Before Rock Band and Guitar Hero… There was Amplitude

Exciting news from the weekend kids, “Amplitude” may be coming back! Now, if you consider yourself a huge fan of music games, and own every “Rock Band” and “Guitar Hero” game ever made, but have never heard of either “Frequency” or “Amplitude,” consider yourself a poser. Those were two, very original games developed by Harmonix, for the PS2, way back in 2001 and 2003 respectively.

Each game had the player controlling a small ship that would “blast” beats from various instruments off a preset track by using the L1, R1 and R2 buttons. The inspiration for Harmonix’s later rhythm games is blatantly apparent here, and both games were praised for their originality and addictive gameplay by gamers and critics alike.

In an interview to tech website Ars Technica, Harmonix co-founder and CEO Alex Rigopulos stated that he would like to see another iteration of the once beloved series, and that the company has never forgotten where they’ve come from.

“I’d love to do a sequel to Amplitude, actually. It’s an issue of prioritization. It’s challenging enough to keep the Rock Band train on the tracks. We’ve grown from about 80 or 90 people a couple years ago to more than 300 now, and managing that kind of growth takes focus. For us, that lingering question of ‘what are we going to do about Amplitude’ is still very much out there. I would love to come back and do it right for the PlayStation 3, for example.”

So, how bout it gamers? I remember picking up “Amplitude” at Best Buy as a wee lad, simply because the games back cover acknowledged Slipknot’s presence in the game. Once I took it home, I was forever hooked. Aside from Slipknot, there was a plethora of all this great music that I had never heard of before, and it wasn’t too long after that that I picked up its’ prequel “Frequency.” My CD collection grew quite a bit during that time of my life, and I couldn’t help but laugh when people first started playing “Guitar Hero” and how trendy everyone thought they were by listening to Freezepop. “You have to listen to these guys, they’re great,” someone would say, and I couldn’t help but think that I was already once step ahead of the curve.

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