Apple is hoping you can't get enough of Rock Band, promoting on its website a playlist featuring 74 songs of the game for a whopping $73.26. At $0.99 per song, that's a savings of exactly 0% -- in other words, resist the temptation to buy the whole package (iTunes link) and feed your Phase addiction by downloading the songs you like individually (from either iTunes itself or via one of its competitors).

While the lack of savings might leave room for pause, at 74 songs (that's main setlist and quite a few of the DLC tracks), Apple still missed some of the best gems -- namely, every single bonus song. A quick search on iTunes led us to finding all but four of the bonus tracks ("29 Fingers," "Outside," "Nightmare" and the power ballad "Timmy and the Lords of the Underworld"). If you're looking for a more eclectic mix, search for the bonus 9 tracks available; that'll only cost you $8.91.
[Via X3F]

We can do without "whiny" being the default setting for so much indy/emo music, but Arlington-and-Grand Prairie-Texas-based Man Factory serves up enough indy-powerpop-rock to offset any latent emo sadness. Plus the group's latest project is a series of seven songs written from the perspectives of Street Fighter characters. The series is called, "Street Fighter II: Rock Opera: Round 1," and hits enough high notes that we hope rounds two and three follow.

The band offers such tracks as "Chun Li, i'm lovin it," and "There goes Dhalism" for free at its site. (Or visit the MySpace page to play them in-browser and download the whole package as a zip file.) Our verdict: Knockout.

[Thanks, Matt]

Would you prefer your Nintendo Wii to get jiggy wit' your Will Smith MP3s? Our first piece of advice would be to not download the new Photo Channel, version 1.1, which replaces MP3 support with AAC. If it's too late for you, then we recommend taking these simple steps, provided by Nintendo itself:

• From the main menu, click the "Wii" button
• Select Data Management
• Select Channels
• Select Photo Channel 1.1 and confirm you want to delete it
• Photo Channel 1.0, the original, automatically returns to the main menu

If you change your mind yet again, then you can always re-download the update. Yes, Nintendo's providing instructions on how to downgrade your Photo Channel to keep playing MP3s - it even says in the description, "for instance if you'd rather have MP3 compatibility instead of AAC." Why Nintendo couldn't figure out how to support both formats simultaneously - a feature available in pretty much every other audio player out there - is beyond our comprehension. If audio quality is really their concern, we wonder if version 1.2 will continue the trend and abandon AAC for FLAC.

[Via NWF]

While most Wii owners are too busy playing Super Mario Galaxy or checking out Miis to care, Nintendo has announced through their web site some pending updates to the Wii's Photo Channel. Call it a bad news sandwich on good news bread. The good news: After the update you'll be able to choose a favorite picture as the channel's Wii menu icon. The bad news: MP3 music playback will be replaced with support for the higher-quality but much less-accessible AAC format. The good news: The AAC files can be played back in a random order. Mmm... sandwich.

While the added features are nice, we're pretty amazed that Nintendo has managed to make the potentially-useful-but-in-practice-pretty-annoying music playback feature even worse by changing up the formats. As Wii Fanboy points out, even those with copious, iTunes libraries in the proprietary AAC format are unlikely to be able to play them on the non-Apple-endorsed Wii (and don't go restarting those pesky merger rumors -- no one is getting bought out) due to the DRM issues. But, again, unless you're one of the three people who uses the channel regularly, you're probably too busy to care. Go back to your business ... nothing to see here.

Despite being unofficially canned in November 2005, Metroid Dread, the rumored 2D-throwback project for DS, is back on the radar. New evidence has been uncovered by IGN (and other privileged Metroid Prime 3 reviewers) while scanning a certain panel found mid-game in this week's Wii release. Using Samus's scan visor, the message reads:

"Experiment status report update: Metroid project 'Dread' is nearing the final stages of completion."

Is Dread back from the dead? Maybe -- or perhaps MP3 developer Retro is just pulling an insider's gag. It's time for Nintendo to fess up.

Michael Kelbeugh, head of Retro Studios, confirmed to GamePro that no online multiplayer would be included in Metroid Prime 3: Corruption, much to the relief of of lil' Timmy Eldridge, the apple-cheeked teen that Nintendo has come in on the weekend to run their online gaming strategy. "Unless you're sending pictures of metroid that you captured, I really don't know how to help you," lil' Eldridge said as he swept the Nintendo commissary (his weekday job).

For his part, Kelbeugh gave the credit for a top-notch single-player campaign for his team's inability to include newfangled multiplayer technology. "It's something we talked about early on, but we only have so many resources. We opted to devote those resources to making a better single-player experience." Oh well, we guess there's always Metroid Prime 4.

I recently sampled Def Jam Icon in its close-to-finished state; the game will ship for the PS3 and Xbox 360 in March. The title takes a genre in which I have little personal interest -- hip-hop stars like Ludacris, Big Boi, and The Game fighting -- and focuses on the best part of that premise, the music. Each player begins a match after choosing a song for their character. As the fight progresses, the music becomes an integral part of the game, with the leading character's anthem blaring and the background objects bumping with the rhythm. With the right timing to the music, the background objects even cause extra injury.

I saw a lot of potential to this approach, but Def Jam Icon is high on my skeptic sense of hit-or-miss; if the game behaves the way EA describes, it should be a fun fighter. But in my short time seeing the game, I wasn't convinced that the downbeats would match the beat-downs as EA touts, especially with user-imported music. I'll have to wait until I'm able to scrutinize the game on my own to make a fair assessment.

