Rock Band Japan

So my dreams, may or may not have come true yesterday. Harmonix and Q Entertainment are teaming up to bring Rock Band to Japan. If you've listened to the show, watched the broadcast or just know me in general, you'll know that I'm a huge Japanese Music Listener. Yes, I'm into Japanese Bubbly Girl Pop. But I'm hugely into the Rock Scene too. So you could say I'm a little excited about this announcement.

The problems I see are that I'll have to import this game. Of course if I got it on Xbox 360 I'd have to buy an import machine to go with it. But along with that comes the possibility of me playing Idolmasters.

If it's out on PS3, of course I could just import the game and buy a few of the peripherals here. But then, I'll have boat loads of plastic guitars and drums sets. Not including the Guitar Hero ones coming out later this year.

Another scenario is that they release the songs as a download. This would be great, It'd cost a few bucks for each song, but be less than importing a system or buying another set of controllers. Plus I could choose which songs I wanted to buy.

My only problem I could see with the game is that the Karaoke is probably going to be mainly useless. Unless when it's on download they use romanized letters, most people (including me) won't have enough experience with Kanji or speed reading to keep up in Japanese. But it's a small price to pay to play a rhythm game with the music I love.

So I decided to start compiling a list of songs that I'd like to see on Rock Band Japan.

I'll start off with Base Ball Bear. They're an "indie" group who formed in high school for culture fest/competition. I've heard they sound a lot like the pillows. Bassist Shiori Sekine played the Bassist in the movie Linda Linda Linda. But we'll get into that story another time. I chose Aishiteru because of it's well roundedness in drums and guitar. Honestly there are more complicated songs on guitar from this band, but the bass and drum parts were extremely easy. The title of the song means "I love you" and the music video has even got translations. I heard about them late last year through this song and they're steadily becoming one of my favorite bands.

If you liked the song and want more, listen to Base Ball Bear - Dramatic. I love the solo in this song, but overall I don't think the song would be fun to play on Rock Band.

Hope you enjoyed it,
David