One of the games that I most looked forward to seeing at E3 was Beatles Rock Band. MTV Games and Harmonix went all out with their presentation, creating a replica of one of the sound studios the Beatles used to record their music. Now, I know what you’re thinking: here’s another set of plastic instruments to buy. And you’re right, but these plastic instruments are faithful copies of the actual guitars that the boys from Liverpool played (and still play, in Paul McCartney’s case). However, the instruments aren’t all that’s new.

Harmonix has reorganized some of the game screens, moving the No Fail toggle out of the options menu and creating a more detailed account of how your singers did after the song is over. They’ve also made the Easy mode automatic No Fail, meaning that now a music-game noob won’t cause your entire band to fail out. But the biggest addition is the chance for as many as three band members to harmonize on the same song. Turks wondered where you would plug two extra microphones into your console, but it was never mentioned and we had no Q&A time with the demonstrators, so we just have to trust that it works, which it did in the demo. It was also mentioned that the addition of one or two harmonizing voices would not negatively impact your band’s final score, provided your lead singer doesn’t screw up too badly. Beatles music comes from an era of close vocal harmonies, which are amazingly difficult to sing correctly when you’re also concentrating on the notes flying down the Rock Band note highways, so you can rest assured that missing a few harmonies is not going to get you kicked out of your band. Beatles Rock Band hits store shelves on Sept. 9.