What we want is some program + service which provides a Konami-like interface with a vocal+ musical track, and with (paid) access to _all_ songs, because what you really want with karaoke is to sing songs you LIKE. And that of course changes as new songs come out.
My wife and I have had a blast over the years playing karaoke-style games on XBox, PS2 (and now the Wii). We much prefer the
Konami games to Sony's
SingStar - SingStar is nice since it has the original artists & videos, but the absolute time-track on Konami's implementation is far superior if you don't know the song well (which is usually the case at parties).
The fatal flaw of both however is that the number of songs you can access is extremely limited. We downloaded all the songs for Konami via XBox Live years ago - about 80 (and cost about $80), 70% of which were lame songs no one's ever heard or would want to sing. SingStar sells separate genre-based discs, with about 50% of the songs being worthwhile.
I can't believe the recording/gaming industry haven't recognized that millions of game-buyers are willing to pay a dollar a song or whatever to have it in their karaoke collection.
What is out there to provide this functionality? Thanks!
posted by Memo at 5:41 PM on April 11, 2008