The band’s original fans will get a kick out of seeing The Beatles perform in the Cavern Club or on the Ed Sullivan Show. Younger fans will love finally seeing Beatles songs released on the interactive Rock Band format. Parents can play with children to expose them to their favorite band, and children can play with parents to expose them to video games.

Even if the Rock Band guitar intimidates mom and dad, they know every word to every song and will not be shy about belting out “Can’t Buy Me Love.”

If you have never played Rock Band or Guitar Hero before, they are rhythm games where you try to match notes sliding down the screen by pressing the corresponding colored button on a guitar or drum shaped controller. They require attention, rhythm and finger dexterity.

Beatles fans who are not necessarily video game fans will relish in being able to pretend they are one of the Fab Four and picking up a microphone. Unlocking photographs and videos are the icing on the cake. The game is loaded with exclusive content, even the loading screens are filled with between-takes banter and jams captured in recording sessions at Abbey Road Studio Two.

Rock Band fans that are not necessarily Beatles fans may not be as enthusiastic about the game. Sadists will not find challenges beyond what is currently on the market, and 45 songs is half of what was included with Rock Band 2. Nevertheless, there is still find plenty to love. First, is the inclusion of three-part vocal harmonies providing a new challenge and allowing up to six people to play at once. Secondly, the visual style, cut scenes and general polish are amazing and unmatched in previous releases.

The development team watched a ton of reference footage and submerged itself in the Beatles and their history, said Josh Randall, creative director of The Beatles: Rock Band. Recreating four of the most famous faces in the world was a daunting task, and one that had to be performed perfectly to appease lofty fan expectation, he said.

The Beatles Rockband Intro from Stephane coedel on Vimeo.

Creating 3D representations of Paul, John, George and Ringo was one of the most challenging aspects of the game, Randall said. The team spent a lot of time trying to make them as evocative of the individuals they were based on as possible. But when early models looked a bit stale, Harmonix went back to the footage and discovered they were missing a critical element: joy.

The Beatles had joy pouring out of them every time they played, Randall said. Therefore, relatively late in the development cycle, Harmonix developed new technology to “turn up the joy filter” by making their eyes more expressive and increasing reactions to the camera and each other, he said.The team focused not only on their faces, but also on each Beatles’ mannerisms. From the way their mouths move when they sing, to the way their hair bounces and how wide they open their eyes, Randall said.

About once a month Randall and other members of the development team had a meeting with the shareholders: Paul McCartney, Ringo Starr, Olivia Harrison and Yoko Ono. Even Giles Martin, son of producer George Martin, was an instrumental collaborator. Their feedback helped drive the look and feel of the game, Randall said.

For example, Olivia Harrison invited some of the team members to her home to see private photos of George Harrison to help capture his essence in the game, he said. After watching game footage of the rooftop concert, Yoko Ono mentioned how it was a windy day. So Harmonix went back and simulated a brisk wind whipping the Beatles’ hair around to make the experience more realistic, he said.

Paul and Ringo’s help really came through in designing the Cavern Club set, as there were only a few black and white photographs and one old film to go off, Randall said. Much of the work in the game is based off their memories, he said.

“It was really incredible, to sit with those guys and hear their stories,” Randall said.

Early on they understood the game and how it could expose a whole new generation to their music, Randall said. They appreciated it as a new way for people to experience their work and as a challenge to be creative in a new medium, he said.

The Beatles were arguably the best songwriters in the history of Rock. Selecting songs to include in the game from such a deep library was a challenge in itself, Randall said. Primarily the team considered whether a song would be fun as a Rock Band track, he said. Secondly, they wanted to ensure the tracks covered the evolution of The Beatles’ sound and included favorites and deep cuts.

Story mode roughly follows The Beatles career, from the Cavern Club to the Ed Sullivan Show to Abbey Road Studios and the rooftop concert. Trippy dreamscapes accompany the music from the band’s studio years. These animations perfectly capture and modernize the visual style of The Beatles.

“If we were going to go psychedelic, we were going to go modern psychedelic with a riff off the stuff from the 60s,” Randall said.

Research consisted of watching and rewatching Yellow Submarine, he said.

