History VideoGame / RockBand

* FiveManBand: With the addition of keyboard in Rock Band 3, you can now make your own.
** Except that you can only have four members on stage at a time. Keys will replace either bass or guitar (unless you turn on All Instruments Mode).
** Subverted in the DS version, where your guitarist alternates between guitar and keyboard during songs that have keyboard parts.

On March 5, 2015, Harmonix announced that ''Rock Band 4'' would be coming to UsefulNotes/PlayStation4 and UsefulNotes/XboxOne. Previous generation DLC is compatible with the next generation and upgraded to include ''Rock Band 3'' features such as harmony vocals and fill lanes at no additional charge, and Harmonix worked "aggressively" to make previous generation instruments also compatible. The developers intend to use ''[=RB4=]'' to turn it into a platform for the series, avoiding the stagnation that resulted from regular game releases with regular updates and new content releases.

* UnwinnableByMistake: Certain road challenges in Rock Band 3 are completely impossible for certain players to get anywhere on. Just from the on-disc songs, Antibodies on Vocals by itself during the Overdrive Chain challenge is an automatic loss of 5 spades - as even the full 13 seconds of overdrive obtained by the 3 overdrive phrases does not affect the spade meter.
** In some of Rock Band 3's road challenges, you just have to keep using overdrive to get spades. If your band is just a vocalist & a keyboard player, Foolin' will only have enough energy for you to get 5 stars & four spades.
** Rock Band 2 has the random event "Biggest. Show. Ever." which tasks you with getting 5 stars on every song in the setlist plus an unnamed encore song with no overdrive at all. The encore added is always Ace of Spades. The problem is, multiple band-mates deploying overdrive simultaneously gives massive score multipliers to everyone, and the star cut-offs adjust for this. If you have a full band, it is impossible to get 5 stars on Ace Of Spades without overdrive.

* BookEnds: Meta-example: Music/PaulMcCartney's "Band on the Run" was in one of the first packs released in 2010. Flash-forward to the last week of 2010, we have... "Band on the Run" again, as part of one of the last packs of the year. The difference is that the first one was a live version from [=McCartney=]'s live album ''Good Evening New York City'', while the most recent one is the remastered eponymous album version (yep, with Music/{{Wings}}).

** Recently, we now got "Fatal Illusion", by Megadeth on Bass, listed in-game as '''Tier ZERO''', despite featuring fast strumming sections and even a bass solo (though not marked as such in-game). This was due to an error on Harmonix's part when they tierred the song; it probably should've been Tier 5 (or even 6), but as it stands, it is ''by far'' the most difficult Bass song in the Warmup Tier.

** During "[[Music/TheRamones Blitzkrieg Bop]]" the audience will sing misinterpreted lyrics.

* {{Bowdlerise}}: Being a T-rated game, swears such as "F**k" and "S**t" are muted from the vocal track (and removed from the vocal chart). The themes, on the other hand, [[Radar/RockBand can be pushed pretty far]]. Of course, they make sure that there's no penalty for singing during "empty" sections. If the swear is in the right place, [[ThisIsForEmphasisBitch you can launch overdrive from it]].

* GettingCrapPastTheRadar: [[Radar/RockBand Some lyrics]] push the envelope as far as a T-Rated game can (or E10 in Lego's case). One notable example is "Beethoven's Cunt" from [[Music/SystemOfADown Serj Tankian]]'s solo career; Harmonix had to censor the title to be able to put it up on the game.

** In ''Lego Rock Band''. outside of the Rock Challenges, you only lose studs if the crowd meter is empty, rather than failing. You can even recover the studs by playing well afterwards.

