The Beatles: Rock Band TV Spot Does Abbey Road Overload

@Rutty: Me too. I think it's seeing them all young and happy with their fans from forty years later. It's like they're getting a peek at their legacy and they're delighted.

Derek, IN

@Phydeaux: Misanthropic Gamer is aptly named.

I just found out Beau Ryan from Radnerd.com is in this ad. Very cool!

@mordennight: BURRRRRRN HIIIIIIIIIM

@hot_heart: squee! Nice.

@mordennight: Yeah, you know what? You're right. They sucked so hard that they turned this world inside out and it was never the same ever again.

...

The Beatles suck. I can't believe that so many people like them enough to warrant them having their own Rock Band game. They suck so hard.

mordennight

@Clstirens has a Na-na-na-Nano:

Woke up, got outta bed, dragged a comb across my head.

oh shit man, this game is going to be soooo much fun. I've been singing Beatles tunes in my head for days after seeing some of the ads.

CAN"T WAIT!!!!!

no fooling around here, but I am truley looknig forward to this game more than any other leading up to xmas.

ODST and Modern Warfare 2 don't have shit on the Fab Four.

If anyone needs me, I'll be under the sea, in an octopuss' garden.

Peace, we out!

@hot_heart:

fuckin' artists!!

lol

@Phydeaux: Number nine, number nine, number nine...

(Please tell me you get it =p)

@cutmaclass: "Wonder how the competition will respond, TV commercial-wise..."
Bobby Kotick: MOAR LEGGGSSSS = MOAR MONEEEEEYYYYY!!!!!!!

monkeysaresilly

@Misanthropic Gamer: Misanthropic Gamer is a poopiehead...

@The Anti-Fanboy: Playboy is pretty much as close as you'll get to art in the porn industry. Seriously.

Not that I'm with Activision on using Hef and Co. ... the Tony Hawk et al. ad made more sense.

@hot_heart: oh nine, oh nine, oh nine?

@Misanthropic Gamer: Please move your trolling, lying self elsewhere.

superdance14

'Released nine, nine, oh nine'

UR DOIN IT WRONG

@GameBuddy - Doesn't like tomatoes on his sandvich.: Please please me, oh yeah, like I please you!

That said, I loved the Beatles as a little child too, and my favorite song was about acid, so...yeah. Like I knew that at the age of 4.

@jcb231:
Well, there is "E10" in between E and T, but I can still see why they chose T instead.

Blah8

@ergonomicuser: WHERE IS IT HOW MUCH GOOD SIR

The box looks awesome.

The reanimation of dead people was a bit creepy though.

@Orionsaint: There's this magical new invention called video tape and you see... time makes fools of us all.

gordiehowe5

@ArakniD:

I dunno, the Hugh Hefner GH5 one is kind of funny, as a take off of the earlier Risky Business spoofs that advertised GH4.

jcb231

@bobtheduck:

Alien 3 was compositing, but I think this is CG based off of actual photos and footage....putting their heads on body doubles and such.

jcb231

@nworobes:

Hard to find a really high-def version of the ad, but from my point of view it looks like a combination of archival footage/photos and body stand-ins. Heads composited onto bodies and all that....

jcb231

@megatom0:

Drug references, violent references, sexual references. Sure the Beatles don't really curse and they aren't explicit, but the intent is there in many songs. It's not tame enough to be rated E, and T is the next rating up, so until they invent a rating between E and T, it has to be T.

Plus I'm betting they have to take into account that slightly more graphic songs like "Why Don't We Do It In The Road?" will be added via DLC.

jcb231

@TRT-X:

Those aren't impersonators. They're using archival photos and video and splicing it into new footage to make it look like the Beatles are there with all those people. The Beatles' bodies appear to be stand-ins too....looks like just the heads in some scenes are added in.

jcb231

The most brilliant part of the ad is the transition at the end, from Abby Road to the scrolling guitar neck in the game.

I love this ad. I find it somewhat touching for some reason.It's just really cool.

Rutty

@cutmaclass: Wow. Let's just give the music rhythm genre a worse name than it already has. Associate it with porn! That'll go well for the Games Are Art movement.

It sucks that people are still gonna buy millions of copies of this game, and leave Rock Band, the real work of art, sitting lonely on a corner while it shrivels because it didn't sell itself out.

see, this has taste. The Beatles are involved, so using old footage isnt pissing on their history as its THEIR history to pssi on.

GH5 ads? not so much. Nor is the creepy Kobain zombie

@ergonomicuser: yes what are you even talking about

dibbitydan

@marbles: Awesome stuff, I doubt 95% of kotaku got that "A Day in the Life" reference.

I'm 20, btw.

Clstirens has a Na-na-na-Nano

@ergonomicuser: Wait... What?

Holy crap you did what?? (surely that was a metephor

Clstirens has a Na-na-na-Nano

I thought the Beatles ran away from their fans.

@cutmaclass: Holy fuck, he's RIGHT!