“We wanted to capture the spirit and vibe of the music and come up with fantastic locations and abstract visuals that matched the feel of the songs,” Randall said.

The Beatles: Rock Band is not a game you can review alone. This is a party game, best experienced with two or more people. So we enlisted the help of Omaha-based Beatles tribute band Yesterday and Today to give us their impressions of the game.

Drummer Tomm Roland said it nearly perfectly simulates Ringo’s style.

“As far as what you’re playing, it’s on the record,” Roland said.

Even the details are perfect, he said. All of the drum fills in the game are programmed the way Ringo would do it left-handed, Roland said. In Ticket to Ride, there is a presumed mistake where the beat changes in the middle of the song, and even that is represented in the game, he said.

Matt McGuigan, bassist & vocalist for Yesterday & Today, said the bass lines were also well portrayed in the game.

“They have all the rhythms in there,” McGuigan said.

Ryan McGuigan and Matt McGuigan from Yesterday and Today.

More importantly, the game will have the same timeless quality that The Beatles’ music enjoys, McGuigan said. The Beatles’ have never spoiled, they continually find ways to be creative in hot new mediums and genres, he said. The visual aspect of the game just elevates the audio aspect to a new level, he said.

Working with The Beatles has bee a dream come true for the Harmonix team, Randall said.

“We spent a lot of nights here making sure we did right by these guys,” Randall said.

Being incorporated into Beatles history is flooring, he said. Paul McCartney has been so impressed with the project that he is using footage from the game in his concerts right now, he said.

If you are not satisfied with only 45 Beatles tracks, more will be available for download soon. In October, the remaining songs from Abbey Road will be released as downloadable content, followed by Sergeant Pepper’s Lonely Heart Club Band and Rubber Soul in November and December. Depending on those sales, it’s a safe bet that more albums will be released in 2010.

Or if the simultaneous release of the game and The Beatles’ remastered albums has you reliving Beatlemania, check out Yesterday and Today at the Omaha Community Playhouse where they will be performing all of December.

Track List:

Cavern Club

• I Saw Her Standing There
• Twist and Shout
• Do You Want to Know a Secret
• Boys

Ed Sullivan Theater:

• I Want To Hold Your Hand
• Can’t Buy Me Love
• A Hard Day’s Night
• I Wanna Be Your Man

Shea Stadium:

• I Feel Fine
• I’m Looking Through You
• Eight Days a Week
• If I Needed Someone
• Ticket to Ride

Budokan:

• Drive My Car
• Day Tripper
• Paperback Writer
• Taxman
• And Your Bird Can Sing

Abbey Road Dreamscapes:

• Yellow Submarine
• Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band/With a Little Help from My Friends
• Lucy in the Sky With Diamonds
• Getting Better
• Within You Without You/Tomorrow Never Knows
• Good Morning
• I Am The Walrus
• Hello, Goodbye
• Hey Bulldog
• Back in the USSR
• Dear Prudence
• While My Guitar Gently Weeps
• Helter Skelter
• Revolution
• Birthday
• Octopus’s Garden
• Something
• Come Together
• Here Comes the Sun

Rooftop Concert

• Dig a Pony
• Get Back
• Don’t Let Me Down
• I’ve Got a Feeling
• I Want You (She’s So Heavy)
• I Me Mine

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Cornfed Gamer – You only have one year between releases of NCAA, how do you balance the time between adding new features and improving the core, on the field experience?

Ben Haumiller - That’s a fun part about it, is that we do have such a tight time line every year that there really is no down time. We don’t ship for six days and I’m already working fully on next year’s title.

You’re constantly thinking about what you’re going to be doing next and always working within the budget you have for that year with what you can get in.

A lot of that comes from talking to the community members and seeing what the fans of our game really want to see added. So we put a lot of stock into what they want to see.

CFG – I imagine some ideas you have to cut, or wait and it takes two years to implement?

BH - That’s always the toughest part is seeing something that you really want to see in the game not make it in just because you don’t have the time to do it. A lot of times you try to work it in gradually, where it might be a two-year feature to get the full scope of what you want to see. You get elements of it one year, and go for it full bore the next year.