* SequelDifficultyDrop: ''2'' added No Fail mode, but nothing can be saved while it's on. ''3'' has a stricter crowd meter, but almost everything can be done with No Fail on (most goals now revolve around getting a certain number of stars instead of survival).
* SequelDifficultySpike
** A noticeable case of UnpleasableFanbase. Note how many people complained that ''Guitar Hero III'' was too hard, and that ''Rock Band'' was too easy, and compare it to how many people complained that ''Guitar Hero World Tour'' is too easy and ''Rock Band 2'' is too hard.
** ''Rock Band'' has 2 songs that fall into ''Rock Band 2''[='=]s "impossible" tier, 3 if you count the cover of "Run To the Hills" (which doesn't transfer over due to licensing issues, though the original version is now in the Music Store). Rock Band 2 has '''12'''!
** Vocals got the biggest boost in difficulty in Rock Band 2. Some of the songs that were in the impossible tier for vocals in Rock Band are in the ''fourth tier out of six'' in Rock Band 2. "Foreplay/Long Time", the hardest non-bonus song on vocals in the original Rock Band, was placed right at the bottom of tier five in Rock Band 2, meaning most of the songs in the upper ''two'' tiers of difficulty in Rock Band 2 are harder to sing than Rock Band's hardest non-bonus song.
** The Rock Band Network is seeing this in a ''tremendous'' way; the amount of songs rated at the maximum tier in at least one category, let alone multiple ones, is staggering. Vocals is usually the exception, as the songs in question are metal tunes with talkie lyrics without regard to pitch measurement.
*** Chaotrope deserves particular mention, as each song of his released on RBN is generally harder than his previous releases. The Hourglass Paroxysm, released as two parts due to being longer than 10 minutes, [[DoubleSubversion double-subverts this]]: Part 1 is probably the easiest 5-star anyone will get on a chaotrope song on anything other than Keys, while Part 2 proceeds to give everybody whiplash with 2 of the three guitar solos, both drum solos, and the overall difficulty (which is considered by some to be above that of [[Music/DragonForce Operation Ground And Pound]]).
** Interestingly, this trope is inverted for the regular DLC store, which has a lower percentage of "Impossible" songs (in terms of band difficulty) than ''Rock Band 1'', even if you don't include "Run to the Hills" in that percentage.
** Rock Band 3 has an interesting version of this trope. Though all of the instruments are harder individually, the difficult parts are more spread out over the whole setlist, meaning that the general band-difficulty saw a massive drop, even as the individual tracks became harder.
** There was an unwritten rule in the first two Rock Band games (and all of the Guitar Hero games for that matter) that all guitar and bass parts were limited to the first three frets on Easy and the first four on Medium. However, for Rock Band 3, not only was this rule scrapped, it was inverted: the tracks on each difficulty are now ''required'' to have at least one of every color that is present on the Expert track. In practice, this means that most new songs on Easy now have you using all five frets. Casual gamers were not pleased.

* EarlyInstallmentWeirdness:
** In the original ''Rock Band'', songs were separated into nine tiers of difficulty; in all subsequent games, it was reduced to seven.
** Also in the original game, preset and custom characters were tied to a specific instrument; in all subsequent mainline games and ''Lego Rock Band'', any character can play any instrument.

** This also screwed up a lot of Guitar Hero 2 players when "Hangar 18" came out for Rock Band; the RB chart is quite different from the GH2 version.

** The Wii version of RB 2 is compatible with RawkSD, a bit of homebrew that lets people import songs from any Rock Band or Guitar Hero game as well as play fan-made songs. Considered a killer app.

** The reason we have Billy Joel songs in the library can be traced to a slam on Darran Franich of ''EntertainmentWeekly''. While recapping an episode of ''[[TheOfficeUS The Office]]'' which mentioned a hypothetical "Rock Band: Billy Joel" game, Franich stated that "[[http://popwatch.ew.com/2010/05/14/the-office-recap-chump-ep-25/#more-71187 let’s hope never actually exists ever]]". Billy Joel took that as an afront, and contacted his agents to [[http://popwatch.ew.com/2010/10/21/billy-joel-rock-band-3-office/ allow his songs to be used in the game]]. Thankfully this came after [=RB3=]'s release, making for his songs to round out good keyboard songs.

* EarnYourFun: Averted in Rock Band 3, which unlocks every song from the start (though there are still clothes and instruments to unlock). The Beatles, Green Day, and Lego games also have most songs unlocked from the beginning. Played straight in the first two games, where the majority of songs are locked from the start, and can only be earned by playing the Tour mode, which can be tedious compared to Quickplay.
** The player can input a cheat code to unlock on-disc songs in the first two games; however, this disables saving and achievements.

