Recently, we talked about Jason Oda's Galvanized!, a game created to promote techno act The Chemical Brothers. Last year, we also mentioned Triple Trouble, The Beastie Boys's politically-charged promo game.

Here's another recording artist game, Bang the Drum, promoting formerly has-been but recently rediscovered band INXS. The game is, in a word, terrible. The design concept is pretty good -- a music rhythm game based on the prowess of INXS drummer John Farriss. There's one (count 'em, one) INXS song, the eponymous "Need You Tonight." But the game is nearly impossible to play, offering only rudimentary directions and terrible in-game feedback. As an expression of the nesting doll-like logic of recursive promotional deals, drum manufacturer Sabian also gets prominent mention in the game.

This game, like many other stinkers, was created by Blockdot, the operators of the Kewlbox.com website on which it can be found. Regular WCG readers may recall my previous jibes at Blockdot, but it seems that they're now laughing all the way to the bank. Traditional media conglomerate Media General recently bought Blockdot for an undisclosed sum. Media General owns numerous local newspapers and TV networks, so I can only imagine that we will soon see Blockdot's forgettable games on dozens of forgettable local newspaper and television network websites. On with mediocrity!