutilation"
Yeah Yeah Yeahs "Maps"
Red Hot Chili Peppers "Dani California"
Coheed & Cambria “Welcome Home”
Fallout Boy “Dead on Arrival”
The Killers “When You Were Young”
New Pornographers “Electric Version”
Indicates a cover song, all others songs are original master recordings

Rock Band is a new platform for music fans and gamers to interact with music like never before, challenging users to master the lead/bass guitar, drums, and vocals as solo artists or cooperatively as part of their own band.


Rock Band is slated for release for the Xbox 360 video game and entertainment system from Microsoft and PLAYSTATION 3 computer entertainment system and PLAYSTATION 2 computer entertainment system in the first quarter of 2008 in Europe.

Rock Band is rated “T” for Teen (lyrics, mild suggestive themes) by the ESRB.

EA will serve as the exclusive distribution and marketing partner for Rock Band, managing distribution for the game in US, Europe and Australia.

For more information on Rock Band and Harmonix Music Systems please visit www.rockband.com and www.harmonixmusic.com.

Community to Create Custom Band Homepages

Social Website Allows Rock Band Community to Create Custom Band Homepages and Network via "Musicians Meeting Musicians" Classified Section

Harmonix, the leading developer of music-based games, and MTV Games, a division of MTV Networks which is a division of Viacom, along with distribution partner Electronic Arts, revealed today details for the ROCKBAND.com social community website. The site will launch on November 20, alongside the North American release of Rock Band for the PLAYSTATION 3 computer entertainment system and Xbox 360 video game entertainment system from Microsoft. A PlayStation 2 version of the game will also ship on December 18.


The ROCKBAND.com Web site will incllude in-depth Rock Band™ leaderboards, personal and band home pages, and a “Musicians Meeting Musicians” classified section to help form bands online. The site will also give fans the opportunity to create their own Rocker Profile pages and communicate wit h other Community members, blogging about their musical tastes and meeting others with similar interests.

“ROCKBAND.com blurs the lines between fantasy and reality, ” said Melissa Macaulay, Producer of ROCKBAND.com, Harmonix. “The site allows you to hype your in-game band’s accomplishments, while providing a forum to meet other real-life people and potential band mates who share your musical tastes.”

ROCKBAND.com Features:
Personal & Band Pages: ROCKBAND.com will automatically load your in-game characters and game stats from an online database so your personal profile page will always be up to date. Choose from four genres in the game to customize your profile pages with cool background skins that reflect your rock tastes.

Band Classifieds: Find and create your own band through the ROCKBAND.com Band Classifieds page. Here you can advertise your own rocker skills or search through dozens of rocker profiles to choose band mates who share similar music tastes.
Rock Band Leaderboards: Climb to the top of the charts as a solo artist or band! From band rankings to solo scores, the ROCKBAND.com leaderboards will earn you fame and fortune as you progress on your journey to Rock Band stardom.
Rocker Blogs: Find out what’s happening behind the scenes with your favorite bands through their blogs. Use your blog to communicate with band mates about practice times, meet others with similar musical interests and keep your groupies in the loop with the website’s unique blogs.

Rock Band Forums: Interact with other rockers and music lovers about anything and everything rock!
Photo Creator: (Coming Soon!) Take the ultimate promo band or solo shot with the website’s Photo Creator. Pick a location, the right lighting, and a coordinated (or not!) pose for your band. Take it over the top cheesy or seriously intense. It’s all about your band’s total image.

“We see ROCKBAND.com as a true extension of the Rock Band world. It will be an awesome way to meet new people who have similar musical tastes,” said Josh Randall, Creative Director for Harmonix. “With ROCKBAND.com players will be able to come together and express themselves in a collaborative manner, which is what playing music is all about.”

Harmonix has partnered with the San Francisco creative powerhouse Mekanism to build the social networking site.

“We are designing ROCKBAND.com as an online home for your band, and as a creative platform for living out your rock and roll fantasy”, said Pete Caban, partner at SF-based di gital studio Mekanism. “The bands and rockers that you can create in Rock Band are insanely unique, and it’s going to be fascinating to watch this community come to life.”

Rock Band is slated is also slated for release in Europe in Q1 2008. The game is rated T for Teen by the ESRB. For more information on Rock Band and Harmonix Music Systems please visit www.ROCKBAND.com and www.harmonixmusic.com.

Jesper Kyd Scores Kane & Lynch: Dead Men

British Academy award-winning composer delivers visceralsoundtrack for new video game from the creators of Hitman

Jesper Kyd has composed and produced a dark and distorted soundtrack for Kane & Lynch: Dead Men , a gritty, character-driven third person action shooter from the creators of Hitman, IO Interactive. Kyd’s intense cinematic score is a cohesive and hard-hitting combo of scar-edged melodic soundscapes and subversive action-driven grooves that portray the twisted and emotionally driven story of the two lead characters, Kane and Lynch, a flawed mercenary and a medicated psychopath – forced together but hating each other every step of the way. Kane & Lynch: Dead Men will be available on Xbox 360, PlayStation 3 and PC Games for Windows in November, 2007.

