Hey, just so you know ... this post is now about 15 years and 4 months old. Please keep that in mind as it very well may contain broken links and/or outdated information.

I played Guitar Hero for the first time last Christmas at a relative’s house. Since then I’ve dabbled with the GH demo kiosk at Best Buy and played drums briefly on Rock Band at a friend’s house. It seemed like a lot of fun and really appealed to the air guitarist and table drummer in me (as it would to most men, I would assume).

So for my birthday this past October, my wife and daughter surprised me with Rock Band for the Wii. While this was a great gift, I knew that Rock Band 2 was just around the corner (at the time, just a month away). So I returned the game and pre-ordered RB2 through Amazon.

As time went by, the release date for Rock Band 2 kept being pushed out. At one point it was the second week of January! Amazon duly kept sending me e-mail updates as to when my game would be arriving. I had pretty much resigned myself to not having my birthday present until early 2009. Then, suddenly, earlier this week I got an e-mail from Amazon saying it had shipped! It arrived on my doorstep Thursday night.

Friday evening, my daughter and I unpacked everything. The drums and guitar are wireless, but the microphone is corded (it’s a nice long cord though). You have to daisy-chain the small wireless receivers to the Wii via USB connections, so it’s a little messy in that regard, but it’s worth it to have the convenience of wireless instruments. Once we had everything connected, we gave Quickplay mode a try, my daughter on vocals and me on guitar, both on Easy mode. Considering she didn’t really know the songs, she picked them up really fast. Before we knew it, we had “Eye of the Tiger,” “Hungry Like a Wolf,” and “We Got the Beat” down.

The one thing that bugs me about games like this is the requirement to “unlock” songs. The box lists all of these tracks (“plus many more!”) but when you start, you can’t play just any of them. My daughter, for example, noticed Blondie’s “One Way or Another” was on the box, but wasn’t available in Quickplay until we manage to unlock it in Tour mode. I had the same issue with Dance Dance Revolution: Hottest Party (though eventually I did get all the songs unlocked).

So Saturday night I spent about two hours playing by myself in Tour mode, unlocking more songs. It was addictive! I would finish a set (on guitar) which would unlock more songs, some of which I’d be like: oh, I’ve got to try that one! So I’d keep going and going.

Tonight I finally gave the drums a try, which was great fun too. This is just really a fun fun game. It helps if you’re musically inclined and know some of the songs, but seeing my eight year-old belt out “Eye of the Tiger” shows that anyone can play this game and have a great time.

Have you seen those recent car commercials on TV where they show all of these classic toys (the Big Wheel, Sit-n-Spin, etc.) and then show the adult in the new car, correlating the feeling of those new toys on Christmas morning to driving that new car? That’s sorta what playing Rock Band 2 is like for me … growing up playing air guitar, drumming on the steering wheel in the car, now realized as a video game in my living room. It rocks!