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Karaoke bars are popping up everywhere. You’ve seen the signs. They’ve intrigued you, but you’re terrified of the prospect of stepping up in front of a crowd of spectators and belting out the latest hit from Bare Naked Ladies and falling flat on your bare naked butt. Well never fear because Konami has come to your rescue with Karaoke Revolution for the Playstation 2!

Karaoke Revolution allows you to get a feel for the karaoke experience with simulated crowds and differing venues minus the stage fright and drinking. The game comes with a Logitech USB headset, which plugs into the USB port that you may not have notice on the front left of your PS2, underneath the controller port. Simply plug in the headset, turn on the game and tell the neighbors to prepare themselves to be dazzled by your singing prowess.

The game has several available modes to choose from. In Single Player mode, you’ll find three game mode options. In Showtime mode, you choose a character to start a singing career and win your way to the top while being scored on accuracy and pitch. In Arcade mode, you play a number of rounds singing songs of increasing difficulties also with scoring on accuracy and pitch. In Karaoke mode, you don’t have to worry about singing off-key or fudging the words because there are no scoring. Just sing to your hearts content and have fun! After selecting a mode and choosing from one of several odd-looking character representations, select your judging level (four levels from easy to expert), venue, song and then sing with the music. And if you’ve got a bunch of friends over for the night, you can share the karaoke experience with Multiplayer mode, which is sure to make the neighbors shriek with delight…or call the cops.

The headset included with the game isn’t exactly the best despite the Logitech brand. I’ve got a lot of hair so I couldn’t even sit the thing on top of my head, so you may need to fiddle around with it to get it to a comfortable and usable point if you have a lot of hair or a very large head. In the end though, you may just want to hold the thing in front of your mouth and say to heck with trying to make it do the impossible, or you can use any PS2 usb headset such as the socom headset. You’ll probably also need to adjust the sound levels a bit as you play especially if you’re going for a platinum record score. Thankfully the good folks over at Konami realized there might be some need for this and added an on-the-fly sound adjustment feature. Pressing and holding the controller’s buttons will allow you to adjust the sound from the microphone as well as the vocals, earpiece and in game music levels with the controller pad during the songs.

Karaoke Revolution features over 35 songs from old classics like Celebration to more recent hits like How You Remind Me. Now while 35 songs might have sounded like a lot to Konami, I don’t think it was nearly enough to make the game not get old within a few weeks. However, Konami must have anticipated this eventuality and has an in game feature, which will allow expansion discs to be used to upgrade the game. No expansion discs are even rumored to be in the works yet, but there is a song suggestion form on the official website that allows you to voice your opinion as to what songs you’d like to see released for the game.

This game features little in the way of extras. Unlockables include a couple of songs and additional in-game personas as well as some videos of the game production and hilarious music and outtake videos. I’ve heard complaints from some people about the fact that the in-game vocals aren’t done by the original artists. Well, if you know anything about real karaoke, this is the norm. At real karaoke bars, the background vocals and music usually does not feature the real artists. Licensing fees and such would just make it too expensive so there are people who cover the songs as accurately as possible and are usually fairly good. Besides in karaoke bar, just like in the game, the real fun lies in the singing. When singing karaoke in a real karaoke bar all the vocals are turned down or off except for the background vocals. So there is really nothing to complain about when it comes to the songs except in the case of a couple of bad choices when it comes to singers.

Karaoke Revolution is a really great game and hopefully it will get the support it deserves from the Bemani community and the gaming community in general. This game is perfect for the aspiring Britney or the shower Chad Kroeger and a perfect game whether you’re alone or with friends. Just before you decide to blow the roof off your place with your singing, make sure the neighbors aren’t going to call the cops.

Cynthia Threadgill

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Questions? Comments? Stupid Remarks? Email: cyndy01@swbell.net

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