Karaoke Revolution

[zmeston]

At the end of Konami's four-hour E3 press conference, the company announced a new rhythm/music game called Karaoke Revolution, and wheeled out singing sensation (ahem) Jennifer Love Hewitt to demonstrate. You play the game with the stand-alone USB headset, matching the pitch of your voice with the notes displayed on the screen. It's pretty damn cool stuff, and I found out later that Harmonix (they of FreQuency and Amplitude, and the developers of KR) threw together the E3 demo in record time.

Now, among the journalists I was hanging with after the press conference, I was alone in my belief that KR will be successful, since it taps into the current American Idol vibe and has plenty of mainstream/chick appeal. (The American Idol rhythm/music game from Codemasters, by the way, is crap.)

How do the rest of you feel about KR? Will you buy it/play it?

-- Z.

[WiseSalesman]

I'll buy it. A friend and I were actually talking about making a "Sing Sing Revolution" machine the other day, and had got as far as drawing up a few shcematics, and putting down some basic flow charts for elementary coding.

Of course, now that I know it's in the works, I can forget about that, and have more fun just playing it. Being a vocalist myself, I'll be looking forward to this immensly.

[NE146]

After all the time I spent schmoozing in Karoake bars in the late 80's and 90's.. (no they're not like the karaoke bars you guys have in the states.. they were dark skanky places where you stayed in your booth drinking mixed drinks and sang "my way" in privacy along to bad korean laserdisc videos with some buy-me-drinky girl). I think the idea of a karaoke videogame would just give me the jitters x_x

[devilman]

Sounds interesting. I was thinking about this idea the other day - wondering if would be possible on a technical level. I'd perhaps give it a whirl in private - my singing voice is chronic! :D

[RetroYoungen]

Karaoke? Sounds evil to me (I fear those who karaoke, I've heard so many people do it so badly that it frightens me to no end). I wouldn't do it for fear of sounding like those drunk people at bars who just stagger around and stuff. ::shivers::

[kingpong]

Sounds interesting. I was thinking about this idea the other day - wondering if would be possible on a technical level.

Last year I picked up an OnKey Karaoke TV Star microphone on clearance at Wal-Mart (marked down to $5 from $75) that does what I imagine this game will do. Basically it just senses the pitch you're singing compared to what it is supposed to be. It works quite well actually. Pretty neat little device - connects to the TV to display the lyrics and play the audio, has 50 songs built in, can download more songs (for a price), lots of effects like changing the key, shifting male to female and vice versa, echo effects, etc. You see your score throughout the song, then a final score at the end.

I would imagine Karaoke Revolution will work much the same way. If a sub $100 device can do it, plus have songs built in and generate the sound and video through the TV, I imagine a PS2 can pull it off pretty easily. Hopefully it will have similar audio effects - with this OnKey thing I enjoy combining several audio effects to make myself sound like Alvin and the Chipmunks singing Super Freak.