I love music games.

If you know me, this is probably no surprise to you at all. I like videogames. I like music. I play several instruments, write songs, and sing with moderate competence. Q.E.D., you know? These games are pretty much made for (and, most likely, by)  people exactly like me.

I remember back in April or May of 2005, while working at OPM, I was sent down to RedOctane to get an exclusive look at new game the company was working on. Up until this point, RedOctane was known primarily for creating high-end peripherals for dance games like Dance Dance Revolution. But they had decided to branch out into a slightly different genre.

The game was called Guitar Hero. And after fumbling through a version of “Smoke on the Water,” I got pretty excited about it. I wish I could tell you that I knew right from the first time I saw it how big Guitar Hero would be, and what a huge gaming and social phenomenon it would kick off.

But to tell you the truth, I had no idea. The game seemed to have a lot going against it. It was expensive. It required a special peripheral, something which gamers were notoriously stingy about buying. It was only coming out on one system (though to be fair, the PS2 was the most popular console at the time). And while similar games had been big in Japan for years, the U.S. market seemed to show no inclination of being interested.

So no, I had no idea. I know I loved it, and I certainly hoped it would do well. I just didn’t know how many other people would dig it as deeply as I did.

Turns out, quite a few did. And still do. Now, four years and literally billions of dollars later, the music genre is just dominating the industry. The Guitar Hero and Rock Band franchises have together become an entirely new — and entirely legitimate — way to experience music, from classic favorites to brand-new artists.

I think that’s pretty friggin’ cool.

So after years of covering the genre, and getting excited about each new release, from new games to new downloadable content, I realized that I needed to find a way to share my love of this stuff with the world. Because clearly, there are a heck of a lot of you out there who love these games as much as I do.

So welcome to Plastic Axe. This is where I’ll be sharing news about all those games with all those plastic instruments, posting updates to everyone’s catalogs of downloadable content, and maintaining an ever-growing database of every damn song available for every damn music game¹ on the market²: The Vault. (More on that later.)

I don’t expect this to be a simple task. But what can I say? I love this stuff.