But there are some things that wind up getting cut that just breaks your heart. You get so attached to some of these features but it comes down to a balance of what’s good for the whole of the game, not just those singular parts. So something might get cut that you’re attached to, but it’s for the better of the whole game.

CFG - Give me an example of a feature that you were a big fan of that got cut in the past, or even in this year’s release?

BH - One example would be dynasty mode priority score updates, like you see on ESPN. Where, during the course of the game you’re getting updates on other games that are happening around the nation to make you feel like you’re in a full environment. Like you’re actually there in the middle of a Saturday afternoon.

But for technical reasons it has always been difficult to get those in the right way, especially when also trying to include scores from online games of other friends and online dynasty.

That’s one thing we would like to have. It would be nice point and we’re working to try and get it but we haven’t quite got there yet. Other things pop up that lower that on the priority list of what we’re doing.

CFG – How you guys decide to allocate rankings and skill points to the different schools and players?

BH - Team ratings, that’s all done by a committee of us on the NCAA team. We all get together and have a roundtable discussion to come up with our top 25 rankings for each year.

In the past couple years we’ve had roughly 18 of the top 25 schools within one spot of where they wound up in the real life preseason rankings. We do our list back in February, before a lot of the spring practice happens. We’re taking a lot of stabs in the dark at what we think schools are going to look like and how the top 25 is going to shape up based on what we know at that time.

As for the rosters, that’s something we really try to do based on the team and what you’re expecting when you’re playing as that team. If you’re playing as USC, for example, and they have a team that’s built around running the wishbone, that’s not going to make much sense. When you’re playing as USC you’re expecting to have a team that’s built with a pro-style offense. If you’re looking to play as Alabama, you’re looking to have a stud receiver to throw to at all times.

That’s how we build our roster. We don’t have the real players in the game,  so we can’t actually create the teams based on the real life players. But we’re building them based on the themes for those teams.

Another example from the Big XII is Texas Tech. If they’re not throwing on every down and they don’t have the players to be able to run that offense then it’s going to seem a little strange to you when you’re playing the game. So we’re trying to keep them as true to their real-life identity as possible even though we don’t actually have the real players in the game.

CFG - There’s so much focus on downloadable content and digital distribution nowadays, have you guys ever thought about releasing a core game every three or four years and providing downloadable roster and schedule updates every year?

BH - There are discussions always happening on what’s the best model and how we want to get the product out. We’ve discussed a lot of different options and that one is something that has been mentioned as well.

Those decisions are made well above my position. I’ve just got to work with whatever decision we go with. But yeah, you’ll see a lot of change into digital distribution and getting content out that way. We’re not planning on doing it next year or the year after, but who knows what happens in the future.

CFG - How do you decide what new features from past games get to stick around in the next iteration and what kind of things get left behind and why?

BH - When we moved to the next generation, that first year it was really about getting a game up and running. We weren’t sure what full game experience we would have. We were trying to grab everything we could from the older version and get it in, but it became a point of, OK, we could take all these features, but there are certain things we wanted to really redefine how they work and really do them the right way. Not just port over what we had before and keep going.

With dynasty sanctions, for example, where you get players that get into trouble and you can choose to discipline them, or not, and you might end up running into the heat of the NCAA. That was something where we had a system that works well on the PS2 version, and it was a fine system, but we really want to, at some point, go back and readdress how that works and really upgrade the system and make it a much better and more fun experience.

So the decision was made for some of the features, to leave them out right now with the plan of going back and make them larger and better. So you’re seeing things come back along the way.

CFG - You guys do both Madden and NCAA Football, and a lot of the gameplay is similar. How is the focus of NCAA different from that of Madden, or what different considerations do you take as a team when focusing on the college sport compared to the professional sport?

We have two separate teams that work on each title. The guys that work on NCAA with me, we’re all very huge college football fanatics. I mean, I try to make it to at least 10 to 15 college football games a year all across the country just to see different places I’ve never been before and check out some great games along the way. I haven’t had a chance to make it out to the Sea of Red yet but it is definitely on my list.

We feel our games are best when they are as different from each other as possible. There are things that are very similar, and a lot of our gameplay stuff is shared. Our gameplay team does work on both titles because when it comes down to it, a halfback dive is a halfback dive. There’s really not much difference with the way its run in the pros versus in college.

