For one reason or another, I found myself really wanting to get behind the kit of a drum set again for the first time in years. Problem is, those are expensive, loud and take up a lot of space, a combination of elements that aren’t great for living in an apartment. So I decided to look into picking up a Rock Band 4 kit to fill that void at a reasonable price. After some research, I think it would genuinely be cheaper to buy a real drum set than the game itself.

It’s absolutely wild how out of control these listings are. On Amazon alone, the only full kit I could find is priced upwards of $1000. It’s even crazier when you remember that a decade ago we couldn’t walk through a GameStop without tripping over 17 plastic instruments that no one wanted. Yet here I am in 2020 staring at plastic guitars that start at $250.

I get that prices skyrocketed once Harmonix and Mad Catz stopped manufacturing the things, but the fact that the official Rock Band 4 website links to the previously mentioned $250 plastic guitar page on Amazon is bonkers. I understand that Rock Band 4 wasn’t exactly flying off the shelves when it launched back in 2015 and it made fiscal sense to stop producing them. I also understand that Mad Catz as a company literally went bankrupt because of dwindling sales over the years, but the Rock Band 4 instruments seemed like the final nail in the coffin.

I just wanna play the drums again, and the Rock Band drums were supposed to be a cheap alternative. I’m also pretty sure could interface with a PC as a midi controller in case I wanted to lay down actual drum beats for songs, which is a plus. I’d gladly have paid $150 or whatever the kit initially cost in 2015, but at this point it’s easier to just buy a real electronic drum set for a little more than to scour the depths of Craigslist for someone’s nasty, dust-covered and probably busted Rock Band 4 drum set.