Harmonix Music Systems, Inc.
Harmonix Music Systems, Inc. is a company that makes video games
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Harmonix was founded by 1995 by Alex Rigopulos and Eran Egozy. They began the company on the idea that everyone should be able to experience the joy of performing music, even those who may have trouble learning a traditional instrument.
FreQuency was released on November 20th 2001 and was Harmonix's first game on the Playstation 2 console. The gameplay of Frequency revolved around the player guiding a virtual avatar known as FreQ down a note highway in the shape of a octagon tunnel. There would be musical tracks lining the walls of this tunnel. On these tracks were notes that if the player hit the corresponding key of on their Playstation 2 controller would emitt a sound, this is house the songs were formed. If the player managed to correctly do this for up to two bars of the track, the game would tell the player the track had been captured. The game featured 27 tracks from various artists including some from in-house musician and musical director Kasson Crooker and his band Freezepop who have gone on to feature in other Harmonix games. The game gave Harmonix critical acclaim and sold enough copies to warrant a sequel Amplitude that was released on March 24th 2003.
Upon being aquired by MTV games they began work on a new muic game title known as Rock Band, which would talk the primary gameplay from Guitar Hero and add two extra instrauments to the game, a 4 pad drum kit and a microphone to give the full band feel. Released on the 20th November 2007 (the same day 6 years ago FreQuency was released) it was like its now rival and had commericial and critical sucess selling over 4 million units and creating 600 milion dollars in revenue. One of the key aspects of its sucess was its Music Store which was a feature on the menu of the game that took you to a itunes like interface where you could purchase additional songs in either single form, a track pack or a whole album. This enabled some people to instead of having a setlist of 58 could grow their setlist into the hundreds. To this date over 30 million songs have been sold on the Rock Band store and new ones are added every week. Like the previous Harmonix games Rock Band spawned a sequel, Rock Band 2 which was released on September 14th 2008. It was the dedication and care Harmonix showed to the licenses it used in its games that prompted Apple Corps, the label behind the british band The Beatles to choose Harmonix to devolped a beatles themed game which became The Beatles: Rock Band.
The Beatles: Rock Band was announced on October 20th 2008 and the first gameplay footage was released on 18th Aprill 2008. Harmonix have stated that they want the game to offer a expirence of The Beatles and their lifes rarther then just being Rock Band with a setlist full of Beatles songs. With the help of Apple Corps Harmonix were able to use photos of the beatles to craft a stylised art direction which they feel is key to the game, furthermore the animation of the beatles member on stage during the game was motion captured by tribute bands. The Beatles:Rock Band is scheduled for release on the 9th September 2009 which is the same day the remasterd CD versions of classic beatles albums will be released.
Harmonix Music Systems are the creative developers behind many music/rhythm games, including early titles such as Amplitude and Frequency to their newly-released title, The Beatles: Rock Band. They were founded on March 1, 1995 in Cambridge Massachusetts by Alex Rigopulos and Eran Egozy.
Creators Alex Rigopulos and Eran Egozy
FreQuency
FreQuency was released on November 20th 2001 and was Harmonix's first game on the Playstation 2 console. The gameplay of Frequency revolved around the player guiding a virtual avatar known as FreQ down a note highway in the shape of a octagon tunnel. There would be musical tracks lining the walls of this tunnel. On these tracks were notes that if the player hit the corresponding key of on their Playstation 2 controller would emitt a sound, this is house the songs were formed. If the player managed to correctly do this for up to two bars of the track, the game would tell the player the track had been captured. The game featured 27 tracks from various artists including some from in-house musician and musical director Kasson Crooker and his band Freezepop who have gone on to feature in other Harmonix games. The game gave Harmonix critical acclaim and sold enough copies to warrant a sequel Amplitude that was released on March 24th 2003.
