Giant Bomb User of the Minute skrutop posted this video of Guitar Hero 5 on the boards this morning. It's a bunch of footage of Virtual Kurt Cobain doing a bunch of stuff that Real Kurt Cobain would have probably needed two shotguns to cope with.
On one level, this is kind of hilarious, and it's definitely a testament to the graphical quality of Guitar Hero 5 that seeing V-Cobain sing a Bon Jovi song, or seeing him make rap poses while mouthing Flavor Flav's words seems so absolutely wrong on so many different levels.
I suppose a lot of this has to do with me being "of a certain age," such that I distinctly remember the whens and wheres of Cobain's suicide. While I never worshipped the dude like some of my peers did, you could certainly elevate him to some kind of "voice of a generation" status. And it's the near-mythic legacy he left behind and the way the Nirvana catalog has been protected from commercial interests over the years that makes this stuff so harsh. Blame Courtney Love, I suppose, for not continuing to protect that legacy. His appearance in the game seems fine, but perhaps the business deal should have prevented Neversoft from using that model in anything other than Nirvana's tracks? Or, in lieu of the license holders not caring enough about Cobain's likeness to place meaningful restrictions on its use, maybe the developers should have shown a little restraint? I wonder if there was even any discussion on this topic during the game's development...
I don't know. Like I said, it doesn't really bother me, and I'm certainly not outraged or anything, but it definitely struck me as completely crazy. Way crazier than all the other dead musicians who have appeared (or will be appearing) in music games. Three Kurt Cobains with invisible instruments, performing a Megadeth song! What? Too soon?