Like Rock Band, only fake.

So there’s this website, JamLegend.com, which is a poor man’s Rock Band played with the keyboard. There have been lots of little Flash games like this, but Jam Legend is the first one that’s worth playing due to the sheer amount of songs available. Well, okay, by that I mean it’s the first one I’ve found with video game music to play. And there’s not very much of it. And it’s so disorganized you can’t even click on the “Video Games” genre and get it all. But still!

Most of the non-video game tracks are by no-name bands nobody’s ever heard of. I’ve played a few, but they’re pretty universally terrible. Fortunately there was enough gamer stuff to keep me interested for an hour or so. I hope more gets added, and flagged appropriately in the genre list.

There’s apparently software out there that will recognize whatever plastic guitar you have laying around, but I haven’t tried that. I’m not sure there’s really a need; I’m pretty okay just with my number keys.

After you finish a song the game awards you with some arbitrary amount of experience points, and you get to watch a little meter fill up. When the meter fills up the game goes “YAY!” and you go up a level. I have absolutely no idea what any of this actually does, but I’ll be goddamned if it isn’t satisfying. I want Rock Band to throw me a periodic “YAY!” too.