Megadeth man Dave Mustaine says he’s had “high-level meetings” with Activision and Neversoft about the possibility of making a new kind of music game based on the band.
In response to a question from a fan on the band’s website, Mustaine, the singer, guitarist, founder and sole remaining original member of Megadeth, expressed keen interest in taking part in a videogame project based on the band. He said he’s not especially interested in doing another Guitar Hero game but suggested that the band is looking at teaming with Neversoft and Activision for something different and, in his eyes at least, much better.
“I have recently had two very important high-level meetings with the people from Activision and Neversoft, and we are talking about a lot of things, but a Guitar Hero box set is not as attractive to me and the people from Guitar Hero as the new idea that they offered me, as the creative stuff that we are talking about is over-the-moon!” he said. “I just hope that someone doesn’t stand in the way of this happening. I know that there are a lot of really damaging results from our mothership (WEA) having some legal disputes with YouTube and Guitar Hero to name just a few.”
What could this “new idea” be? Perhaps something along the lines of Guitar Zero, in which the player is required to be kicked out of his band for being an out-of-control alcoholic and then spend the next decade or so of his life obsessing over it and flailing around for some way to prove that he’s better than those half-talent jerks ever were. Multiplayer gameplay will be supported but will be unreliable and will automatically kick everyone but the host out of the game after two or three songs.
In spite of his apparent enthusiasm for the project, Mustaine admitted in a previous Q&A that he’s actually not much of a gamer himself. “I am not a gamer, but I do like to play a little bit. I guess you have to grow up with the controller to understand how to use all of the combos patterns,” he explained. “I once bought the game, The Punisher, 18 years ago, and I was so overwhelmingly out of control, and I knew it because I had never played and the next thing you know, all I could think about is how do you beat this game. I finally beat it, but it was after a long few days of neglecting my wife, and being really glaringly addicted to the game.”
Presumably Mustaine is talking about the 1990 Microprose version of The Punisher for the Amiga, Atari ST and DOS-based PCs. 1990 was also the year that Megadeth released Rust in Peace, which coincidentally happens to be the last Megadeth album I ever bought. God, I feel old.
Anyway, I’m not sure what to make of this. I was a pretty big fan back in the day and Megadeth undoubtedly has a lot of miles under its belt, but is there really enough there to support a game based on the band? Megadeth has a few tracks that are great as part of games like Guitar Hero but unless Mustaine is planning to do something like REO Speedwagon’s Find Your Own Way Home (which, for the record, I would totally buy) I just don’t see a Deth-centric game having a whole lot of mainstream appeal.