In a surprise development, LucasArts and Kuju have announced they're breaking up, putting an end to the pair's would-be lovechild Traxion. Billed as a music-puzzle game, Traxion was going to integrate Kuju's music analysis technology with a player's MP3 collection (stored on the PSP Memory Stick), generating a series of minigames that would correspond to certain elements of each song -- the game would also include its own licensed tracks. Unfortunately this ambitious project has proved to be the undoing of Kuju and publisher LucasArts's partnership.

While both parties have declined to comment on the specific circumstances that led to the breakup, the official statement (from both sides) is that the split is a mutual decision. While Traxion's future is uncertain, Kuju has confirmed it's developing other music-based software for unspecified platforms.

OK, so the white DS Lite already looks an awful lot like an iPod, but the resemblance is even stronger now that hackers have made an MP3 player for the system that mirrors the iPod interface, right down to the blue-on-white menus. GBADev has more info and a download link, and YouTube has a video showing off the touchscreen-as-clickwheel hotness.

The player requires a specially-designed DS or GBA flash cart to work, and the memory on those things pales in comparison to even the smaller iPods. Still, a neat little hack to show off to your iPod-loving friends.

We've known for a few months now that the Wii would be able to play MP3 music from inserted SD cards, but we weren't sure of the exact form this feature would take until we actually got our hands on the system. Now that we've had a chance to try it out, we're quite underwhelmed by this undersold "feature" of Nintendo's latest system.

While the Wii easily facilitates viewing of digital photos with the intuitively named "Photo Channel" on the main system menu, there is no similar Music Channel to play your MP3s. Instead, users that want to hear some tunes have to go into the Photo Channel, select some pictures, view a slideshow, go into the options, and only then will they be able to choose from their selection of songs.

Calling this photo slideshow soundtrack an "MP3 player" is too generous -- basic features like fast forward and rewind are not even available, and the selected song will simply loop unless another one is actively selected. It's hard to believe that Nintendo equipped the system with the ability to play music without also including some rudimentary music player software, but that is exactly what has happened.

The only other way to play MP3s on the Wii is with custom soundtracks, a feature supported on a game-by-game basis. While setting up and using the feature on Excite Truck was relatively easy, we're a bit miffed that Nintendo didn't decide to build this feature into the system software, so a custom soundtrack could be added over any game at the player's choosing. Making MP3 soundtracks an optional feature that has to be actively added by developers practically ensures that the feature will be underutilized.

Nintendo could theoretically upgrade the MP3 playback function with a future software update, but as it stands now this Wii "feature" pales in comparison to similar music playback offered by Sony and Microsoft.

Wii annoyances
PS3 annoyances
Xbox 360 annoyances

IGN decided to hook up an iPod to their shiny new PS3 today, only to find out that Sony hasn't let the two be playmates just yet. The PS3 will mount the iPod, but none of the audio, video, or photo files on the iPod will show up. They could transfer music to a new directory that they created on the iPod, but that's just using it like any other USB storage device.

It's no secret that Sony isn't fond of the success of Apple's little mp3 player, even going as far as calling podcasts "RSS channels" just so they don't have to use the word "pod" in press materials. Even Microsoft released a free download for the Xbox 360 that let you hook up your iPod and stream music, will Sony follow suit? The PlayStation Portable they hooked up worked just fine, so it's time to spread the love to some other usb devices. If you have a ton of music on your iPod that you want to transfer to your PS3, and if you're lucky enough to get one, you'll have to either wait for an update or start burning a lot of files.

Come on Sony, let's play nice with the other kids on the block.

IGN has updated the story with the following: NOTE: In our initial play-test of the PS3, we reported that the multimedia playback feature was hampered by directory structure limitations. However, we have since been informed of a full browsing function for all storage devices -- indeed, you CAN browse media that's not native to the PS3's normal directory structure. Please check this updated news article for the latest update on the multimedia features.

According to their own updated article, "It's a hidden option that some may not notice at first, and sorting through folders isn't exactly easy." So, it'll work in a pinch, but where's the full-featured device browsing? We want our $600 console to do things like this out of the box, not with a workaround or an update that isn't out yet.

[Thanks, jjrooster]

At yesterday's Sony event, we reviewed a few details about how the PS3 will handle music playback. The system will rip your own audio CDs to MP3 or ATRAC, logging ID details through Gracenote. Sony also says that the device will download and add album art if it can be located.

Like the Xbox 360, the PS3 will also support iPods and USB mass-storage devices; it can copy MP3 or ATRAC files to the internal hard drive.

With these media options, Sony keeps pushing the PS3 as a device capable of more than gaming. We're not sure how many of these features we'll use, but maybe gamers' families will. We just hope that these non-gaming decisions didn't contribute much to the cost of the system.

The antecedent to all those tips and tricks magazines can be found in this obscure LP from the 80s: Conquer the Video Craze: How to Beat the Hottest Games. In it, "Atari Champion finalist" Curtis Hoard reads off -- in a stultifyingly slow monotone -- the techniques he's used to earn him that honorific.

Sluggo at Dinosaur Gardens has not only found this retro artifact, but he's converted it into MP3 for our enjoyment edification. Learn strategies for: Centipede, Defender, Stargate, Dig Dug, Donkey Kong, Pac-Man, Ms. Pac-Man, and Tempest. Wait, Pac-Man and Ms. Pac-Man?

[Via Boing Boing]

BenQ is launching the GBA micro-esque (and by extension XGP Mini-esque) Joybee EG10 MP3 player in Japan featuring ten Sega Game Gear and Master System games, including Sonic Blast, Sonic Spinball, Columns, Putt and Putter, and more. The unit also contains an SD slot, ostensibly for holding your tunes on. This thing is obviously housing the hardware to play retro Sega titles, so how hard will it be to hack ROM playback into these boys when--and if--they leave Japan?

See also:
Coby DVD player with 8-bit Sega games

[Via Engadget]