Plain and simple, I am a Beatles fan because of video games—prior to a specific game, I didn’t give two shits about one of the most influential acts in modern music history. But this week, the sole reason for my fandom, The Beatles: Rock Band, turns 15. Harmonix’s rhythm game masterpiece feels forgotten despite the miraculous circumstances that allowed it to exist.
It remains the single most gorgeous tribute the band has ever received and deserves to be remembered as both the peak of a forgotten genre and a prime example of how games can allow newer, younger audiences to appreciate things they wouldn’t have otherwise.
The Long And Winding Road
The existence of a Beatles video game was announced by MTV Games, Apple (no not that Apple, this one), and Harmonix in October 2008. In the media landscape of the time, this was massive, with both gaming and mainstream outlets reporting on the new untitled project. Back then, there were two dominant franchises in the absurdly successful rhythm game genre, and every few months the world’s biggest bands would pick a side.
Guitar Hero, owned by Activision and developed by Neversoft, managed to lock down groups like Aerosmith, Metallica, and Van Halen to exclusivity deals that eventually resulted in their own standalone entries. Meanwhile, Rock Band, the franchise helmed by Harmonix (the original creators of Guitar Hero, confusing I know) and published jointly by MTV Games and EA, managed to get bands like U2, AC/DC, and The Pixies to drop entire albums into its ever-growing, always forward-compatible music library.
Two bands were widely considered the holy grail of this ongoing cold war: Led Zeppelin (one of the only rock acts to never feature any of their music in either series) and the Beatles. Both groups had a long history of being deeply protective of how and where their music was licensed.
So when one of these holdouts declared they were jumping onto gaming’s biggest trend, it was major. There was a caveat: Players couldn’t import these songs into the other Rock Band games, one of the key advantages Harmonix’s series had over the competition. Still, though, this was the goddamn Beatles. This was huge news to everyone.
Everyone but me.
Nowhere Man
As a fanboy skimming Harmonix forums daily, with hundreds of Rock Band songs on his Xbox 360 hard drive, I was underwhelmed. I knew very little about the Liverpool-based quartet. Aside from some late-night infomercials promoting box sets of their old-ass music, the Beatles were about as distant from me, a Black teenager from New York City raised primarily on hip-hop, ‘80s pop, and the Tony Hawk Pro Skater soundtrack, as humanly possible.
I had an appreciation for a handful of older rock acts like the Police and Jimi Hendrix thanks to my parents. But the Beatles, who broke up before either of them could speak complete sentences, didn’t resonate with mom or dad during their formative years, either.
It was the 2009 Xbox E3 Press Conference, of all things, that changed my tune. In a genius bit of marketing, Microsoft opened the show with the world premiere of The Beatles: Rock Band. Six joyful members of the Harmonix team played “Day Tripper,” followed by Giles Martin, son of the Beatles’ legendary producer, explaining that the Beatles catalog was “meticulously reworked specifically for this game.” The resulting work was also the basis for the 2009 remasters being released alongside the game’s launch.
Then, in a moment that seems like a fever dream in today’s sauceless era of Summer Games Fests, Giles was joined onstage by Paul McCartney, Ringo Starr, Olivia Harrison (wife of George), and real-life badass Yoko Ono-Lennon. This was a rare moment in which the living Beatles and their surviving loved ones had come together (heh) under one roof, and the mainstream media ate it up.
The significance of this, of course, was totally lost on me, a 16-year-old writing up dumb E3 blogs for my 300 Tumblr followers. But I was intrigued. It finally clicked that this wasn’t just a Rock Band game with Beatles avatars and some extra chrysanthemums in the main menu’s UI. Sure, this wasn’t my band. But this was clearly something Harmonix was excited to make. The team’s enthusiasm was infectious enough to get me, a fan of their work since Frequency and Amplitude, curious about the final product.
A few weeks after the September 9, 2009 release date I picked up my copy and quickly discovered my new musical obsession. The Beatles: Rock Band was obviously a great game. But it was also an in-depth, lovingly crafted history lesson told across 45 songs, dozens of archival videos and photos, loading screen fun facts, and original cinematics, aimed squarely at a total Beatles novice. Harmonix diligently recreated the sets, stages, stadiums, and imaginary landscapes of the band’s entire career, instantly catching me up on why they mattered.
Fixing A Hole
Sure, this was about as sanitized a history lesson as one could get on The Beatles, a band with no shortage of controversies and fuck-ups. And with music (and games) being subjective, not everyone would have the same takeaway. But like the Wii, which simplified the hobby for working parents and retirees just a few years before, The Beatles: Rock Band was an undeniable demonstration of how video games could reintroduce and recontextualize a point of cultural significance to all ages.
A year before The Beatles: Rock Band, I would’ve cynically written them off as a bunch of old white dudes with no real classics like a Reasonable Doubt or a Late Registration. Within a month of rolling credits, I purchased 70 percent of those 2009 remasters. I even learned how to play a handful of their songs on the bass.
Harmonix has since moved on from the Rock Band series to create unsung gems like the experimental turntable simulator Fuser. Then, in 2021, the company was purchased by Epic Games and has since released the successful Fortnite Festival. But it’s a shame that its Beatles game only received a handful of DLC releases (the rest of Abbey Road, Rubber Soul, Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band, and the free single All You Need Is Love). It’s an even bigger tragedy that Harmonix couldn’t renew those licenses so it could remain playable on modern hardware (would love it if Epic used its near-infinite war chest of V-Bucks to rectify this, but I digress).
Some 15 years after its release, The Beatles: Rock Band represents one of gaming’s finest moments: The tasteful and respectful preservation of seminal work from another medium in a new and interesting way. The rhythm game bubble may have popped not long after its 2009 release. But The Beatles: Rock Band is paramount to the industry trend that birthed it. It is a gold standard in a larger phenomenon that makes the entire medium so unique and so compelling in the first place.
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