The Beatles: Rock Band

This page is rather stubbly and could use some expansion. Are you a bad enough dude to rescue this article?

To do: Find a way to decrypt the Milo files, get deeper into the game to find more stuff. Use this as help for files and stuff that might need to be found. The modding community has found large amounts of unused content including dreamscapes, outfits and a lot more!

Meet The Beatles, Rock The World! The Beatles: Rock Band is a 2009 music/rythm game developed by Harmonix, published by MTV Games, and distributed by Electronic Arts as part of the Rock Band series, this time centered around the Fab Four. The game doesn't have a lot of cut content but it does have some stuff left in the files and other minor stuff worth mentioning.

Unused Pianos#

To do: Are there any other unused instruments? Document the other unused pianos mentioned here if possible.

FenderRhodes73#

Going through the instrument files for the Wii version, you can find a piano called piano_fenderrhodes73.milo_wii not used in the final game. There are other unused pianos too.

Unused Songs#

Blackbird#

In between the files for Can't Buy Me Love and Birthday, there's a file named blackbird.milo_wii. It's a Paul solo song, yet can be found in the files for John, George, and Ringo as well.

Frame Rate Test (Rock and Roll Music)#

Much like Rock Band 3, The Beatles: Rock Band also contains a song called Frame Rate Test. A frame rate test is to... test the frame rate. The Frame Rate Test had all 5 tracks with random patterns and lyrics. The song being used is their version of Chuck Berry's "Rock and Roll Music" from their album Beatles For Sale, which was not playable on disc or released as downloadable content. The models of The Beatles being used are from The Cavern Club and not the early Abbey Road Studio models, which are chronologically more accurate to the song itself.

Watch on YouTube

Strawberry Fields Forever#

In the character files across any version of the game, you can find straw.milo_wii/xbox/ps3 and straw_alt.milo_wii/xbox/ps3. This likely means that Strawberry Fields Forever was going to be originally used, but was cut from the game and they used the models for Fixing a Hole (though it was downloadable content only) instead.

Big Rock Endings#

Big Rock Endings from the main series games still exist here, but are never used in any official song. They can still be accessed using customs, however. The HUD mostly behaves as it would in other Rock Band games, but the fill bars don't show up on the highway. When playing on drums, hitting a note during the Big Rock Ending will cause the game to crash. It's quite likely that these are a direct leftover from the other Rock Band games, rather than a planned feature that was cut.

Watch on YouTube

Drive My Car Alternate Song Venue#

The DLC Full Album trailer for Rubber Soul reveals that at one point, Drive My Car was probably originally going to be played at Shea Stadium instead of Budokan. Although, it's unknown if this is just footage from an early pre-release build or simply a mistake, as it was included on disc before the DLC came out.

Watch on YouTube

Build Instructions#

The packagesteps.txt file in the root of the game directory contains instructions on building the PlayStation 3 version of Rock Band 1. Strangely this file is only present in the Wii version of the game.

Make a directory band\image\ps3\package
Make a directory band\image\ps3\PATCH0
Make a directory band\image\ps3\PATCH0\USRDIR
Make a directory band\image\ps3\PATCH0\USRDIR\gen

run system\tool\build\ps3sys.exe

Select File/New System File for Game Data

Enter the following data:

TitleID = BLUS - 30050
Version = 2.00 (or whatever next version)
Title (default) = Rock Band

Select Edit/Update PS3_SYSTEM_VER from EBOOT.BIN ...
Select the file band/run/band_r.self

It should tell you the new version is 1.9000

Select File/Save As and put it in band\image\ps3\PATCH0\PARAM.SFO

Put the right icon in band\image\ps3\PATCH0\ICON0.PNG

Create file band\image\ps3\SETUP.CFG and make look like this:

Content-ID = UP0006-BLUS30050_00-RBPATCH000000000
k_licensee = 0xd275fb131f069aee503b371946d6b900
DRM_Type = Free
Content_Type = Game_Data
PackageVersion = 01.01

From band\image\ directory run these commands

copy ..\run\gen\patch_ps3.hdr ps3\PATCH0\USRDIR\gen\
copy ..\run\gen\patch_ps3_0.ark ps3\PATCH0\USRDIR\gen\
make_fself_npdrm ..\run\band_s_ps3.elf ps3\PATCH0\USRDIR\EBOOT.BIN


The following step needs to be done using Cygwin (doesn't work with regular dos prompt)

cd ps3
make_package_npdrm --patch SETUP.CFG PATCH0

Japanese Language Files#

Language files for a Japanese language can be found on the kiosk demo of the Xbox 360 version under "main_xbox.hdr\ui\locale\jpn". This is interesting because the game never supported Japanese as a language.