Karaoke Stage's European break

Sing and dance from March.

News by Tom Bramwell Former Editor-in-Chief

Published on 24 Oct 2005

SingStar's monopoly on PS2 karaoke could be under threat - after Konami announced Karaoke Stage 2 for PS2, due out in March 2006.

In a way, the situation's the opposite of that in the States, where Konami's Karaoke Revolution series is followed to market by Sony Europe's SingStar exports. Karaoke Stage 2 is based on Karaoke Revolution Party - the fourth game in the series - although it won't be released on Xbox and Cube in Europe as it will be overseas.

Whether we're to become slaves of a console karaoke duopoly rather depends on public interest of course, but Karaoke Revolution's mightily popular over yon pond, despite using songs performed by in-house musicians rather than the original recordings in the same manner as SingStar.

There are plenty of similarities though - Karaoke Stage 2 will offer solo as well as duet and competitive performances to people with more than one microphone, and rates performances based on pitch, holding a note and timing.

The performance rating plays a big part in the single-player mode, which is similar to the Career effort that appeared in the first SingStar - allowing you to pick a character and then pursue a singing career through small venues onto larger arenas, judged on the fly by a crowd that grows in size and noise when you hit "Good" notes and slinks away when things get "Poor".

Karaoke Stage 2 also features a Sing and Dance mode - a first for the KR series, and obviously a first for us KS debutants - which allows players to plug in the dance mat from Konami's Dancing Stage series and perform predetermined dance routines, and there will be other mini-games built around the player's song range.

Like SingStar, KS2 also supports Sony's EyeToy camera - not for video recording, though, rather for creating 3D models of the player's head for use in-game.

We look forward to getting our mouths round and in it next March. Here's the full track listing: