Harmonix is the Boston-based studio responsible for the Guitar Hero and Rock Band series that, during the 2000s, filled front rooms (and, later, attics) with plastic instruments used to role-play rock musicians by means of intricate rhythmic tests. At the height of the genre's popularity, Harmonix worked with the Beatles' estate to convert the band's back catalogue to the interactive format. Consumer weariness toward plastic video game peripherals, however, precipitated a crisis. Fuser is Harmonix's attempt to reinvigorate the music game it once popularised, this time by casting its player as a DJ tasked with mixing and splicing assorted hits to delight a virtual audience. This is a far more creative proposition than the Simon-says format of earlier rhythm games, where your job was merely to strike buttons in time with the music.

It's been ten years since Microsoft launched the Kinect camera and it lived quite a life. The Xbox 360 peripheral became a key part of the whole Xbox platform and then years later, almost just as quickly, faded into obscurity. It may not have been the enduring success Microsoft was hoping for, but its legacy is bigger than you might first think. Kinect launched in 2010 and seven years and two versions later, Microsoft stopped making the gear. A year later and the company stopped offering the accessory for newer Xbox consoles.

Ever wanted to combine the vocals from "Call Me Maybe" with the guitar from The Jackson 5's "I Want You Back"? With a new game, Boston-based music video game giant Harmonix -- makers of the iconic Rock Band franchise -- you can add these two songs, and hopefully better combinations, together, to make your own mash-ups using a smartphone, a high-tech gameboard and deck of cards. "There's a feeling you get when you hold the cards in your hand and slap it down on the board, you transform into a music maker, you feel like a DJ," said Steve Janiak, Harmonix' chief executive, during an interview at PAX East last night. "You're in control of the mix in a way you wouldn't feel if you were just doing it on a screen." The new game, Dropmix, lets players combine the vocals of one song with the bass line from another and add the drums from a third song to make an entirely new tune. When it is released later this year, the game will include current hits from Bruno Mars, The Chainsmokers and Ed Sheeran, as well as classics like The Jackson 5, Run-D.M.C and Barbra Streisand.