Coming Together

The Beatles Rockband will arrive in a matter of days. After the controversies regarding the songlist, the price, the obtaining of the licenses and the hype its a bit hard to believe that in a matter of days we will be able to enjoy the experience promised by Harmonix.

For a few days now the PR machine for the game has been activated: in-store demos, television ads all in an effort to increase the hype, maybe even to let some oblivious people know that there is, in fact, a Beatles game coming. Like the preview trailers and the gameplay the actual commercial is a thing of beauty.

I guess the reason why I, and probably many more people, enjoy the commercial so much is because of the way old Beatles footage has been cleaned up, showing the Beatles in HD for the first time ever. Lets not forget that people who saw the Beatles live in their prime become fewer by the day, the only images we have of them are grainy videos and grainy pictures which make the whole thing seem like something unreal, something out of a distant history.

The ad brings the Abbey Road Beatles back to life, it gives us our best opportunity to see the group in person, gives us our best images of the group ever. Its pretty amazing, especially when you hear "Come Together" accompanying it. Sure we've heard Beatles songs in ads on tv before but only cover versions. In short, it makes you want to buy the game.

But its also kinda freaky. Two of the guys are dead and bringing them back to life in this manner is a bit like creating freaky robots or talking wax figures or some crazy automata of John Lennon and George Harrison. Then at the :17 second mark you get that image up there of a very happy John...should he be that happy? they tried to pull at the heart strings, and they were successful but they might have been a bit too successful.

Probably not though, its a great ad for what looks to be a great game one which if my band members cared for the Beatles as much as I do I'd probably have on pre-order right now.

By the way, the best part of the video? at around the :09 second mark, George Harrison checking out one of the guitar controllers. I'm sure more than one person has chocked up watching this thing.