All that trademark digging wasn’t a wasted effort. Konami is developing Rock Revolution and its hard not to compare it against Rock Band despite Konami’s history with Bemani. In Rock Revolution players get to bang on drums and strum plastic guitars, but there won’t be any singing. The other difference is the drum has six pads and a pedal. DrumMania, Konami’s arcade drumming game, has five pads and pedal. Rock Band has four pads and a pedal.
Konami could have easily thrown singing into Rock Revolution since they developed Karaoke Revolution. However, Konami has to differentiate their game from Rock Band somehow. Perhaps, Konami is trying to make Rock Revolution appear hardcore by making it look more complicated with an extra drum pad to hit.
Rock Revolution is scheduled to come out this year on the PlayStation 3, Xbox 360, Wii and the Nintendo DS. The DS version doesn’t plug and play instruments like Guitar Hero: On Tour.
While Konami is undoubtedly the father of Guitar Hero and Rock Band, Rock Revolution hardly seems revolutionary. Perhaps, Konami can capitalize on the niche group of GuitarFreaks and DrumMania fans by releasing original Konami songs as downloadable content.
Images courtesy of Konami.