But where we get really specific is in our playbooks. The Wildcat is now becoming a phenomom in the NFL right now, but we’ve had it in NCAA since Arkansas was running it a few years ago.

CFG – How often do you get Lee Corso and the gang together to record new audio for NCAA?

BH – We bring them in every year to record new content. We try to throw away the lines that are considered to repetitive, or have been there for a few years, and try to freshen them up. One thing we did this year with Brad Nessler is you were able to go online and actually enter in the phonetic spelling of your last name. So he read a bunch of, thousands of, user submitted last names, so when they went in and actually edit rosters or create players and put their own last name in, they’ll actually hear Brad Nessler say it for the first time.

We have a lot of scripted commentary we try to have them read for certain situations, but a lot of fun is when we have them come in and just watch the game being played and react and talk about what they’re seeing. We get a lot of great content and a lot of great commentary just from letting them do that, for letting them be themselves. I mean they call games for a living, so letting them just do the commentary based on the action they are seeing while watching the game being played, you get a lot of really cool, key things they would say. When you’re trying to write for them you’re trying to channel their voice, and it’s a little tough to do at times. Just let them naturally do it on their own and they come up with some great stuff.

CFG - There are certain features to the game that are unlocked by purchasing the features using Microsoft points. Why are these essentially downloadable content instead of part of the core game, and does it create a competitive disadvantage for those playing online dynasty?

BH – A lot of these are what are considered accelerators. The five star prospect thing, that is something that’s intended for the guy that wants to play the feature and wants to experience it, but maybe doesn’t have the time to play every high school game. They want to jump right in and start playing in college. So we give them the option to bypass that section.

Or in dynasty for example, you want to have the toughest place to play but you don’t have the time to invest to get your team to the top, we’re giving you a way to accelerate your experience to get you to that point.

Everything we have as far as the accelerators this year are things you can find and do on your own, but this gives you a chance to jump in there a little earlier.

It’s something that in the long run really doesn’t unbalance the game so much, since, everything is already there for everybody. But we do see how some people may say, ‘well we don’t want that in our dynasty, we want everybody to do it on their own.’ So that’s one thing that will actually be in the patch that we’re coming out with–I don’t know the exact day yet, but it will be as close to launch as we possibly can–will be the option to have that turned off for online dynasty so people can have their dynasty without the concern that somebody may have some downloadable content.

CFG – What’s the winner of the Season Showdown tournament gets. If Nebraska wins, do we get to see a Husker on the cover next year?

BH – Hahahaha. So we’re working through everything we can to try to figure out if we’ll wind up having a great grand prize for it. It really comes down to, the intent behind it was really all along the pride of your school and showing off that your school is the best. We don’t know yet exactly what that’s going to mean in the long run, but for now it definitely Is a mode that’s geared toward showing off your school pride.

CFG – There’s no NCAA for the Nintendo Wii this year. Why?

BH – We decided to take a step back for a year and really take a look at what we can be doing with the Wii console and make a college football game on the Wii that really just blows people away. So it’s something we’re looking at doing in the future. No commitment yet on when we’ll be doing it again. But its something we are looking at jumping back into and really utilizing what the Wii can do to make a unique college football experience.

CFG – Personally I’ve always preferred dynasty mode. Do you have any ideas we can look forward to with dynasty mode in the next few years?

BH – I’ve got pages and pages of notebooks filled of things that we want to do with dynasty. A lot of it does come into increasing the coaching aspect and adding more of an athletic director mentality to what you can do.

One thing that’s really nice is we’re not going to run out of ideas anytime. It’s just a matter of getting all those things prioritized and implemented into the game. With online dynasty being added last year that opens a whole new realm. It’s a lot more fun to recruit against your buddy for a five-star quarterback than it is to recruit against the computer. We definitely see that as the way to go.

Everything is moving into the online space, so we really want to be there with that and increase how you’re able to interact with the game, where you’re able to play and how you’re able to do the different aspects of the game. Whether it be at your console, whether it be at your computer, whether it be on your mobile phone. Wherever you go, being able to always be connected to whatever happens in your dynasty and being able to participate is definitely the future as far as gaming goes.

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