The SingStar revolution
If you don't want to spend your evening in a seedy Japanese Karaoke club or in front of a drunken hoard and don't want to spend the earth, you can now enjoy the highs and lows that is Karaoke in the comfort of your own home.
Gone are the days of rickety tape casette based units with cumbersome sheets of lyrics and here are the days of slick onscreen lyrics overlaid on actual music videos.
Sony has actually recognised that the way to enhance value of the still wide spread PS2 is to innovate. SingStar does this by using a nifty little adapter that plugs into the units USB port and connects two microphones. It's great that the cords are long enough to ensure that the singer's eyesight isn't strained from standing two feet from the television.
Currently avialable are 150 songs across most singable genres of music. Each version has 30 songs and the versions currently avialable are:
- 80's with great hits like Jefferson Starship's 'We Built This City' and Survivor's 'Eye of the Tiger'
- Rock which is great for the guys with Gwen Stefani's 'What You Waiting For?' and The Killers' 'Somebody Told Me'
- Popworld with Fountains of Wayne's 'Stacy's Mom' and Hoobastank's 'The Reason'
- Party with Destiny's Child's 'Survivor' and Maroon5's 'This Love'
- The original game with Village People's 'YMCA' and Ricky Martin's 'Livin' La Vida Loca'
Soon they will also be releasing a new version called 'Anthems'.
There is definitely some great songs here, but it is important to note that although there are all the big names, they have not always included their best and most well known songs. Despite this there is more than enough to keep you going for hours with minimal disappointment.
The game also keeps you entertained because it scores you for "how well" you sing. This may sound scary at the onset, but even the most tone deaf person should be able to do reasonably well on the "Easy" setting as it only listens for the intervals between notes and not the exact note you should be singing. The game then rates you anything from "Tone Deaf" to "Lead Singer" to "Super Star" depending on your score.
Combine this with the functionality to sing duets or battle each other via singing, it really does deliver and will make your home a party zone.
Personally, I recommend combining a night of SingStar with cocktails. I hosted a SingStar night last night and combined it with steins of beer and caprihina's. It went down a treat.
Lastly, SingStar is really quite affordable with games costing about £15 - 20 each and the starter pack ca. £30. I found the best prices in the UK on HMV.com.
It would be great to hear your experiences with SingStar as I think it can bring out the singer in all of us, but sadly won't make all of us a singer.