Jeff Gerstmann is Still Alive

Quick one here before I step out for the evening, but you might want to head over to the official site for Audiosurf and sign up to take part in its beta weekend… that’s this weekend!

It’s an IGF finalist that reads your music and makes levels out of it. Apparently you can play along with the songs in a variety of modes. Check out this video for an idea of what it does. I haven’t played it, but it looks totally rad.

(h/t to "Gage" for pointing this out to "me.")

I actually wrote this post last night, only to have my machine crash (iTunes has been acting up) and lose it. As it was locking up, I snapped a photo of the post, but rather than typing it in, let’s use this opportunity to boil it down to its key points!

There have been many lists of this nature floating around since Rock Band’s release. The best I’ve seen so far has been Jane’s over at Game Girl Advance. I love the girl rock, and Elastica would be an especially fantastic addition.

My list is probably a bit more obvious than most. I’ll update it as I think of more. But before we get to that, I have to say that Harmonix absolutely needs to develop and patch in some sort of in-game song-purchasing interface for the game. Something along the lines of SingStar PS3′s SingStore. Xbox Live Marketplace is horrible when it comes to getting actual info about what you’re buying, and listing the packs and the individual tracks right alongside each other with a warning that you might accidentally purchase the same thing twice has “fix me” written all over it. The PS3 side seems a little bit better, as the PlayStation Store is better at presenting text, but navigation and finding the new stuff isn’t so hot.

With that out of the way, I bring you this growing list of songs and albums that I would immediately purchase if and when they turned up in Rock Band.

Juliana Hatfield – Universal Heart-Beat
Belly – Feed the Tree
Weezer – The entire first album.
Green Day – Dookie
Green Day – American Idiot
Frank Black – Los Angeles
Smashing Pumpkins – Zero
The entire soundtrack to Judgment Night
Bloodhound Gang – Fire Water Burn
Golden Earring – Radar Love
Doobie Brothers – Long Train Running
Duran Duran – Hungry Like The Wolf
Hum – Stars
Everclear – Santa Monica
Def Leppard – Photograph
The Distillers – City of Angels (this is mostly here to elicit a negative reaction from Alex, who both hates this band and songs about Los Angeles. Eat it!)
Hard-Fi – Suburban Knights
Rancid – Olympia WA, or just about anything else from “…and out come the wolves.”