Silver, spiked-up and gravity defying hair: $275. Green eyes sparkle mischievously behind non-hipster black frames: $150. Straps every where and any where on tight, black pants and there are enough of them to rival a Final Fantasy pretty boy's outfit: $500. A delivery boy button down shirt in the best colour a mosh pit can produce: which is of course blood red: $322. Black, tall boots with studs, spikes and laces untied: $410. A tattoo of a soul in despair on his wrist: DIY Colour by Numbers, $0. Rings designed to inflict pain when a face is punched: $60. The vocal range of a raspy demon to the highs of an angel: $1000/hour. Having a 3D figurine of your favourite Rock God to be displayed proudly on your shelf for all your celebrity Rock Star crush needs? Priceless. Wait, no. Actually, I think it was $85.


Rock Band was one of those games that I felt was made for me. Apart from gaming, I'm passionate about my music. That's not to say I'm an expert on either things, of course. Rock Band helped me discover a few new bands and made me start to pay closer attention to the ones I probably should have been paying attention to already.

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Truthfully, the game was made for every one with the passion to belt out lyrics to their favourite songs at 3 in the morning, drum their way into stardom while tossing those sticks at their 'fans', shred their way to glory with ache-filled fingers, and be ignored as bassists (though, we all know bassists are the coolest members of any band). Rock Band is the righteous rock matrimony of two of my favourite past times.

A recent The Oxtails special, this song. Performance times subject to cancellation by venue and promoters at their discretion. Set lists may vary.


As if that was not enticing enough, Rock Band gave me the ability to customize my in-game character Zarnyx, lead singer of The Oxtails.

What fun is it if you're unable to dress up in Freddie Mercury's likeness? Wear a kilt? Wear a Doctor What coat complete with a long scarf in the middle of Summer? Rock a hot pink Mohawk? I can assure you, you're not having fun unless you've pierced the hell out of your face.


My imagination did not have to run too wild when designing Zarnyx's Rock Band Rock God persona as his origins were designed based on my love of Villains with silver hair, a certain flair and well, I like black rectangular shaped glasses. I had in fact created him years prior which is an uninteresting story that had nothing to do with medication.


With the release of Rock Band 2, Harmonix turned the dial up to 11 on selling and branding your Rock Band Band as your real life band. You could order pins, stickers, posters and t-shirts of your virtual band in cliched rock poses while standing on stages all around the world or whatever you fancied. But best of all, in partnership with a 3D printing company, Harmonix allowed for the ability to get a statue made of your in-game customized character.


A collective excited and confused exclamation of "What the devilry is this?!" was echoed among my circle of Rock Band playing friends when we stumbled on this bit of information. In my circle, only two of us really cared to have our characters made leading me to make the most ridiculous real world purchase of an in-game character. So it was that one Christmas I gifted my real life friend B. the figure of her Rock Band character and The Oxtails' guitarist, G. And it was then too that Zarnyx was born in all his fragile glory as a Christmas present to myself after some serious Gil Tossing.


I always had a crazy dream that one day I could get Zarnyx made into an action figure of sorts. While Rock Band did not allow me to create the ideal representation of the character I had designed in my mind, the mere fact that I could have somewhat of a physical Zarnyx to gaze upon was quite thrilling.

It's not a perfectly made statue - his skeleton hand tattoo gloves are blurry and do not show great detail of bones. He's actually wearing glasses but clear frames did not translate when the figure was made and it instead looks like shades. It's probably the one thing that disappointed me but it's okay too.


So Harmonix's ploy to get my gil (and they did, oh did they ever) worked just fine for me as I'm sure it did for them. I've got my Alter Ego on my shelf. He's always poised to scream out a rock anthem over my head every night. And I kindly thank you to shut it because no, his microphone wielding singing position is not reminiscent of Chester Bennington's.


Rock on, KoTAYku! Anything you tossed some gil at recently? Special editions of games, anime figures or general awesome things I need to know about or that you're willing to share? Twizm...not you. Don't put me under the desk to cry with a bottle of the hard stuff again.

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