Amplitude
Released on the back of FreQuency's sucess Amplitude was released exclusively to the Playstation 2 in March 2003 a year and a half after FreQuency. Using FreQuencys sucessful formula it added new features and better graphics to make what many believe to be a legitmate update from FreQuency. It contained 26 songs which was actually 1 less then its predecessor which is rare in the music game genre as nowerdays every game tries to added more songs than the one before. It included a remix mode in a simlar style to the one featured in FreQuency giving the player the ability to custom songs to their own liking. The game also well received by the gaming press getting high scores on websites such as Gamespot and IGN. The sucess of both Amplitude and FreQuency gave Harmonix the chance to team up with publisher Red Octane to create the Guitar Hero Series.Guitar Hero (Series)
The Guitar Hero franchise first appeared on our shelves in 2005 with the release of the first game in the series Guitar Hero for the Playstation 2. Guitar Hero took the ideas showed in FreQuency and Amplitude of a note highway, but reduced the number of tracks to just one and added the use of a guitar shaped controller that came bundled with the game. This controller had 5 coloured buttons on the guitar in place of frets which acted like the buttons on a Playstation 2 controller and a strum bar which was used like strings and that had to be strummed every time a note was played. Guitar Hero featured 47 songs of which most of which were cover versions of rock songs. Guitar Hero sold well selling 1.53 million copies and making $45 million dollars. Its sucess lead to the cultural phenomenon that guitar hero is today as well as spawing a many sequels, such as Guitar Hero 3 which made 1 billion dollars being the first video game ever to do so. When their contract with Red Octane ended 2006 they were purchased by Viacom parent company of MTV Game who would go on to publish Harmonix's future titles.Rock Band
Upon being aquired by MTV games they began work on a new muic game title known as Rock Band, which would talk the primary gameplay from Guitar Hero and add two extra instrauments to the game, a 4 pad drum kit and a microphone to give the full band feel. Released on the 20th November 2007 (the same day 6 years ago FreQuency was released) it was like its now rival and had commericial and critical sucess selling over 4 million units and creating 600 milion dollars in revenue. One of the key aspects of its sucess was its Music Store which was a feature on the menu of the game that took you to a itunes like interface where you could purchase additional songs in either single form, a track pack or a whole album. This enabled some people to instead of having a setlist of 58 could grow their setlist into the hundreds. To this date over 30 million songs have been sold on the Rock Band store and new ones are added every week. Like the previous Harmonix games Rock Band spawned a sequel, Rock Band 2 which was released on September 14th 2008. It was the dedication and care Harmonix showed to the licenses it used in its games that prompted Apple Corps, the label behind the british band The Beatles to choose Harmonix to devolped a beatles themed game which became The Beatles: Rock Band.
The Beatles: Rock Band
The Beatles: Rock Band was announced on October 20th 2008 and the first gameplay footage was released on 18th Aprill 2008. Harmonix have stated that they want the game to offer a expirence of The Beatles and their lifes rarther then just being Rock Band with a setlist full of Beatles songs. With the help of Apple Corps Harmonix were able to use photos of the beatles to craft a stylised art direction which they feel is key to the game, furthermore the animation of the beatles member on stage during the game was motion captured by tribute bands. The Beatles:Rock Band is scheduled for release on the 9th September 2009 which is the same day the remasterd CD versions of classic beatles albums will be released.
| Company Name | Harmonix Music Systems, Inc. |
| Street Address | 625 Massachusetts Ave |
| City | Cambridge |
| State | Massachusetts |
| Country | USA |
| Website | http://www.harmonixmusic.com/ |
| Contact Email | |
| Phone Number | 617-491-6144 |
| Date Founded | March 1, 1995 |
| Count of Games Published | 0 |
| Count of Games Developed | 28 |
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Johnny Napalm first in Guitar Hero |
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Pandora first in Guitar Hero |
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Grim Ripper first in Guitar Hero |
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Axel Steel first in Guitar Hero |
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Judy Nails first in Guitar Hero |
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Izzy Sparks first in Guitar Hero |
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Xavier Stone first in Guitar Hero |
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Pandora first in Guitar Hero |
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Clive Winston first in Guitar Hero |
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Lars Ümlaüt first in Guitar Hero II |
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