Karaoke Revolution Party

Grab your friends, plug in the mics, and get this party started

NA release: 8th November 2005
EU release: N/A
JP release: N/A
Developer: Harmonix Music Systems
Publisher: Konami
NGC Magazine Score: N/A
Mods Used: None

I can’t sing to save my life. I’m that bad that I had to wait until I was home alone before even attempting to play Karaoke Revolution Party. Of course, that didn’t stop me from being judged by the game which constantly confirmed that I’m absolutely atrocious at singing.

That said, actually singing isn’t how you do well at this game, and simply singing in time to the words isn’t good enough. Scoring is based mainly on your pitch, which I found to be extremely difficult while singing. While humming, I could do it somewhat although it seemed that the pitch detection isn’t perfect – apparently my humming can be too high pitched for the chorus of Take On Me.

Of course, humming being more effective isn’t exclusive to Karaoke Revolution Party as Singstar does the exact same thing. It’s just a quirk of this style of game and there is a basic Karaoke mode. The song selection is a good mix with a bunch of covers of popular songs and you can turn off the vocals as well.

This uses the GameCube microphone, so you have to remember to hold down the button on it the entire time. The various minigames are built to support pass and play with their own microphone, or a full 2 player mode using 2. You can sing along to the full versions of songs, short versions or play though small slips of multiple. There’s also two minigames which I couldn’t get to work at all, such as Pong where you control the paddle with the pitch of your voice.

There’s also a song and dance mode, where you use a dance mat to play a basic version of Dance Dance Revolution while you sing. You only hit one arrow at a time, but it’s a good addition. Although slightly odd for the GameCube as the only DDR game was the Mario one, so dance mats weren’t quite as common. This game definitely isn’t for me, but it seems to be a good example of this type of game.

Fine

In all, Karaoke Revolution Party is the finest and most fun karaoke game on any console and even rivals many PC-based karaoke programs. In other games, you sing. In this game, you sing and the computer tells you how much you blow. If only Britney Spears had this much input. Pop this game in and you’ll find that even the uptight girl in the corner with a glass of merlot is going to enjoy herself at your karaoke party when Sweet Caroline hits the airwaves. Good times never seemed so good.
Jonathan Miller, IGN

Remake or remaster?

I’m surprised there isn’t a Karaoke platform where you can buy lots of extra tracks.

Official Ways to get the game

There’s no official way to get Karaoke Revolution Party