I was wondering what to write for the next article here at Games Xtreme. It seems like only yesterday I was listening to a song with my grandmother, Ian Drury's: Hit me with your rhythm stick (Ian Drury and the Blockheads if you want to be technical) and it struck me, no pun intended that there was a veritable goldmine in that very song. My mind flicked across in a typical tangent and constructed an article on a genre that was founded pretty much by the previous kings of simon-says like button-music matching games: Konami.

What am I talking about? I'm talking about the genesis of Band games as they now stand. To explain further one has to go right back to the source of such things. In the infancy of electronic entertainment there were several things that conspired to making the current generation of music games as they stand. Oddly enough, Simon Says, that electronic nightmare of button matching to musical beeping was the grandfather of the original Konami designed Beatmania series.

I don't care what Konami say, someone there must have thought: hey, this is a novel concept, let's see if we can't make a game out of this and sell it for far more than the original toy. There's something addictive about pressing brightly coloured buttons in time to the beats of yesteryear. Of course it didn't take long for the concept of Karaoke to filter into the modern game market either - once again spearheading this is, you guessed it, Konami.

Konami at one time or another have produced a bewildering array of beat driven games, from dancing, singing, and even guitar…and keyboards, drums. But they never thought of combining those concepts into a single core game with a band mechanic, a fact that has cost them dearly in the innovation stakes and sent them into a blood-curdling fury of activity - both legal and game development wise. More on that a little bit later in the article.

Harmonix enter the fray, the young bright stars of the rhythm game industry and produce a revolution in rock games: Guitar Hero. It soars to new heights of interactivity and allows you to experience the feeling of being a rock star from the comfort of your own home. It sold massive amounts and shifted numerous electronic controllers to boot. There have been several iterations of Guitar Hero since then. Harmonix went their own way and left Activision, leaving another company to take up the mantle of GH development.

Whilst this was going on, Harmonix partnered up with MTV and game giant: EA to produce the most innovative music game yet: Rock Band, this staggering entry into the genre really set the fires of competition alight in both Konami and Activision. In Konami's eyes they had just beaten them to the punch and the only reaction was to grab their legal swords and start slashing, claiming patents and copyrights, attempting to bring these media giants crashing down. It was a futile attempt that ended up with a terrible show at the 2008 mini-E3.

Music games had come of age and Rock Band buried the Konami instrument titles, it combined two guitars (lead and bass) with drums, and a microphone. It touted an impressive track list with many master recordings available right on that disc. The addictive mix of instrument play and Karaoke-style singing gave players a taste of being a rock band and brought with it an incredible sense of team-play, more importantly it allowed non-gamers a chance to shine. My own wife being a prime example, she's not really a gamer, but given a copy of Rock Band and a microphone, she'll happily take that mic over until forcibly removed from it. Recently it brought another poor soul into the genre who claimed that he had: two left hands and couldn't play these kinds of games.

Yeah, I had to fight to get my fake plastic guitar off him.

Rock Band's instrument design was solid, but flawed. The strum-bar on the guitar wasn't as reactive as it could have been, the solo notes worked fine but the buttons were fairly clunky. The overdrive (star power) wasn't as sensitive as it required quite an angle for tilt. The microphone worked perfectly and the drums were criticized for a less-than-solid return-bounce from the sticks, poor rapid-note performance and a tricky foot-pedal.

Yet with all those flaws the game was a massive hit. It sold incredibly well and the inevitable sequel was already in the works. Harmonix said that they wouldn't change much and just address certain issues with the original game and instruments. Yet that wasn't the only thing about to change. At the same time Harmonix were coding away at Rock Band 2, Activision had decided to enter the rock band stakes with the next in the Guitar Hero line, the aptly named World Tour.

One might have expected both companies to stare war-like over the game trenches on this one, but something incredible happened. In a massive show of solidarity, perhaps to fight against Konami's heavy-handed approach to their patents and perceived rights over all things music based. Harmonix/EA/MTV and Activision decided that there would be a large degree of compatibility between the instrument sets in Rock Band 2 and GHWT.

This is a great thing since the GHWT instruments are leagues ahead of the Rock Band kits. Both the guitar and drums are wireless and have a better action, solid construction and pretty flawless design. The kick-pedal is better but still needs work (since I'm not a drummer I can't complain too much), but this observation comes from a real drummer. So thanks Alex!