A member of the Harmonix development team announced on the RockBand forums this past friday (2/29) that the game's next batch of downloadable content will be six Grateful Dead songs: China Cat Sunflower, Casey Jones, Sugar Magnolia, Truckin' Franklin's Tower, and I Need A Miracle. All of the songs use the orginal master recordings. The songs will also be made available for individual download if you prefer not to buy the entire pack.
Source: Rockband Forums [ more info ]

Anyone who's been following Rockband has known for a while that Harmonix would be releasing Grateful Dead songs. They announced it long before the game his shelves. Tomorrow will see the first of what I assume will be many Dead additions to the Rockband DLC track list.

I've never really listened to Grateful Dead (beyond "Touch of Grey"), but I figured if there was ever a time to draw the Grateful Dead Bears into a comic, this would be it. I would like to note that being color blind isn't an impediment to playing the game well. Rhythm is rythm, and colors aren't required to see jewels on the screen. Besides being completely color blind is pretty rare and that's the only condition that would keep someone from being able to see any of the colors. ( More information about color blindness can be found at: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Color_blind. )

Even at that, the comic does leave one significant questions unanswered...
If he's really color blind, how the hell does he know the other bear is purple?

Being colorblind hasn't prevented me from being good at Guitar Hero, at least. I can't distinguish between the green and yellow gems, but they're spaced enough that it isn't ever a problem.

There are plenty of little flash games (especially in the Bejeweled style) that don't take colorblindness into account though. For me, they become games of "randomly switch tiles". Surprisingly, almost the exact same amount of fun.

It's funny that you linked that colorblind wiki. I went through it the other day and read all of the colorblind stuff(among other eye related things). I didn't know it effected such a large portion of the population.

---

What about Peggle?

I chuckled at that one. Reminded me of a college roommate I had. He was playing Bust a Move, a great puzzle game, and kept on losing. After a while, he figured out that because he was color blind, the orange and red bubbles looked the same to him so he couldn't tell them apart. He was more than a little ticked off at the game though.

Originally Posted by Woody:

If he's really color blind, how the hell does he know the other bear is purple?

If you've ever had "grape" kool-aid, you know that it's not grape. It's purple. Purple has it's own scent and flavor. This, this is how.

:3

It never bothered Jerry Garcia to play with 9 fingers, why should it bother the Dancing Bears. Now I have to go buy Rockband. I have been a Deadhead for over 30 years. Not the quit my job and follow them around the country type, the go see shows when cash allows type. I saw 75 shows before Jerry passed away. I feel I know the songs well enough to kick ass.

When I was in college I had a friend who was an engineering major. He was also totally colorblind. Yet when I did a perception lab using people from the dorms where I lived he scored 100 percent, the best score by over 30 points.

As he described it he couldn't see the actual colors, but he could tell the difference between colors by their texture.

I imagine he wouldn't have any trouble playing RockBand (or Guitar Hero) because even if he didn't know what the color was that he was seeing, he'd still be able to tell them apart.

Steve

Pretty much reminds me of the last time I saw the Dead in concert prior to Jerry's death.

When playing Rock Band, I'm definitely more on the "position" aspect than the color. Guitar or drums, doesn't matter, only the positioning matters. Furthest-right, second-from-the-left, or push down with your foot HARD. Whatever. Colors don't really matter.


I gotta say though, having recently graduated from easy to medium drums... holy s***. Drums are only about 5x as hard as guitar on ANY difficulty, and WAY more of a workout. Damned fun though!

I do great with guitar hero and rock band all the while being colorblind. Red and green usually get me everytime and I feel for the guy with the yellow and green issue. Those are hard for me as well. And as far as purple goes, I can't see it at all. All purple is blue. So I would see the bear as a blue bear. My big issue with video games are sports games like football and hockey. I have a hard time figuring out who I am with those little colored circles around the feet of the players. They always use shades of green and yellow that I cannot distinguish. Grrrrr!