Karaoke Revolution Games

How Is It Done?

At the bottom of the screen there is a singing field where the words, note length, and tone all appear. As you sing, an arrow pops up letting you know what tone level you are. Above the words, are the tone and length bars. Match the arrow with the bar and you’re in business. Kelly Clarkson, look out.

You are scored based on whether you hit the right notes and if you hit the lengths. The better you do, the more your singing meter fills up. After each phrase/verse, the amount of green in your meter indicates if you get a great, good, fair, poor, or lousy rating. Keep the greats and goods coming to keep the crowd meter glowing so you can get double points. If you consistently score lousy, then the audience will start walking out on you and you’ll fail the song. And it is embarrassing when computer people walk out on your performance.

So what do you sing into? The PS2 has two USB ports on the front so that you can hook up special microphones. You can get the headset style (likes the one for Socom) or you can get a handheld one. Logitech makes a good handheld mic for around $20. But if you want to shake your thang around like Britney Spears, go with the headset.

The Songs

All styles are represented, except Bluegrass, depending on which of the three versions you get. There are lots of alternative and pop songs, but you can go way back to the 60’s with Elvis and Sonny and Cher. Or boogie down 70’s style with "Play That Funky Music" (no, not the Vanilla Ice remake).

On most songs, you can play either the full song, or the short version. The second Karaoke Revolution introduced Medley mode, where you can sing 3-5 short version of the songs in a row. Karaoke Revolution 3 featured Duets mode. With two microphones, you can sing classic male/female songs like Sonny and Cher’s “I’ve Got You Babe”, and the song “Under Pressure.” There are two fields of singing, with singer one on top and singer two on the bottom. The verses and chorus alternate between the two singers for that duet effect.

Karaoke Revolution Party is the 4th installment, but one with the best feature of all: Singing AND dancing. Hook up your dance pad for the full performance experience. While you sing, arrows scroll along the bottom under the singing field. Tap the arrows like you would on Dance Dance Revolution. You can choose a number of difficulties which increase the amount of arrows thrown at you. If you have Dance Dance Extreme 2, then you can play the demo with two songs or buy the full version out now.

What Makes them Fun

Obviously, the party factor. Getting a bunch of your friends over to sing karaoke is always fun, but with the actual judging you can see who’s good and who need tomatoes thrown at them. And with duet mode and the Dancing/Singing mode in the fourth one, don’t you think hilarity will ensue?

Thompson’s Two Cents

Karaoke Revolution is a crowd favorite at my house. You’ll find some people really get into the songs (anything by Michael Jackson) and some interpret their own notes (read: bad) to the songs. And let me give you a piece of advice: record other’s singing for blackmail purposes, because that in itself is funny.