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The games are based on karaoke singing in which an amateur singer sings a popular song while it plays without vocals. The games are able to sense the pitch of the singer's voice and award points based on how well the singer matches the pitches he's supposed to be singing.
Karaoke Revolution requires the use of a USB microphone. A microphone headset made by Logitech is available in a bundle with the games and is also sold separately; Logitech also sells a hand-held karaoke microphone. [1] The game does not attempt to understand the singer's words; because it only senses his pitch, the singer can hum to a song or sing different lyrics without penalty. The game adapts to the player singing one octave higher or lower than the song, to accommodate players whose vocal range does not fit the song.
The songs in the game are coversIn pop music a cover version is a new rendition of a previously recorded song. Pop musicians may play covers as a tribute to the original performer or group, to win audiences who like to hear a familiar song, to increase their chance of success by using a (not performed by the original artists, but sounding almost indistinguishable from the originals) of pop hits frequently sung in karaoke bars.
The player is depicted as a character on-screen performing at one of several venues, such as a subway station, a carnival, or a football halftime show. The words to the song scroll right-to-left at the bottom of the screen, above a piano rollA piano roll is the media used to operate the player piano or pianola, band/fairground organs, calliopes and hand-cranked organs. A piano roll is a roll of paper with perforations (holes) punched in it. The position and length of the perforation determine representation of the relative pitches at which they are to be sung (the game calls these "note tubes"). At the left end of this area, a "pitch arrow" shows the pitch which the player is singing and provides feedback on whether he's hitting the notes. A "crowd meter" shows the mood of the crowd as the player sings; if he does a good job of hitting notes on-pitch then the crowd will cheer more loudly and clap in rhythm with the song, and the scene will become more vividly animated. If the crowd meter falls all the way to the lowest rating, the audience will boo the character off-stage and the game is over.
Each song is divided into approximately 30 to 50 "phrases." A meter will fill up and turn from red to green for each phrase, based on how well the player sings the right notes; if the player can fill the meter to green, he will score more points, and getting several greens in a row will create a "combo" and award a 2x score multiplier until the player fails to make green on another phrase. The game can be set at higher difficulties which make this meter larger and require the player to hit the right notes more precisely to fill it to green.
Since maximum scores for each song are normalized around 50,000 or so, overall scores on songs can be compared. To achieve the gold record for a song, 12,000 points must be achieved. To achieve the platinum record for a song, 20,000 points must be achieved. Winning records will unlock additional characters, outfits, and songs.
Karaoke Revolution Volume 2 introduces a "medley mode" which challenges the player to sing a string of short clips from various songs.
Karaoke Revolution Volume 3 introduces "duet mode" which lets two singers play simultaneously.