mysario

What do YOU think ever happened to Caramel Bear?

CLICHE STORY APPROACHING: Alex, Mr. Rigopulos, Sire, whichever you prefer - I've been a big fan of Harmonix games, and music games in general, since I first laid eyes on Amplitude in a video rental store back in 2004. A year or so later, my friend ends up getting this game called "Guitar Hero" and we thought this was the craziest thing to come out since a game about Tony Hawk. We both end up getting "Guitar Hero 2" later when it comes out (he got the PS2 one and I become part of the 360 crew) and it was frankly, the bee's knees! Next year, some of my friends heard about this new game coming out called "Rock Band" and ended up getting it when it came out. I thought there was no way this could match with Guitar Hero, I was hero in this game! But Rock Band brought something brand new to the table: drums. Oh hot damn. So I begged my mom (cool kid alert) to get me Rock Band for Christmas so I could be cool and play the drums and learn to sing like Freddie Mercury all while shredding the guitar into pieces. I could be the greatest one man band ever.

I end up getting this game and buying as much DLC as I could (sorry about your credit card, Dad), even if I didn't know the songs. It really opened up my world to all kinds of different music and helped me find some of my favourite bands today. The game inspired me to pick up bass guitar (because who needs another guitarist?) and I've been playing for the past 6 years or so and loving every second of it. As the next year approached, my friends and I were ready to pick up the sequel "Rock Band 2" and have our minds blown by more rock. One of my friends ended up being part of the community and playing and meeting with a lot of people to FC songs and such while I tagged along, doing vocals because everyone was better at me with everything else. I'll skip a lot of the life story, but "The Beatles: Rock Band" was an amazingly beautiful game and I thoroughly enjoyed all the other games that came out too (Lego, Green Day, the 3rd, and I finally picked up Unplugged a year ago - even "Phase" and "VidRhythm" were a good time!)

Though the community was dying, I still supported and loved playing RB3 until the final song "American Pie" was released a year ago. I still play "Blitz" now and then whenever I want to kill time. I also picked up all of the "Dance Centrals" as I loved the idea of being more active and dancing, however, I learned the hard way that dancing is not easy and I am not as coordinated as I would like to be (but I did my best to power through it and now I'm somewhat coordinated and am less likely to trip on myself these days.)

What I wanted to say is I'm excited to see how "Fantasia" is and hope the new "Amplitude" comes out and re-ignites a rhythm revival (or at least the child in me.) Your games have helped me meet plenty of friends, get me started on playing bass and guitar and get me through some tough times - I wanted to say thank you for starting up this company and triggering a nice domino effect on my life along with plenty of others. And thank you for reading this!

CLICHE STORY OVER

For questions: is there any likely chance you can give a 20-year old boy (in some cultures, I would be considered a man) with nothing to do a job for this Summer? I live around 30 minutes off of Cambridge!

On a more serious (orange) note, how hard was it starting up the company at first? Seeing as you were opening up a brand new kind of market for American audiences, I'm sure it had to be hard going through uncharted territory.

Will you lend me Super Attack Pea? I still need that SuAP avvie, I got credentials and references plz

Thanks for doing this y'all! How's life been post-Neopets? Does the old gang hang around with each other all the time or is this just a one-off reunion?

Edit to rephrase the question: basically, what would the post-credits freeze-frame say about each person?

(Bonus question: what did y'all think about the 'The Darkest Faerie' video game for PS2?)