There was a time when some living rooms were filled with plastic guitars and disassemblable drums. That era, led by the fever of Guitar Hero and titles like Rock Band, seemed to have passed as a truncated category without relevant updates for almost a decade.
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Now, RedOctane Games, the studio made up of veterans from those golden years, seeks to revive that flame with Stage Tour, a video game that takes up the challenge of music simulators.
The game promises to bring us back to the dynamic of note tracks descending down the screen accompanied by physical peripherals.
The premise of Stage Tour is to recover the experience of having the whole band in the same room.
To achieve this, they will offer new physical controllers, including an official Kramer guitar developed in partnership with Gibson and a newly manufactured drum set, allowing divided roles in lead melody, rhythmic accompaniment, percussion, and vocals.
The resurrection of this niche seeks to reconnect players with a tactile music experience amid releases dominated by strictly digital formats.
In parallel, the studio’s most recent announcement focused on the franchise’s backbone: the catalog. In its seventh song reveal, named under the concept “The stars have aligned,” Stage Tour confirmed the inclusion of three classics with mass appeal.
The list added In the Stars by The Rolling Stones, the cross-cutting 90s pop anthem All Star by Smash Mouth, and the stadium rock of Starlight by Muse.
With these three additions, the setlist officially reaches 25 confirmed tracks.
The musical curation so far shows a balance between historic names and contemporary rock exponents.
The list already includes heavyweights like Red Hot Chili Peppers with Dani California, Radiohead with Just, Slipknot with Psychosocial, and The Cure with Just Like Heaven.
But there is also room for modern and heavy sounds from Ghost and BABYMETAL.
These are the confirmed songs – so far – for Stage Tour:
To adapt the formula to current times, RedOctane Games announced that, in addition to the classic quick play modes, they will include a campaign mode.
The new mode will combine traditional five-button gameplay with roguelite elements, aiming for each game session to be completely different from the previous one.
According to RedOctane Games, Stage Tour will be available on PC via Steam, PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X|S, and Nintendo Switch 2, targeting a release for the late 2026 season.
The next announcement of songs and mechanics is scheduled for the upcoming Gamescom fair in Germany, where more details of this bet to revive a genre many thought was over are expected to be revealed, but which seems to refuse to hang up the pick and drumsticks.
