Giant Bomb Video Game News

Aerosmith, AC/DC, Metallica, and The Beatles have already done it, and it would seem that the trend of Guitar Hero and Rock Band games that focus specifically high-profile music acts isn't slowing down anytime soon. It's long since reached the point where it's about as popular to blindly speculate about which band should get Rock Banded next as it is to make jokey guesses about which movie franchise should receive the LEGO treatment (a parallel set of trends that made the announcement of LEGO Rock Band a particularly mind-blowing revelation.)

Aside from Led Zeppelin, Van Halen is probably the most obvious and oft-suggested band to focus a music game around. The big difference between the two, apparently, is that a Van Halen game might actually be happening. Kotaku has reported that the Unterhaltungssoftware Selbstkontrolle--the German rating board whose title, according to Babelfish, translates to “maintenance software self-check”--has published its rating for a game titled Guitar Hero headlining Van Halen for the Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3. Activision hasn't yet commented on this development, and at this point in the year I can't imagine they're going to say anything until around E3 time, but I won't let that stop me from wondering aloud about Guitar Hero headlining Van Halen. 

There are few bands in the world that have undergone as visible a personnel change as Van Halen when, arguably at the height of its considerable popularity, David Lee Roth left and was subsequently replaced by Sammy Hagar. Now I'm not much of a Van Hagar fan, but the Red Rocker was with the band for a long time, it would seem ridiculous to make a game that revolves around Van Halen and doesn't feature both singers. Guitar Hero: Metallica all but ignored the fact that Metallica had two different long-term bass players, so there's precedent, but that's a harder trick to pull with the lead singer. I can't imagine fans would be too pleased to see David Lee Roth's voice coming out of a polygonal Spitting Image version Sammy Hagar, or vice versa.