AHAHAHAHAHAHA *pauses, clutches sides, catches breath* AHAHAHAHA ...

Mercyful Fate. Led Zeppelin. Def Leppard. Mötley Crüe. It’s totally metal to purposely misspell your band’s name, right? So in a way, we can’t really fault Activision for misspelling Lynyrd Skynyrd on the box art for Guitar Hero: Metallica (as you can see in the image above, they omitted the second “y” in “Skynyrd”). Amazingly, no Dtoiders -- usually an eagle-eyed bunch -- picked up on that when we posted the cover artwork last week! Lynyrd Skynyrd is just one of over 20 artists that aren’t Metallica to have their music in the game.

However, in every other imaginable way, we most definitely can fault Activision for this inexcusable screw-up. Sure, it may be (pronounced 'lĕh-'nérd 'skin-'nérd), but it’s not spelled that way. Really, how difficult or time-consuming would it have been to Google “Lynyrd Skynrd” when putting together the cover art? Not very, of course -- and the person responsible for this guffaw-inducing gaffe would have instantly realized that he or she had made a huge mistake.

Activision hasn’t yet commented on this blunder, so we don’t know if they’ll be offering a corrected cover for download -- which is what EA Sports did with the cover of Madden NFL 09 when Brett Favre left the Green Bay Packers for the New York Jets last summer -- or if they’ll be able to fix the error in time for the game’s March 29th release on PS3 and 360 in North America. But for now, people who are sticklers for spelling -- like me -- are going to continue having a field day with this one.

[Via Rolling Stone Rock & Roll Daily]