With living rooms across the country already choked by piles of fake plastic instrument controllers, the latest volley in the rhythm games arms race is poised to dump another load of gasoline onto the fire. However, Konami has the right idea; Rock Revolution is going to be B.Y.O.G.C. (Bring Your Own Guitar Controllers).
Years ago, the publisher essentially laid the foundation for the current instrument-like peripheral rhythm game craze with titles like DrumMania and GuitarFreaks, which were released well before Harmonix’s first Guitar Hero saw the light of day. Surprisingly, Konami waited until now to throw down the gauntlet against the Rock Band and Guitar Hero franchises. Though the upcoming Rock Revolution is expected to provide a gameplay experience that’s largely similar to its competitors, the company will only be producing a six-pad (plus kick pedal) drum peripheral for the title. The guitar aspects of the game will rely on the use of existing guitar controllers.
This week, Konami’s associate product manager Mondona Akhazan confirmed there are no current plans to produce a guitar peripheral for Rock Revolution. The standalone game will launch on October 14 with the game and new drum kit bundle coming in November.
“Initially, when we started making the game, we designed it to be more of a drum-focused game,” Akhazan told MTV’s Multiplayer Blog this week. “We have our competitors out there that created games that are focused more around the guitars, so with this we really wanted to pay homage to the drummer.”
Akhazan said Rock Revolution will work with Guitar Hero and Rock Band franchise guitar controllers. Konami’s unique drum peripheral will work with [i]Rock Band 2 and [i]Guitar Hero: World Tour. Conversely, the game will be playable with competing drum kits by automatically detecting the number of drum pad inputs of the peripheral being used and scaling back the drum track notes to fit.
Published: Sep 18, 2008 01:21 pm