This morning, somebody sent me the following link with this quote: “I have seen the second coming of the party game, and it is called Rock Band. All hail.”

Now that the developers of Guitar Hero (Harmonix) are working on that, the owners of the Guitar Hero franchise (Red Octane) have their work cut out for them. They’ve released an abbreviated song list from Guitar Hero 3, which includes Smashing Pumpkins, Tenacious D and the Beastie Boys. My favorite part: according to Wikipedia, Living Colour went to the studio to re-record ‘Cult of Personality’ after the original masters could not be found. More dubiously, ‘battle mode’ will grant the ability to mess with your opponent’s guitar playing, such as breaking his strings or overloading his amp.

Broken String: When an opponent breaks one of your strings, that button on the guitar controller won’t work until you fix it. To do so you’ll have to rapidly tap that “string” until it is repaired.

Amp Overload: This attack causes the scrolling fret board on screen to shake and blur, making it extremely difficult to read which notes are approaching.

Lastly, the Guitar Hero 80’s song list has almost fully been announced. I’m actually most excited about this, as this is all the music I grew up on. It’s funny to watch people debate the song lists for that reason – for example, Quarter to Three, the site frequented by many notable game reviewers, would appear to be happiest if the game was all Smiths and Rush covers.Remember that the next time you read a game review.

Also, I realize that the band Extreme is now in the where are they now file, but damn, check out this video and tell me they aren’t a fitting final encore.