A heads up for the ignorant: I've gone to the effort of chucking in a Rock Band release date counter! Credit where credit's due for the krazy kountdown kode (Javascript Kit, incidentally), but now we can go ahead and watch the days disappear! I'll be doing a considerable number of updates in the week(s) up to launch, stealing videos from YouTube, and maybe something EVEN MORE SPECIAL. Who knows? Who knows?. For the moment, let's just have a little recap about what we're getting come May 23rd..

The poorly named 'Band in a Box'. Not exactly The Beatles, is it?

Just look at that picture. Just look at it. We've got a set of drums - 4 pads and a bass pedal. A set of drumsticks. Perhaps even some instructions. Oh we'll most probably have to buy sound dampeners and a replacement set of sticks and all that stuff but THAT'S NOT IMPORTANT. It's a drumset... for a video game.

Further peerage into the BOX OF DREAMS reveals a guitar. Not only that, but it's a plastic guiter for a console! Sound familiar? Possibly. Maybe you have one of those VTECH 'My First Computer' things when you were like 5 (unlike me, having an old green-screen Amstrad to keep me amused). Maybe you got one in an ill-advised moment of car boot sale shopping. Maybe you just built one. Regardless, it can strum, it can be pressed, and it can do all sorts of EFFECTS. Like a musical Photoshop.

As my gran never used to say to me at Christmas, "Paul, there's MORE!". Even if she did, it would usually be perhaps an orange or an instruction to fetch another stool from the attic. But this isn't like a family Christmas! None of my Christmasses ever had... USB MICROPHONES! "What on Earth would that be used for?", the stupid among you cry before setting fire to the curtains with a stick of rock. Well cry no more - in Rock Band, you can sing! How inclusive is that? Everybody has a friend that's awful at Guitar Hero, and now they can get involved too! Unless they're shit singers, in which case you'll just have to finally delete them from your phone contacts list and admit that you're just carrying dead wood.

More next week!