The player is depicted as a character on-screen performing at a public venue. The words to the song scroll right-to-left at the bottom of the screen, above a piano roll 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 s/he's hitting the notes. A "crowd meter" shows the mood of the crowd as the player sings; if s/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. New to this iteration of the series is a deep character customization mode, in which players can change facial features, age, ethnicity and weight, along with various clothes and full outfits that comes pre-equipped with some accessories. Also new is a venue customization mode. This allows players to create their own custom stage to sing in, using pyrotechnics, lights, special effects, screens, and more. The game comes pre-packaged with 10 venues, including a Rockabilly theme, a Tiki Torch theme, a Hollywood Glamour theme, and an Outer Space theme. Players can edit these venues, or create their own, with 6 save spaces for custom venues. Also new is the addition of original music videos, which are available for all 50 songs in the track list.
The game comes pre-packaged with a USB Logitech microphone, but it will be compatible with all major gaming mics*, including mics from Rock Band, Guitar Hero, Lips and SingStar.
Soundtrack
The US version of Karaoke Revolution features 50 master tracks (a first for the series), spanning all genres and ranging from classics from the '70s all the way to today's mainstream hits. The UK version features 75 songs. Konami partnered up with Universal Music Enterprises[1] to allow five songs from The Jackson 5 to be featured in the game, along with themes and pictures. Also included are five songs in Spanish on the US version for the first time in the series; the UK version contains songs in French, German, Spanish, Norwegian, and Finnish. The previous downloadable songs from the previous Karaoke Revolution series are also compatible with this version of the series only for the PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360 owners.[2]
These are the complete finalized list of the downloadable songs and all are still cover versions found from the previous Karaoke Revolution series. The DLC songs "(I've Had) The Time Of My Life" and "You Lost That Lovin' Feelin'" for the Xbox 360 version are not supported with True Duet features. As of 2010, there will no longer be anymore new downloadable songs for both versions of this game.