GAMING:Blessed with the creative and historical input of Paul and Ringo, The Beatles Rock Bandis set to change the face of music video games – what a thrill to get the chance to replicate musical history, writes BRIAN BOYD

THE WEATHER in London on January 30th, 1969 was cold and very windy. Paul McCartney remembers the day well because it was the last time The Beatles performed together. When the producers of the music video game, The Beatles Rock Band, gave him a preview of the game, he saw an animated version of that last-ever gig.

Everything was perfect about the recreation, but for one thing: their hair wasn’t blowing around in the wind as McCartney distinctly remembered. The producers went back and added in a hair-being-blown-around-in-the-wind effect.

That sort of attention to detail (and reminder of just how hands-on McCartney and Ringo Starr were in the game's production) is one reason why The Beatles Rock Bandis such a significant release.

Music games are one of the few massive growth areas in the industry. The two main players in the field, Rock Bandand Guitar Hero, have earned more than $3 billion over the last decade.

To date, the music game industry has largely been the preserve of hard rock music, and the typical gamer is young and male. Expect that to change now that the biggest and best music group ever has joined the fray. This not just the Rock Bandfranchise's biggest release, it is arguably the most important music game release ever.

The Beatles have a unique pan-generational appeal. The Beatles Rock Bandis so lavishly produced, and so simple to play, that the sales of the consoles (PlayStation, Xbox and Wii) are expected to spike over the next few weeks, as people who've previously found the idea of playing videos games alien to them will want to get this one.

The attraction of music games, as opposed to traditional shoot-’em-ups, is that gamers can play along with the songs on instrument-shaped plastic controllers (guitars, drums, etc). The goal is to keep in rhythmic time with the song being played.

With The Beatles Rock Bandpredicted to become the biggest selling entertainment commodity of 2009, it remains something of a surprise that a band who have so zealously guarded their musical legacy agreed to licence their songs to something so lowly as a video game. The Beatles aren't even up on iTunes, and they only very rarely allow their songs to be used in TV programmes, films or on Greatest Hits compilations.

The Beatles as a legal entity today (McCartney, Starr, Olivia Harrison and Yoko Ono) only agreed to this game because of a chance meeting between George Harrison's son, Dhani Harrison, and Van Toffler, a top executive at MTV. Harrison was on holidays three years ago and had brought along the new Guitar Herovideo game. He bumped into Toffler (MTV owns Harmonix, which eventually produced the game) and the two got talking about how the games industry and how significant a development it would be if there were ever to be a Beatles game.

Harrison brought the idea to his mother, McCartney, Starr and Ono, who agreed that a properly done music game could sit as an important part of the band’s canon. They also reasoned that, as The Beatles were musical innovators, it would be appropriate to be involved in the innovative world of music games. Plus, they would be embracing “interactivity” – a word they usually baulked at.

The Beatles have previously turned down multi-million-pound deals if it meant handing their music over to a third party (for fear of how it would be used). And because of the way Apple Corp (their management company) is set up, McCartney, Starr, Ono and Olivia Harrison have the power to veto any proposed project relating to the band’s music. Which makes decision-making a tortuous process. The only way to get them in on anything is to involve all four of them at every step of the way.

The game includes 45 Beatles songs and is broken down to show the band in very accurate animation form at different stages of their career. You see them first playing at the Liverpool’s Cavern Club, then on to the Ed Sullivan show in the US. As the timeline progresses, you take in their famous Shea Stadium show, as well as that last-ever gig on top of the Apple Building.

All the “live” songs on the game are accompanied by footage of how fans would have behaved during the Beatlemania era. The producers studied books about 1960s fashions in order to “dress” audience members appropriately.

Because The Beatles stopped touring in 1966 and became studio-bound, the songs from that time are recreated in a special "Dreamscapes" mode: for Octopus's Garden,they play in an underwater setting; for Here Comes the Sun, they stand on top of a flowered hill on a sunny day.

The real fun part of the game comes from using the “peripherals” – the instruments you need to participate (which are sold separate to the game). These are replicas of the Rickenbacker, Gretsch Duo Jet and Hofner guitars used by the band, as well as a Ludwig-branded replica drum kit. There are also microphones available, and the idea is the better you match the group’s three-part harmonies on the songs, the more points you amass on the game.

It’s only when you strap on a guitar and get miked that you realise what a thrill it is to – in virtual way – replicate what is, by any standards, musical history. When this journalist went to a preview of the game during the summer, fights nearly broke out over who would play lead, who would play bass, who would play drums – and that was before the sulks and tears over what song to play.

With four different levels of difficulty (from absolute “I’m all thumbs” beginner level to hardcore gamer-freak level), there is no sense that you need any level of gaming proficiency to throw yourself into the songs. And giving the game a sort of spooky feel is the real, and never before released, in-studio chatting between the four.

The idea was to "intensify people's engagement with the music", something you can only really appreciate when you strap on Lennon's guitar (albeit a small and plastic replica) and play his guitar line on Day Tripper. The longer you spend fiddling around with the game, the more you discover. For example, there's a "drum trainer" in there somewhere, which teaches you to play Ringo's trademark drum fills. And those who play through all 45 songs (only 44 titles are known; one will remain a mystery until the game's debut next week) will get to listen to the ultra-rare and long out-of-print 1963 fan-club only Christmas song The Beatles recorded.

The attention to detail on the game is superb. The venues, the haircuts, the clothes, the instruments – a lot of work was put in ensuring everything was just as it was. But that’s no big surprise when the game’s two “fact-checkers in chief” are Paul McCartney and Ringo Starr, who both raided their own archives to check and double-check details.

It is this mix of pedantic detail under a front story of how popular music was thrillingly transformed by the Fab Four that really makes The Beatles Rock Bandsoar. Or, as McCartney put it when he saw (and played) the finished product: "It does reflect The Beatles . . . the reality and the mythology".

• The Beatles Rock Bandis released on September 9th