'Green Day: Rock Band': We've got a preview plus the exclusive 47-song track list!
In 1994, Green Day’s Dookie was in heavy rotation in my elementary-school hallways. I also seem to recall video games being a big deal in my circle of acquaintance at that time. So I’m pretty sure I would have been the king of the fourth grade if I had possessed some sort of video game that involved playing “Longview” and “Basket Case.” Well, as of this summer, all I’ll need is a hot tub time machine to make that scenario come true, because MTV Games is about to drop Green Day: Rock Band, the franchise’s second band-specific game after last year’s awesome The Beatles: Rock Band. I stopped by MTV’s Times Square offices recently to check out the game, which arrives in stores June 8 and was developed by Harmonix, the same company that created the other Rock Bands.
The game boasts 47 playable songs — take a look at the full list after the jump, exclusively at the Music Mix. At its core you’ll notice three albums from Green Day’s discography. “The key to putting it together ended up being [2004’s] American Idiot,” Harmonix project director Chris Foster told me. “They’re doing a musical based on the album, which is a story that goes from start to finish. We didn’t want to pick and choose songs from that. So we made the call for the first time in one of our games to have the full album on disc. Then we were like, well, [2009’s] 21st Century Breakdown is also meant to be heard that way… So that gave us a second album. And then Alex Rigopulos, our CEO, heard about that, and he was like, ‘Why the hell aren’t you putting Dookie on there?’ To which we were like, ‘Uh, yes sir!’ It was a no-brainer.”
Dookie and American Idiot wound up intact in the game; twelve songs from 21st Century Breakdown are included automatically, while six others, which were already available for purchase in Rock Band and Rock Band 2, will remain that way. However, players who have already bought those 21CB tunes can import them into this game free of charge. In addition, the game also includes a handful of key Green Day hits from other albums, like “Brain Stew” and “Good Riddance (Time of Your Life).”
The game uses three distinct virtual venues to represent different eras of Green Day’s career. American Idiot is set at the National Bowl in Milton Keynes, England, where the band’s live DVD Bullet in a Bible was recorded. 21st Century Breakdown gets the Fox Theater in the band’s home territory of Oakland, Calif., where they played a memorable gig last spring. (“We put the stuff from their main show into that little theater, including pyro that would burn the place down if you actually used it in that space,” Foster laughed.) At the band’s suggestion, Harmonix created a fictional hole in the wall called The Warehouse for Dookie, as a composite of the “house parties and squats” where they regularly jammed before making it big.
After testing out a few choice tunes with Foster and a couple of MTV publicists, I can tell you that Green Day: Rock Band would have blown my 11-year-old mind. The basic gameplay is similar to any Rock Band game, which is to say it’s a total blast if you like Green Day. Those pop-punk anthems are every bit as fun to pretend-play using plastic instruments as you’d imagine. Green Day insisted on carrying over the three-part vocal harmony capabilities from The Beatles: Rock Band to their game, which is a plus. The visuals are pretty cool, too. New motion-capture technology lets the game’s Billie Joe Armstrong, Mike Dirnt, and Tré Cool avatars move around the digital stage more freely, even stage-diving and crowd-surfing at key moments. Hardcore fans will appreciate the attention to detail: “[The band members] had their road crews take photos of their tattoos and sent those all to us,” Foster said, “and then we actually did historical research to figure out what tattoos happened when, so we could peel them back to get the ’94 and 2004 versions of the characters right.” And with access to MTV’s extensive vaults of Green Day footage, the game’s designers were able to include all sorts of rare performances and interviews as unlockable rewards.
Check out the full track list for Green Day: Rock Band below, then let us know: Are you psyched for this game? Which songs do you think would be the most fun to play?
Green Day: Rock Band track list
The Warehouse
Dookie (1994)
“Burnout”
“Having a Blast”
“Chump”
“Longview”
“Welcome to Paradise”
“Pulling Teeth”
“Basket Case”
“She”
“Sassafrass Roots”
“When I Come Around”
“Coming Clean”
“Emenius Sleepus”
“In the End”
“F.O.D.”
Milton Keynes
American Idiot (2004)
“American Idiot”
“Jesus of Suburbia”
“Holiday”
“Boulevard of Broken Dreams”
“Are We the Waiting”
“St. Jimmy”
“Give Me Novacaine”
“She’s a Rebel”
“Extraordinary Girl”
“Letterbomb”
“Wake Me Up When September Ends”
“Homecoming”
“Whatsername”
Warning (2000)
“Minority”
“Warning”
Nimrod (1997)
“Hitchin’ a Ride”
“Good Riddance (Time of Your Life)”
“Nice Guys Finish Last”
Insomniac (1995)
“Brain Stew”
“Jaded”
“Geek Stink Breath”
The Fox Theater, Oakland
21st Century Breakdown(2009)
“Song of the Century”
“21st Century Breakdown”
“Before the Lobotomy”
“Last Night on Earth”
“Peacemaker”
“Murder City”
“¿Viva La Gloria? (Little Girl)”
“Restless Heart Syndrome”
“Horseshoes and Handgrenades”
“The Static Age”
“American Eulogy”
“See the Light”
Downloadable Content (not included)
“21 Guns”
“Know Your Enemy”
“East Jesus Nowhere”
“Last of the American Girls”
“¡Viva La Gloria!”
“Christian’s Inferno”
(Follow the Music Mix on Twitter @EWMusicMix.)
More from EW.com’s Music Mix: