It wouldn't be the Beatles without a little mania. The world will give its attention to the Fab Four this week, as it has done regularly for more than four decades, the latest rekindling of one of music's most enduring love affairs.

Wednesday will bring a Beatles bounty, led by the premiere of long-awaited CD upgrades and "The Beatles: Rock Band" video game -- groundbreaking releases designed to captivate diehard devotees while luring a new generation of fans into the fold.

The 09/09/09 release date -- number nine, number nine, number nine, if you will -- is the culmination of a ubiquitous, months-long promotional campaign. And it's the biggest blast of Beatlemania since the multimedia "Anthology" project rolled out in 1996.

"If you're a Beatles fan, you really like to see the flame continue to burn, and this has lit it up big time," says Beatles nut Doug Podell, operations manager at WCSX-FM (94.7). "I think this is the biggest marketing campaign we've seen for a classic rock band in a lot of years. And that's great for the Beatles fanatics, because it keeps everything alive."

The effort, two years in the works, is a collaboration between EMI Music, MTV Games and the Beatles' Apple Corps. For music and gaming fans, the Beatles are inescapable this month, with television commercials, magazine covers, newspaper circulars, MTV Networks programming, store displays and radio promotions -- right in time, of course, for the holiday sales season.

"There's no stone unturned in the presentation," says Bob Picunko, senior vice president of MTV Games, who helped lead the marketing campaign. "And we're planning to keep that momentum going through the end of the year."

Echoing other principals involved in the project, Picunko says it was crucial to maintain the Beatles' credibility while crafting a marketing spectacle.

"In terms of respect, there's a line between trying to do something completely different and finding the parts of the music and legacy that are relevant today," he says. "There were many discussions, many focus groups, to check that this was both Beatles-fan appropriate and 'Rock Band'-fan appropriate. Our objective was to create a global Beatles celebration on 09/09 that includes everybody. ... Once you've got an alignment of respect for the legacy and the celebration, everything falls into place."