Arstechnica has a post discussing the upcoming karoke-game-on-crack, Rock Band. It’s the Guitar Hero you know and love (but I’ve never owned) plus plastic drums and a microphone. I think the entire setup gets you a four person band. I’ll get to that in a second. What had me rofl’ing like a wofl’ing (note, this is a wofl: #) is a single sentence made by ars writer Ben Kurchera who says:

Ben Kurchera: “This is the first game that’s lead me to consider buying a bigger house to play a video game.”

Hilariously true. But he might consider a smaller house to afford a video game with the $300 plastic peripheral expense required to play Rock Band. Or store Rock Band? Where are these plastic instruments going to go when they are not being played? Is this a bit different than displaying racks of DVD cases or proudly mounting guitars on the wall? Will the plastic musical controllers end up in the sports bin next to the soccer ball that no one kicks? I don’t know, my PS2 racing wheel wants badly to work with the PS3 in the future. I hope it does so it can lose its dust.

Another thing that Joystiq mentioned their first hands-on experience with Rock Band, the apologized to the keyboard players out there saying that there was no virtual keyboard band member in the game. A sad day for myself but I think it would be bad practice; playing real-life Ping Pong always screws up my real-life Tennis game.

Joystick said that Rock Band would disappoint the Rick Wakeman fans by skipping the keyboardist band member. Wait, who? Rick Wakeman? Uh-oh, I’m supposed to know this. Oh, yeah .. right … that Yes guy. Yes, I know his stuff but how about you say Yes next time? I’m not good with names and Rick Rubin is already taking up a lot of room in my musician name brain space.

Guitar Hero came to appease the mass audience just as Guitar Center appeases the mass would-be noodlers. There’s no Harmonica Center even though Guitar Center sells harmonicas. So if everyone wants to play lead guitar, who’s going to sing “Don’t Fear the Reaper”? No one without a few beers. I think the guitar controllers of Rock Band will never hit the closet or the floor. So maybe people should just buy Guitar Hero III instead?

Of course I thought the amount of controller commitment in Guitar Hero would sink it straight out. And yet here comes Guitar Hero III in full force, commanding all different types of fake plastic guitars on various platforms. They have fake plastic wireless guitars, fake plastic replica guitars, fake plastic flying-v guitars and even limited editions. So maybe my group of friends is different than the other groups in the world with large gaming rooms and large desire for fake plastic skills.