The Fab Four are back -- in virtual form. Reunited by publisher MTV Games and developer Harmonix, The Beatles: Rock Band, celebrates the journey the world’s most famous band took by allowing up to four gamers at a time to step into their shoes.

The game, which is available across Xbox 360, PlayStation 3 and Wii, comes packed with 45 songs, including “A Hard Day’s Night,” “If I Needed Someone,” and “Ticket to Ride.” Fans can extend the gaming experience by downloading new singles like “All You Need Is Love” (available exclusively on Xbox 360) and entire albums like Abbey Road (October 20th), Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Heart’s Club Band (coming in November), and Rubber Soul (available in December).

Die-hard Beatles fans can splurge for the $250 deluxe version of the game, which includes plastic game controllers shaped like Paul McCartney's Hofner bass guitar and Ringo Starr's Ludwig drums. George Harrison’s Gretsch Duo Jet and John Lennon's Rickenbacker guitar controllers are being sold for another $100 a pop.

According to Michael Pachter, videogame analyst for Wedbush Morgan Securities, MTV Games sold 5 million bundles and 1.5 million game discs for Rock Band and another 2 million bundles and 1 million game discs for Rock Band 2. The franchise has brought in over $1 billion in revenue versus Activision’s Guitar Hero franchise, which launched earlier, and has totaled $2.5 billion in sales to date. Anyone who bought a previous Rock Band bundle can play the new Beetles game just fine, which means they only need to fork over $60 for the game disc.

“I think The Beatles Rock Band appeals to at least 10 percent of the 20 million installed base of music gamers, so believe the disc will sell at least 2 million units and the bundle will probably sell 1.5 million units,” said Pachter. “I think downloadable Beatles songs will be popular, MTV will probably sell 5 million song downloads.”

Alex Rigopulos, co-founder and CEO of Harmonix, and his team worked closely with the Apple Corps shareholders, McCartney, Starr, Yoko Ono Lennon, and Olivia Harrison, to tell the story of the band’s meteoric rise. The first 25 songs in the game are set in accurately recreated venues from Liverpool’s Cavern Club to The Ed Sullivan Show to Japan’s Budokan arena and New York’s Shea Stadium. The level of detail goes beyond the original tracks, which were painstakingly dissected to allow gamers to play a unique instrument in each song. The screaming fans at the Cavern Club were taken from live master recordings.

Those who continue through the entire story will find a very different setting for the band’s studio period. The final 20 songs, including “Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds” and “Don’t Let Me Down,” are performed in front of magical visual dreamscapes at venues like Abbey Road Studios and the Apple Corps building rooftop in Knightbridge.

In terms of gameplay, there’s one key gameplay innovation that Harmonix introduces to the music videogame genre they introduced to the world with Guitar Hero. The Beatles: Rock Band introduces 3-part harmony singing, which allows players to bring songs like “Love Me Do” to life. For those who haven’t harmonized before, the game has a virtual vocal trainer.

The success of Harmonix’ original two Guitar Hero games and its first two Rock Band games has been hinged on the accessibility of these interactive musical celebrations to the growing number of casual mainstream gamers. While The Beatles: Rock Band has been designed to provide challenges on the more difficult modes to the younger gaming demographic, many of whom will be exposed to The Beatles for the first time in this game; Harmonix has catered the game to the Baby Boomer generation that grew up with the band. The game’s Easy difficulty automatically allows players to continue to sing, strum and drum through songs on stage without ever worrying about being booed off, as will be the case in more difficult settings when notes are missed.

After staying away from the digital world for so long, this first marriage of The Beatles and the developer who pioneered the fusion of music and games is a smashing success. It’s exactly the kind of mainstream experience that parents can enjoy with their children. It’s one thing to listen to The Beatles songs on CD – a new 12-album re-mastered CD boxed set ships on the same date as the game, it’s quite another to live through the whirlwind ride. And it’s something you can do again and again – with friends.

About the Author

John Gaudiosi

Editor-in-Chief

John Gaudiosi has been covering videogames for the past 20 years for outlets like The Washington Post, CNET, Wired Magazine and CBS.com. He has focused on the convergence of entertainment and videogames for outlets like Video Business, Home Media Magazine, Entertainment Weekly, The Hollywood Reporter and Variety. He currently serves as Editor-in-Chief of Gamerlive.TV and is also a freelance game columnist for Reuters and writes for outlets like Forbes.com, NVISION, Official PlayStation Magazine, EGM Now, Geek Monthly, PrimaGames.com, and Yahoo! Games. John also serves as the video game expert for NBC in Washington D.C. and has produced videogame documentaries for The History Channel and Starz Entertainment. John was named one of the Top 50 Game Journalists in the world by Next-Gen.biz in 2007. He is the co-author of Scholastic Books' How to Get into Videogames, Prima Publishing's Madden: Twenty Years of Videogame Football and Electronic Arts: The Official History.