** In the original ''Rock Band'', songs were separated by nine tiers of difficulty; in all subsequent games, it was reduced to seven.
** Also in the original game, custom characters were tied to a specific instrument; in all subsequent mainline games, characters can play any instrument.
* EasyModeMockery: In the first game, Easy Mode prevents you from unlocking the last sets of songs on the Easy career tour. The multiplayer Band World Tour mode takes this further: after a certain point, the Easy difficulty is ''locked out'', forcing everyone to play at least on Medium.

* FakeBand: Much in the tradition of using songs from WebAnimation/HomestarRunner in the Guitar Hero games, the first Rock Band has the eponymous song by [[WesternAnimation/SouthPark Timmy and the Lords of the Underworld]]. Vocalists beware.

** In 2012, [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ueS7rbHqo_k&feature=player_embedded Rock Band Board Game]]. If one wants to try and play it ([[{{Calvinball}} and good luck with that]]), the game board can be found [[http://rockband.wikia.com/wiki/File:BoardgamePrintable.jpg here]].

* PermanentlyMissableContent: Challenge rewards can only be obtained one time per band. While the "impossible [instrument] challenges" clearly show what the costumes look like (before coloring), the "Impossible Marathon, part 2" challenge has a reward of ONE (not a set, ONE) "crazy instrument" for each active player, corresponding to whatever instrument that player cleared Painkiller with. In order to get all 4 crazy instruments on one character, the entire challenge ladder must be gone through four times, each one in a different band. The amount of time one such run takes is comparable to the time it takes to clear [[MarathonBoss Endless Setlist II]]. Remedied in Rock Band 3 - unlock once, use on every character you want for that profile.

* SequelDifficultySpike: A noticeable case of UnpleasableFanbase. Note how many people complained that ''Guitar Hero III'' was too hard, and that ''Rock Band'' was too easy, and compare it to how many people complained that ''Guitar Hero World Tour'' is too easy and ''Rock Band 2'' is too hard.

* ScaryShinyGlasses: Can happen occasionally [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H9RYcHOKwOQ#t=4m9s in a dark room to glasses-wearing characters]].
* SellOut: In ''Rock Band 2'''s Tour Mode, you can recruit a marketing executive who can earn you more money at the cost of fans. On the flip side, you can recruit a stylist who will you net you more fans but you have to give him a cut of your money.

Let's clear up some confusion first: Creator/{{Harmonix}} made ''Guitar Hero'', ''Guitar Hero 2'', ''Guitar Hero Encore: Rocks the 80s'', which completed their contract, and then went on to release ''Rock Band'' in 2007 under EA and MTV Games, the latter of which, in turn, is under Viacom. (''Lego Rock Band'' was handled by Creator/TravellersTales with the ''Rock Band 2'' engine, although Harmonix took care of the note charting). ''Guitar Hero 3'', ''Music/{{Aerosmith}}'', and all ''Hero'' games after that were made by Neversoft under Activision Blizzard (Except for ''Smash Hits'', which was handled by Beenox, and ''Music/VanHalen'', which was handled by Underground). At the end of 2010, Harmonix and Viacom announced that they are parting ways, with Harmonix sold to its holding company, effectively making it independent again.

* SaveScumming: Sort of. The [=RB3=] Pause mechanic actually rewound the song, giving you in effect three seconds to breathe before the song started back up, allowing you to to repeatedly pause and hit difficult chord shifts/drum rolls with 100% accuracy. Harmonix released a patch where excessive pausing turns your crowd meter grey and discards your score for that song.

* VirtualPaperDoll: Every mainline game[[note]]except for the Wii and [=PlayStation 2=] versions of the original ''Rock Band'' and the [=PlayStation 2=] version of ''[=RB2=]''[[/note]], ''Lego Rock Band'', and ''Rock Band Unplugged'' feature a character creator. The first three mainline games also had assets for creating custom band logos, t-shirts, and tattoos.

%%* VirtualPaperDoll

** Even the regular version gets in on this a little. When playing Gorillaz' song "Clint Eastwood", lines sung by Del are sung by the virtual band's drummer instead of their singer, a reference to the song's music video. Plus, the colours go inverted, and your drummer is blue!

* ShoutOut: Rock Band 3 features a pair of boots called [[KnightsOfTheOldRepublic Knights of the Metal Republic]].