World Unveil: Rock Revolution

Konami unveils Rock Revolution, the musical fusion of DrumMania and GuitarFreaks. But how does Rock Revolution compare to its competitors?

In case you didn't know, Konami helped pioneer the current standard of music video games. From the interface to the instrument peripherals, it's easy to see that Guitar Hero and Rock Band were heavily influenced by Konami's early work in the genre. Both GuitarFreaks and DrumMania were released in 1999 as arcade machines that laid the early ground work for how we interact with Guitar Hero's five-button interface and Rock Band's drum kit.

DrumMania (Left), GuitarFreaks (Right)

DrumMania (Left), GuitarFreaks (Right)

RevoRock

Enter Rock Revolution, unveiled for the first time at Konami's Pre-E3 spring event in San Francisco. Rock Revolution is right on par with other games in the music video game genre, featuring a six-pad drum kit with bass kicker plus guitar and bass peripherals. The guitars are still under wraps at this time, but we did get to see the drum kit in action.

As I said, there are six color-coded pads that represent your snare, toms, symbols, etc. plus a bass pedal. That's two more buttons than Rock Band, but experienced drummers shouldn't have a hard time adapting to the different pad layout. My only concern is that the interface needs some dire improvement, especially in the bass pedal department. Whereas Rock Band prompts you to kick the bass by a large horizontal orange bar that runs perpendicular across the fret board, Rock Revolution's bass prompt is merely another blip on the note chart and looks to easily get lost in the fray.

Join the Revolution

Rock Revolution will feature over 40 rock n' roll tracks with downloadable songs after the initial release. A full career mode will allow you to live out your rock star fantasies as you work play for 15 different venues and expand your technique library as a musical virtuoso. But the best feature of all is the state of the art multi-track recording studio where you can create your own music or jam over your favorite rock n' roll tracks.

Rock Revolution will be available on the PS3, Xbox 360, Wii, and NDS this fall.

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Comments [19]

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Bayonetwork

You can never have too many of these games, just like you can never have too much music in general.... unless it's Happy Hardcore.

Toneman

Bayonetwork Posted at: 05/15/08 at 2:20 PM PST You can never have too many of these games, just like you can never have too much music in general.... unless it's Happy Hardcore.
I respectully disagree... Too many games that all use their own periperals... they should make 3rd party peripherals that work with all rythm games!

Bayonetwork

If that's your main problem with having so many of these games, Toneman, then worry not; I have no doubt we'll start to see third-party companies making hardware for these games.

Toneman

Yeah, I just finally gave in... and picked up Guitar Hero 3 for Wii... first one I saw in stores. Now that they've announced drums etc. for GH4, I'm glad I didn't wait for Rock Band. I hear their guitars are not very good quality, and the drums for GH4 look better. The game is definitely fun, it was great outrocking Morello, Slash and the Devil!

MasterGamer666

o wow i agree its to much having all these sets of instruments for all these games and systems

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