Tickets to Ride
There are two games coming out next month that I’m eagerly awaiting. One is, of course, Marvel Ultimate Alliance 2. In which, finally, I will have to choose sides in the Marvel superhero civil war. Until now I had been an innocent bystander. One of the differences between video games and comics: the former makes you an active participant.
That, naturally, is the main lure of video games, which takes me to the other game I’m anticipating, The Beatles: Rock Band. I play Rock Band often. Just last week my adult niece Lisa was in town, and she and I and my three kids formed The All-Wochner Band. We broke up even faster than Milli Vanilli, and were about as talented (especially when I was on drums). The highlight was watching my 6-year-old son, microphone in hand, unhesitatingly belt out “Eye of the Tiger.” The lowlight was me crashing and burning on one of my beloved Nirvana songs. My failure was so complete that after three abortive attempts I blamed the song. I carry the shame with me. This is all great fun, but in no way compares with the vicarious thrill of reimagining yourself as one of the Beatles. This is as close as almost all of us will get (some others of us form Beatles cover bands, sentencing themselves to a lifetime of out-of-date haircuts). I long to sing “I Am the Walrus,” a song that I once theorized, in a paper I presented to the right-wing evangelical religious high school I attended, was an indictment of God. I’m also interested in taking a whack at “Why Don’t We Do it in the Road.” I hope they’re both in the game. (Kinda doubt it about the latter.)
If the main attraction to this game is the idea of sitting in as a faux fab four, I have to wonder two things: 1) Who would choose to be Ringo? On its face, this seems unanswerable. It’s almost a twist on the old Groucho Marx line: You wouldn’t want to play with anyone who would want to be Ringo. And 2) Given that these remain almost assuredly the most famous four faces of the past 50 years, why aren’t their avatars a better resemblance? George looks close, but Paul and John don’t. Judge for yourself. Here’s the “Ticket to Ride” video from the game, coming out on the cute release date of 9/9/09.
And here are the human versions lip-synching to the same hit video. You’ll note how much more like the real Beatles they look here. And by the way, check out John’s mug to the camera at 1:39, as he lets us in on the little secret that they’re lip-synching, or George’s knowing look later on. That sort of clowning was essential to the Beatles, and I hope it made it into the game too.