Karaoke Revolution

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Karaoke Revolution, and its sequels Karaoke Revolution Volume 2 , Karaoke Revolution Volume 3 , Karaoke Revolution Party, CMT Presents: Karaoke Revolution Country and Karaoke Revolution presents American Idol are video games for the Sony PlayStation 2, Nintendo GameCube, and Microsoft Xbox, developed by Harmonix and Blitz Games and published by Konami in its Bemani line of music games.

Screenshot from Karaoke Revolution Presents: American Idol. The song being sung is The Human League's "Don't You Want Me".
Screenshot from Karaoke Revolution Presents: American Idol. The song being sung is The Human League's "Don't You Want Me".

Contents

[edit] Concept

The games are based on karaoke singing in which an amateur singer sings a popular song while it plays with the vocals. The games are able to detect the pitch of the singer's voice and award points based on how well the singer matches the pitches they are supposed to be singing.

Karaoke Revolution requires the use of a microphone. A microphone headset made by Logitech is available in a bundle with the games and is also sold separately; Logitech also sells a hand-held karaoke microphone. Although the cover and instruction manual for the first Karaoke Revolution available for the PlayStation 2 only shows the headset, the Konami Microphone actually does work with the game as well and is therefore backwards compatible. The USB microphones supplied with the SingStar games do not work with Karaoke Revolution. For the Playstation 2 versions a USB microphone is required. For the Gamecube versions a gamecube compatible microphone is required. For the Xbox versions an Xbox Live Headset can also be used.

The game does not attempt to understand the singer's words, but instead detects their pitch. As such, singers can hum to a song or sing different lyrics without penalty. The game adapts to the player singing one octave higher or lower than the song, to accommodate players whose vocal ranges do not fit the song.

The songs in the game are covers (not performed by the original artists, but similar to the originals) of pop hits frequently sung in karaoke bars. This contrasts with the SingStar series from Sony Computer Entertainment Europe, which features only original artist recordings along with the music videos, where available.

American versions of the game are based on a public performance style (like American Idol for example). Versions sold in Japan are basically "karaoke in a box" (just displaying lyrics and videos).

Secret Level has worked to bring the game to Xbox.

[edit] Gameplay

The player is depicted as a character on-screen performing at one of several venues such as a subway station, a carnival, or a football halftime show. The words to the song scroll right-to-left at the bottom of the screen, above a piano roll representation of the relative pitches at which they are to be sung (the game calls these "note tubes"). At the left end of this area, a "pitch arrow" shows the pitch which the player is singing and provides feedback on whether he's hitting the notes. A "crowd meter" shows the mood of the crowd as the player sings; if s/he does a good job of hitting notes on-pitch then the crowd will cheer more loudly and clap in rhythm with the song, and the scene will become more vividly animated. If the crowd meter falls all the way to the lowest rating, the audience will boo the character off-stage and the game is over.

Each song is divided into approximately 30 to 50 "phrases". A meter will fill up and turn from red to green for each phrase, based on how well the player sings the right notes; if the player can fill the meter to green, s/he will score more points, and getting several greens in a row will create a "combo" and award a 2x score multiplier until the player fails to make green on another phrase. The game can be set at higher difficulties which make this meter larger and require the player to hit the right notes more precisely to fill it to green.

Since maximum scores for each song are normalized around 50,000 or so, overall scores on songs can be compared. To achieve the gold record for a song, 12,500 points must be achieved. To achieve the platinum record for a song, 20,000 points must be achieved. Winning records will unlock additional characters, outfits, and songs. For Karaoke Revolution Party, 50,000 points (a perfect score) earns you a diamond record

Karaoke Revolution Volume 2 introduces a "medley mode" which challenges the player to sing a string of short clips from various songs.

Karaoke Revolution Volume 3 introduces "duet mode" which lets two singers play simultaneously. It also revised scoring so that perfect performances result in exactly 50,000 points (with the exception of the Jackson 5's "ABC").

Karaoke Revolution Party introduces voice-controlled games and integration with Dance Dance Revolution, as well as support for the Sony EyeToy.

Karaoke Revolution Presents: American Idol introduces commentary from virtual American Idol judges which affects scoring.

[edit] Releases

Many expansion discs are available for the Japanese version of the game, including an anime song collection and several volumes of J-Pop.

The North American version of Karaoke Revolution was released in November, 2003 in a bundle with the Logitech headset attachment. The game was sold without the headset in February, 2004. The European version of the game, titled Karaoke Stage, was released on April 22, 2005. 'Karaoke Stage'contains the same songs as 'Karaoke Revolution Party'.

Karaoke Revolution Volume 2 was released in North America on July 13, 2004.

Karaoke Revolution Volume 3 was released in North America on November 9, 2004.

Karaoke Revolution Party was released in North America on November 8, 2005.

CMT Presents: Karaoke Revolution Country was released in North America on March 28, 2006.

Karaoke Revolution Presents: American Idol was released in North America on January 2, 2007.

[edit] References to other games

In Karaoke Revolution Party, if you get a platinum record (20000 or more) on the sing and dance mode (microphone and dancemat combo) on expert, you get a trophy that says "Feet of Fury". The font that is used in the trophy description is an exact duplicate of the logo of the independently developed commercial Dreamcast dance game, Feet of Fury.

[edit] See also

[edit] External links

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