E309: DOES BEATLES: ROCK BAND HAVE THE MOST FANTASTICALLY SURREAL GAME INTRO OF ALL TIME?

Answer: yes, full stop.

As I hinted at before, somehow the team at Harmonix, alongside Gorillaz animator Pete Candeland of Passion Pictures (I’m presuming, based on Candeland’s similarly jaw-dropping work on Guitar Hero II‘s TV ad and the full-3D Rock Band 2 intro), have managed to even out-Katamari Katamari Damacy for what I’m going to call as the finest surrealist game intro we’ve ever seen.

And it’s for the Beatles. At first, you’ll think, hey, what amazing likenesses! This is like when the Mamas and the Papas were on Scooby Doo, only even more completely brilliant! And then a minute and twenty later, the doors of perception are blown open and it changes, and then another 25 seconds later, it blossoms even further into a relentlessly glorious technicolor dreamscape to the very end.

Apart from the updated trailer for Sony’s The Last Guardian/Trico, this could easily be the best cinematic treat to come out of E3 2009.

UPDATE: Harmonix has posted a beautiful hi-def version of the intro to the official Beatles: Rock Band website, where you can pick out even more details and legacy references, like the tiny jar of Marmite Ringo packed for his British Invasion, sitting in his Strawberry Fields Farm box. If this animation doesn’t pick up some Major Awards in 2010, I’ll eat my bowler.