When Harmonix announced Rock Band Unplugged for the PSP, many gamers, including myself, were wondering how a game that is known for its large amount of plastic instruments would work on a handheld that doesn’t support any. Unlike the DS with Guitar Hero, the PSP doesn’t have any extra slots for peripherals. Seeing the game at E3, I quickly learned that Harmonix had a few old tricks to bring the band experience to a portable system, and like any great musician, improvisation makes up for the limitations.

Anyone who has played any of the games in the Rock Band or Guitar Hero franchise will be familiar with the scrolling note format that the games are known for. What’s different now is the way that the music is triggered. The face buttons control the four lines that trigger sound for the drums, guitar, bass and vocals so there won’t be any broken drum sticks or bad karaoke with this version. After enough notes have been consecutively hit, that instrument will start playing on its own while you scroll to the other ones with the shoulder buttons to try to complete the whole song.

During simpler times for Harmonix, before their wild success with the music genre and signing deals with artists like The Beatles, (and their “robotic” movements according to Ringo,) there were a couple of little known music games exclusive to the Playstation 2. Known as Frequency and Amplitude, these games set up the foundation for their later success by using licensed music as the backdrop for activating gems to create full songs. This brief history lesson is due to the fact that Unplugged plays exactly like these games. Anyone who’s played them should have noticed it in my description, which is exciting because they were excellent games, and Unplugged could be seen as more of a sequel to these instead of the series its named after. I must say, out of all the ways I could see Harmonix bringing Rock Band to PSP, I feel that this was the most surprising and effective way to do so. I mean, the “portable” in PSP wouldn’t mean much if you had to haul instruments everywhere.

Attention Amplitude and Frequency fans! Harmonix hasn’t let fame get to their heads and forget about you. Sure, Rock Band Unplugged shares the title and presentation, but that’s about it. Those newer fans looking for a brand new music experience or the older gamers looking for a bit of nostalgia, a large track list and downloadable songs can potentially make this road trip one for the ages.