Blogcritics The critical lens on today's culture & entertainment
Colorful, packed with trivia and highly interactive, Music Games Rock just may be as much fun as the games it chronicles.
The book provides screenshots and descriptions for hundreds of music games, complete with “Why It Rocks” and “Did You Know…?” sections for each one. It is available for free at MusicGamesRock.com and will also be available in paperback, iBooks and Kindle versions. I strongly recommend an eBook format such as the free version because there are many great extras in the text,including links to music and videos.
The interactive links are especially fun in the section on “The Best Video Game Music Ever,” where they lead to videos for themes from well-known and more obscure games such as “MegaMan 2” and “Final Fantasy VI.”
“The Best Video Game Music Ever” is my pick for the most entertaining of the special sections, although “The Most Intriguing Music Game Tie-Ins” was also fun. Did you know or remember that Michael Jackson, Aerosmith, The Spice Girls, Journey and even 50 Cent starred in video games?
“The World’s Weirdest Music Games” was also entertaining and made me wish I could find a copy of “Beatle Quest” and a Commodore 64 to play it on.
Other special sections include “Gaming’s Most Unexpected Musical Cameos” (Insane Clown Posse in a wrestling game?) and “The Worst Music Games Ever,” which proves that a game that sucks is often great fun to read about.
With this book, Scott Steinberg does all music and gaming enthusiasts a great favor in providing such an enjoyable history of the genre. Even people who’ve never picked up a plastic guitar in their lives will find the trivia and the style of this book well worth their time.
