If you long to rock out to Rock Band while on your morning commute, your dreams have finally been fulfilled. EA Mobile announced Thursday that Rock Band is coming for iPhone and iPod touch later this month, complete with multiplayer play and in-game downloadable songs.
Like Rock Band Unplugged for PSP, the iPhone version has just four note lanes instead of five, and you can choose to play guitar, bass, drums, or vocals. Guitar and bass have pick-shaped buttons to tap along to the notes as they scroll by, while the drums have familiar Rock Band drum pad shapes. (You’ll note that the colors seem out of place, as they’re designed to be easier to play with one finger from each hand.) Vocals unfortunately (or perhaps fortunately, if you don’t have such a great voice) aren’t sung into the iPhone’s microphone. Instead, vocals are tapped out much like guitar or drum notes, with a modified interface that mimics the horizontal vocal note scroll of the console version. The upside of this arrangement is that first-gen iPod touch owners, which don’t even have the option of mic input, can play along with “vocals.”
Unlike Rock Band Unplugged, though, Rock Band for iPhone has two different ways to play along with friends. You can play together over Bluetooth, live and in person. Alternately, you can join friends playing over a network. According to EA Mobile, the game uses Facebook Connect to match up with friends online, which seems like an unusual limitation; on the other hand, the chances of someone wanting to play online with friends also having a Facebook account are pretty high these days. The game also features the familiar QuickPlay and World Tour modes.
Of course, a comparison with the popular Tap Tap Revenge seems appropriate here, though it should be noted that Tap Tap Revenge’s heritage derives more from Dance Dance Revolution than Rock Band (or Guitar Hero, for that matter). That game uses just three lanes that correspond more strictly to rhythm, not to individual instruments, and the music tends more toward dance music whereas Rock Band is almost strictly rock.
Still, the latest version—Tap Tap Revenge 3—has a sizable catalogue of in-game downloadable content. In addition to the included 20 tracks (listed below), which covers a good cross-section of styles, Rock Band for iPhone will also have in-game downloads of “MP3 quality” music. Harmonix and EA Mobile are promising additional tracks from “OK Go, Foo Fighters, Smashing Pumpkins, Lenny Kravitz, Social Distortion, Devo, and more!” Given the huge catalog of nearly 1,000 songs already in the Rock Band catalogue, I don’t think Rock Band for iPhone players will be left wanting in the music department. Pricing hasn’t been announced for additional tracks, but Touch Arcade got an early look at the game and mentioned a 99¢ price.
I’ll admit to being a huge Rock Band fan—there are more than a few of us in Orbiting HQ—so the prospect of being able to carry it around on my iPhone is an intriguing one. From what we have seen of the interface so far, it seems like the developers were able to come up with a fun way to “play” the songs in the game, despite not relying on the usual faux instruments.
Rock Band for iPhone and iPod touch should be available sometime this month, and works with any iPhone or iPod touch with iPhone OS 3.0 or higher. Pricing for the game itself has not be announced, but the version for other mobile phone platforms is priced at $4.99, which seems like a pretty sweet deal for a game of this caliber.
Track List:
- 30 Seconds To Mars – “Attack”
- AFI – “Girl’s Not Grey”
- All-American Rejects – “Move Along”
- Beastie Boys – “Sabotage”
- Blink-182 – “All The Small Things”
- Blondie – “Hanging on the Telephone”
- Foo Fighters – “Learn To Fly”
- Foo Fighters – “Everlong”
- George Thorogood & the Destroyers – “Bad to The Bone”
- Jethro Tull – “Hymn 43″
- Joan Jett – “Bad Reputation”
- Lynyrd Skynyrd – “Simple Man”
- Motörhead – “Ace of Spades ’08″
- Pixies – “Debaser”
- Presidents of The United States of America – “Ladybug”
- Rise Against – “Give It All”
- Silversun Pickups – “Lazy Eye”
- Smashing Pumpkins – “Cherub Rock”
- Steve Miller Band – “Take The Money and Run”
- Go-Go’s – “We Got The Beat”
