Rock Revolution
Konami is known as the creators of Drum Mania and Guitar Freaks, the forefathers to many popular American Rhythm Games. However despite this (and failed attempts to market GF in America upon its debut), their arcade versions remained relegated to Asian arcades and those lucky enough to import them. When rhythm games became a major trend in 2008 thanks to the popularity of Guitar Hero and Rock Band, Konami decided to cash in on the craze in 2008 with Rock Revolution, a partial band game (no vocals) developed by Zoe Mode, with no dedicated guitar controller (just use a Guitar Hero or Rock Band one), and a very awkward looking drum kit peripheral. The result? Disaster. A game full of covers, a majority of songs under-charted, and an overall low-quality experience.
Versions were released on multiple platforms, the Xbox 360 and PS3 versions used traditional controllers, the Wii version (which was actually pulled before release somehow) awkwardly used the Wii remotes instead, and the DS version used the touch screen, plus the microphone for vocals.
- Cover Version: Completely going the other way on promises by both Harmonix and Neversoft that their future titles would only use master tracks, all but 2 songs on Rock Revolution are covers.
- Dueling Games: With GH and RB
- Executive Meddling: Konami forced vocals to be excluded so it wouldn't compete with Karaoke Revolution. To note, the original games in that franchise were co-developed with Harmonix, future developers of Rock Band, which just so happens to re-use a lot of that game's mechanics.
- Everyone Is Right-Handed: Lefty flip for drums is mysteriously absent.
- Required Spinoff Crossover: One of the game's few DLC packs contained songs from Bemani artists, mainly crossovers from Drum Mania (including a long version of Model DD8, a boss song from GF/DM V4), a new Des-Row song, and a rock cover of "My Only Shining Star" from Dance Dance Revolution SuperNOVA.
- They Changed It, Now It Sucks: The response from fans of the Drum Mania and Guitar Freaks franchises over Konami's choice of a gameplay style closer to its competitors instead of the tried and true formula used in its originators. Complaints also came from players too used to the new industry standard of a slanted highway for notes and a colored bar spanning across the lanes to indicate pedal kicks. The end result is most people complained that they changed all the good stuff and left the bad stuff alone.
- They Copied It, So It Sucks: Despite Konami having originated the very concepts that Guitar Hero and Rock Band have expanded on, people still think the developers tried too hard to copy the "style" of gameplay used by its American-produced counterparts, and some would've been better off with games based more on its ancestors.