Key Highlights:
- Four tracks from Rock Band Blitz were released individually for Rock Band 3 in February 2013.
- Queen, Iron Maiden, Great White and Avenged Sevenfold made up the four-song DLC release.
- Iron Maiden’s The Wicker Man also received an optional Pro Guitar and Pro Bass upgrade.
Harmonix expanded the Rock Band 3 Music Store in February 2013 with four songs previously included in Rock Band Blitz, giving players the option to purchase the tracks individually rather than owning the full Blitz soundtrack.
The four songs were:
- Queen: Death on Two Legs (Dedicated to…)
- Iron Maiden: The Wicker Man
- Great White: Once Bitten Twice Shy
- Avenged Sevenfold: So Far Away
The DLC arrived on 5 February 2013 for Xbox 360 and Wii, with the European PlayStation 3 release following on 6 February. Each track cost 160 Microsoft Points on Xbox 360, 200 Wii Points or £1.19 through the European PlayStation Store.
All four songs supported Rock Band 3’s keyboard instrument. The Wicker Man also supported an optional Pro Guitar and Pro Bass upgrade, allowing players with the appropriate controllers to play a more detailed version of the guitar and bass parts.
The tracks were not new to the wider Rock Band catalogue. All four had appeared among the 25 songs included with Rock Band Blitz, Harmonix’s controller-based rhythm game released for PlayStation Network and Xbox Live Arcade in August 2012. Owners of Blitz could already use its soundtrack in Rock Band 3, while these later standalone releases allowed players to buy selected songs separately and also made them available to Wii players, who never received Rock Band Blitz.
The songs also came from very different points in rock history. Queen’s Death on Two Legs opened the band’s 1975 album A Night at the Opera, while Iron Maiden’s The Wicker Man was the opening track and lead single from Brave New World in 2000. Great White’s recording of Once Bitten Twice Shy appeared on 1989’s …Twice Shy, and Avenged Sevenfold’s So Far Away came from the band’s 2010 album Nightmare.
At the time, this looked like another routine addition to Rock Band’s enormous downloadable catalogue. Less than three weeks later, however, Harmonix announced that its five-year run of weekly Rock Band DLC was approaching its end. The final scheduled weekly release arrived on 2 April 2013 with Don McLean’s American Pie, closing a run of 281 consecutive weeks of new downloadable music.