To achieve the right kind of musical tonality for Kane & Lynch: Dead Men, Kyd’s foreboding and graphic score is as relentlessly intense and unforgiving in its attitude as the violent rage of Kane and Lynch on their destructive path of redemption and revenge. Delivering a masterful mix of melodic and sublime atmospherics, explosive electronic beats intoxicated with musical distortion and strewn with hardcore industrial guitar sounds, Kyd pushes the immersion factor and displays the main characters’ flaws, anger and pain in his echoing themes embedded with haunting vocals, heavily processed synth ambience, ethnic instrumentation and other multi-layered sounds.

Best known for his epic choral/orchestral and edgy electronic scores for the multi-million selling Hitman series, Jesper Kyd’s unique fusion of cinematic scoring techniques and minimalist electronic music for Hitman: Contracts won Best Original Music at the BAFTA Games Awards and his stylish symphonic hybrid score for Hitman: Blood Money was awarded Best Original Score by IGN and nominated for Best Original Video Game Score at the MTV Video Music Awards. His other collaborations with IO Interactive include Hitman: Codename 47, Hitman 2: Silent Assassin and Freedom Fighters, which received GameSpot’s Special Achievement Award for Best Original Music. For more information, visit www.jesperkyd.com and www.myspace.com/jesperkyd.

Students digitally rock in Kogan

Four guys wearing colorful Mexican wrestling masks, shirtless underneath their open blazers, stepped onto stage. They took their positions, their eyes glued to a screen next to them, and the music started. While they played enthusiastically, their concert may have appalled the likes of Queen or the Clash.

Instead of playing typical instruments, this band was playing a video game.

These students were one of more than 600 bands across the country - and 25 at GW - to step onto the stage of the Rock Band tour this fall. Rock Band's big black tour truck has been setting up at colleges across the country since September to promote the video game Rock Band, due for release Nov. 23. The tour offers anyone a chance to try the new game and bring their new-found Rock Band skills onto a stage to audition for a spot on TRL.

“The tour will give everyone from casual music fans, to hard core gamers and professional musicians the chance to live out their rock star fantasies on an authentic concert stage,” said Jeff Yapp, executive vice president of MTV Program Enterprises, in a press release.

Rock Band comes from the collaboration of MTV Games (a division of the MTV network), Harmonix (the creators of Guitar Hero) and Electronic Arts (video and computer game creators). Likened by many to Guitar Hero, the game allows up to four players to pick up three different instrument peripherals, a guitar, bass guitar, drum and microphone, and simulate playing rock music while the music crosses the screen.

Ryan Bittner ‘11 said that he finds the game's versatility very appealing. “You can be like a real musician,” he said. “You can play guitar and sing at the same time.”

The game will give players more options than other games currently on the market, said Rock Band tour manager Kyle Brady. Rock Band will allow for solo players or up to a four-person band to play. The game comes with basic classic rock songs, but will have supplements available for downloading. Players will be able to download up to entire CDs of their favorite bands to use in the game.

“It's like playing along with the best quality songs from your favorite bands,” Brady said.

Trung Le '10 and a group of his friends decided to try the game on campus after hearing about it on Youtube.

“We're all big fans of (the video game) Guitar Hero so we're really excited for (Rock Band) to come out,” Le said. “It's going to be able to involve a lot of people. I think it will be a great party game.”

Gamers weren’t the only ones stepping onto the stage. Rock-star wannabes were also encouraged to drop to audition their music, gaming and rock star abilities for MTV.

“Every band that plays will get seen by a casting director,” Brady said. Of the auditioning bands, two will be picked to play at a battle of bands in New York City, with the winning band going on the open for a “real” rock band at the holiday launch party for the game.

The competing bands will be flown to New York and spend a week going through rock star boot camp.

Bittner auditioned with nine different bands, but was skeptical of his chance of going to New York.

“It seems a little far fetched for a lot of people,” he said. “I just came out here to play the game.”

Source: Daily Colonial

$169 Rock Band on November 23

Harmonix rep confirms Amazon.com price and date for upcoming PS3 and Xbox 360 rhythm game bundles; PS2 edition to follow December 10 for $159.99.

Shortly after Rock Band was first announced for the Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3, retailers posted product pages for the game's various instruments and an all-in-one bundle. However, Harmonix and MTV Games remained stubbornly mum on the subject of pricing and package options for the music game.

That changed today when a Harmonix rep confirmed for GameSpot that Amazon.com's latest changes to the game's price and release date are accurate. The online retailer is currently listing the Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3 bundles of the game for $169.99, with a November 23 release date.

In addition to that news, the representative also confirmed the PlayStation 2 version's price and release date. Last-generation gamers will have to wait a little longer to shred, but the price of admission won't be quite so steep, because the PS2 bundle will sell for $159.99 when it arrives December 10. The game and instruments will also be available separately.

Both the Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3 bundles will include the game, a wired drum kit, and a microphone. The 360 bundle will also come with a wired Fender Stratocaster guitar controller and USB hub, whereas the PS3 bundle will come with a wireless version of the Stratocaster controller and no USB hub. The PS3 edition's instruments can also be used with the PS2 edition of the game.

In May, results that were leaked from a focus group revealed that MTV Games was asking potential customers about three price points: $150, $175, and $200. Shortly thereafter, GameStop began listing the entire bundle for $199, which indicated that Harmonix, MTV Games, and distributor Electronic Arts had opted for the highest price point possible.

Source: Game Spot