Eh, close-up of John Lennon, half-naked Heidi Klum. 6 of one, half-a-dozen of another. I'm torn.

iFOREIGNi

You wonder how the competition will respond?

Last night I saw a Guitar Hero 5 commercial that was exactly like the Guitar Hero World Tour commercials except with twenty Playboy bunnies and Hugh Hefner. I wish I was making that up.

Activision, classy as always.

cutmaclass

@megatom0: Your comment should be rated M, ya potty mouth.

i know what I'll be doing on 9/9/09, buying not buying Beatles Rockband, but the Dreamcast 2, (I've had that thing pre-ordered for years!)

@dagamer34: If you have one of those new HDTV's, it will just show 'FAKE' in giant red letters over the commercial. Then if you had TiVo, you'd get a slow motion replay with announcers pointing out all of the flaws.

crabperson

@Orionsaint: So did most of Alien 3, and yet it wasn't... It was just bad Compositing.

@GameBuddy - Doesn't like tomatoes on his sandvich.:

@megatom0: "Why don't we da-do it, in the road? Why don't we da-do it, in the road? No one will be watching us, so why don't we do it in the ro-oh-oad?" (though that one isn't in the game...)

Dreamwriter

@megatom0: Why don't we do it in the road.

@megatom0: Bang, bang, Maxwell's Silver hammer, made sure that she was dead.

pretty amazing what kind of things we can accomplish on video now

I dunno. Not a big fan. It'd be cooler if it were RB fans recreating the images vs. impersonators.

@megatom0: Oh...I get 'high' with a little help from my friends...

Have you let YOUR knickers down?

Why the fuck is Beatles Rock Band rated T for teen. What questionable lyrics are there in the Beatles music. From my recollection there is no swearing, there are some explicit metaphors I suppose. Happiness is a Warm Gun is about herion but you gotta read pretty deep into it. I mean I take this as saying Beatles music is only for people 13+ I remember listening to the Beatles when I was 3. ESRB can shove it.

As a side note John looks like he's tripping balls in this commercial.

megatom0

Knowing that I've smoked out of the same pipe that John has smoked back in the 70s, I will enjoy this set more than any other RB packages.

ergonomicuser

@Indy_aka_Rex:

So I'll be able to spot all the tricks when I watch this on my HDTV?

@nworobes:

Are they impersonators? It looks like CG.

@Indy_aka_Rex: Really? Interesting.
I did think that Paul and Ringo looked spot on. Maybe I just haven't seen enough footage of that era to have a good idea of what John and George looked like in motion.

nworobes

@marbles: I roffled. Nicely done.

nworobes

I'm speechless. I just don't understand what's going on. What did I just see? Are the Beatles young again and two of them are alive?

@nworobes:

They're not impersonators (for the most part), it's old footage of them superimposed onto doubles. Their faces are OLD FOOTAGE, the bodies are doubles.

The Beatles were overrated...

@(zombie) buddhathing: She had a good run while it lasted.

@nworobes:
Wouldn't the Paul McCartney in the video be an impersonator no matter what? (joking of course)

So good you posted it Twice?
Well Ashcraft did at least

The closeup of John resembles that of a stranded nursing home resident who hasn't seen daylight since 1987

It is archival footage. for instance you can see some of the footage used for Paul here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o2qJaAE5eIM

FrancisFlint

FYI the "competition" is sticking with the Risky Buisness ads. First one will involve Playmates.

DanteSparda504

"...the blend of footage of the band..."
OK, just for clarification, absolutely none of that is archival footage, right? At all points, those are Beatles impersonators, because the actual album cover was just taken from a photograph, and there was no video recorded of that photo shoot?
That's what I'm assuming, but I'd be interested to learn that I am wrong.

Oh, and the John impersonator is super creepy. The George is alright, in that he doesn't look that much like the original, but at least he isn't creep-tastic.
Neat ad, overall.

nworobes

A moment of silence for the Bashcraft RB:B commercial double post. We hardly knew ye.

(zombie) buddhathing

@Michael Nelson: On the one hand, I can't fathom how in this particular instance, the mere mention of the word "road" made you think of those lyrics.
However, I can sympathize, because I played in the pit band for a production of Annie in my final year of high school a few years ago, and for quite a while afterward, those songs would get into my head at the most random times. Good times.

nworobes

"Wonder how the competition will respond, TV commercial-wise..."

I wish kotaku was more upto date sometimes. There have been 2 GH5 commercials and they are both pretty lame.

ArakniD

I guess I disagree. Trying to reproduce a dead person always throws me off a bit, whether it is Nirvana or the Beatles.

Cool commercial...but slightly creepy...

Best. Commercial. Everrrrr.

happytimeharry

Who caaaaares what they're wearing
on Mainstreet or Saville Road?
It's what they wear from (ear to ear!)
and not from head to toe!
That mahahateeerrrrrs!

Is it bad that Annie came to mind first, rather than The Beatles?

Michael Nelson