Beatles video game, box set arrive Wednesday

As for the remastered CDs: “It’s about time,” said Mark Gunter, of the Virginia/Highland neighborhood. “We’ve been waiting since, what? 1987, for them to improve those crappy-sounding CDs. The Stones and Bob Dylan have probably been remastered two or three times each since then.”

Gunter, manager of the Fantasyland Records in Buckhead, has already pre-ordered both the stereo and the mono boxed sets for himself, which will mark the third and fourth time he’s bought the Beatles catalog. And if they put it out on remastered vinyl, he’ll probably buy it again. The cost? No problem. “The die-hards would probably pay more.”

Die-hards and regular customers will certainly push the new sets (which include 14 titles over 16 discs) into the charts. “This fall probably two of the best-selling outfits in the world will be Michael Jackson and the Beatles,” said Kevin Howlett, who provided historical notes for the remasters.

In fact, with the arrival in October of “Rain,” the Beatles tribute musical at the Fox Theatre, and with last month’s performance by bona fide Beatle Paul McCartney at Piedmont Park still ringing in our ears, Atlanta may approach Fab Four saturation.

Not possible, says Steve Landes, who plays (and sings and plays the guitar like) John Lennon in “Rain.” There are always new customers. “Every generation seems to find the Beatles one way or another,” he says.

And there’s always room in cyberspace. “The Beatles: Rock Band” will expand the possibilities by putting the listener in the band.

Chris Foster, lead developer at Harmonix, creators of the Rock Band franchise (and the original Guitar Hero games) doubts he’ll be introducing gamers to the Beatles. More likely vice versa. “They call it the chocolate and peanut butter of music gaming,” he said. “They fit really well together.”

Action in the game, which is available for Wii, Playstation and Xbox platforms, is set at venues that were touchstones in the Beatles’ career, including the Cavern Club in Liverpool and Shea Stadium in New York. Players try to match the music of the songs with their actions on game controllers, which are shaped like the familiar instruments played by the lads themselves — McCartney’s Hofner bass, Ringo Starr’s Ludwig drums. (Extra peripheral controllers such as a plastic version of George Harrison’s Gretsch guitar, are available for $99 each.)

Granny glasses and epaulettes are optional.

The Music:

The newly remastered Beatles catalog, available Wednesday, demonstrates that while the song remains the same, the technology keeps changing.

Updated capabilities mean that the 12 albums of the Beatles catalog, plus “Magical Mystery Tour” and “Past Masters Vol. I and II” (containing non-album singles) will emerge cleaner and better balanced on the remastered compact discs, according to two archivists at EMI.

“There’s lots of technology out there that allows them to do what they couldn’t do [in 1987]: repair and edit without anyone noticing that it is repaired,” said EMI historian Mike Heatley.

While remastering will fix some faults, it won’t change familiar blemishes: “If there was a squeaky drum pedal, there is still a squeaky drum pedal,” Heatley said.

Unlike the remixed 1999 release “Yellow Submarine Songtrack” and 2006’s “Love,” there was no remixing in this project, because that would have represented a deviation from the original artifact, said fellow historian Kevin Howlett. “You don’t want ‘Casablanca’ colorized, do you? You want it in the original black and white.”

For Howlett and Heatley, the monophonic mix, available in a separate boxed set, is preferable to the stereo mix, because the band cared more about the mono sound, and left the stereo mixes to the Abbey Road producers and engineers.

The Game:

Those familiar with the “Rock Band” video games know that you win points (and have fun) by trying to copy the licks from familiar songs, as they flow through real time. Controllers shaped like real instruments allow guitarists, bassists, drummers, and vocalists to enter the song, by following on-screen notation.

“The Beatles: Rock Band,” adds a few new twists to that formula. In addition to the novelty of incorporating Beatles music (until now unavailable on “Rock Band” games or on iTunes), and offering animated versions of the Fab Four, the new game allows players to try out vocal harmony, with roles for three different singers.

The game also visits famous landmarks from the Beatles history. To represent the second half of their career, when the band stopped touring, game designers created psychedelic landscapes to illustrate the songs.

“Because the band has such a rich visual legacy, we were able to do justice to that,” said Chris Foster, lead developer at Harmonix, makers of the game. Players won’t, however, be able to import Beatles songs into their other “Rock Band” games. “At moment it is definitely a walled garden,” Foster said.