rock-band posts

Welcome to Freeware Friday, a weekly column showcasing excellent games that you can play free of charge!

The rhythm genre is one that seems to be exploding, especially with the advent of Guitar Hero. Everbody loves to wail on plastic guitars and pretend to be a rock god! Just look at the bevy of knock-offs, as well as the war between the Guitar Hero and Rock Band franchises. For the PC, though, there's a great Guitar Hero freeware clone for those who want custom music in their game. That clone is the excellent freeware game Frets on Fire, which also happens to have the most ridiculous logo known to man.

Shacknews reports that "I am Murloc," a trash-metal track played by Blizzard's own band, Level 70 Tauren Chieftain, will be available as a free download to PS3 and Xbox 360 Guitar Hero 3 owners starting tomorrow. "I am Murloc," a tribute to the articulate fish people from the popular World of WarCraft MMO, made its debut at the 2005 BlizzCon event.

The track's free release is considered a pre-festivity festivity which leads up to the Worldwide Invitational beginning this weekend.

Just as they have done with iTunes, those in control of The Beatles music have been holding out on video gamers the world over. Until now. According to several sources (Financial Times, GameSpot), MTV Games and Activision are duking it out for the rights to bring The Beatles into the video game revolution.

As everyone knows, Activision publishes the Guitar Hero games, series, which includes Guitar Hero World Tour (the multi-instrument version) due out this autumn, while MTV Games publishes its rival, Rock Band. Obviously both would do just about anything to secure the rights to The Beatles massive back catalog of mega hits.

The Financial Times cites that a deal could be done in just a few weeks; a deal that will in all likely-hood be worth several million dollars. However, final approval would have to come from both EMI (who owns the master recordings) and Apple Corps (who watches over the band's business affaris). With that many levels of red tape, and the fact that Apple Corps has been insanely protective when it comes to releasing their music to digital licensing... let's hope we see it happen in our lifetime.

[via X3F]