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Simon
Cowell thinks I’m awesome. “You are a natural, a
complete and utter natural,” raves the American Idol
judge, after I croon the ’70s-era song “Come Sail Away”
into my Xbox 360. “You’re one of the best we’ve ever
had,” he offers, after a performance of the grunge-era
“Black Hole Sun.” Cowell isn’t famous for flattery, of
course, unless you turn the settings way down to “easy”
on a new video game based on the TV show. Then you can
get away with quite a bit of tone-deafness. Personal
note to Randy J.: I love you, too, dawg.
American
Idol Encore
is one of the latest video games that invite players to
plug a microphone, rather than a game controller, into
their home system. It’s like karaoke: Pick a song and
follow the notes represented by horizontal bars that
whiz by on your TV screen, along with the words. The
game tells you whether you’re in tune. Hit the right
notes, and you win points; go off key for too long, and
you might get booted off the virtual stage.
Singing
games have been around for a while, but this could be a
breakthrough year for the genre—at least, that’s what
some game companies are hoping. Lately, it seems big-box
electronics stores have a wide range of titles for
almost every contemporary music taste, from High
School Musical to hard rock. Game publisher
Electronic Arts has even launched a social-networking
site where users post and rate each other’s
performances.
One of
the biggest video-game phenoms of the moment, Rock
Band, riffs off the success of the Guitar Hero
series by throwing in a microphone with guitar and drum
game controllers. Where Guitar Hero appeals to
the guitar-playing wannabe, Rock Band, as the
name suggests, completes the band. Despite the game’s
hefty $170 price tag, the set quickly sold more than 1
million units the holiday season.
There
are more sing-along games on the way: This week marks
the debut of the latest sing-along entry in Sony’s
SingStar series, exclusively for PlayStation
consoles.
While
other singing games display an avatar busting moves to
the music, the gimmick with this series is that it plays
a song’s original video as your friends sing in
head-to-head or duet modes. Previous versions of the
series have had an ’80s theme or been based on more
current pop songs from the likes of Avril and Britney.
The latest version, SingStar 90s, features songs
from Chumbawamba and REM. The franchise has sold 11
million copies worldwide.
I
avoided this entire genre with a cringe, as any sensible
person would, until fairly recently.
Here’s
what I offer as an excuse: Last fall, I got married in
the Caribbean at the tail end of the rainy season.
Fearing that my friends and family would be stuck
indoors and in need of entertainment during a downpour,
I threw a couple of unopened SingStar games into
a suitcase.
I can’t
blame rainy weather for the results. Ever see one of
your best friends and your new brother-in-law crooning
away to win the most points on the song “Tainted Love”?
I highly recommend it, though not for the musical value.
Ever
since, my wife has broken out the SingStar just
about every time we’ve had a get-together. And yes,
despite this, people still come over.
It’s not
just us.
“This is
definitely a new thing,” says Farah Deen, a 21-year-old
student in Olney who is a fan of the series. “Most of my
friends would not be caught dead in a karaoke bar.”
But she
and her friends stay up late to belt out their versions
of “Material Girl” on her PlayStation 3. Sometimes, she
says, the guys get more competitive about it than her
female friends.
Nick
Matheson, a 22-year-old gamer in Winchester, says he
picked up the game on a lark, thinking his young nieces
would like it. He and about a dozen of his friends used
to get together to play slightly more...macho games,
like the Madden football games, the Fight
Night boxing games, or the bloody, World War
II-themed Call of Duty games. Now, they’re all
SingStar fans, too.
Matheson
says his friends were a little apprehensive at first,
but after he and his twin brother squared off on a round
of Billy Joel’s “Uptown Girl,” it was on. Matheson and
his friends quickly grew obsessed with the game, staying
up all night trying to beat each other’s high scores.
“For
about a month straight, every weekend, we were up till 4
am in the morning singing every song,” he says. “We’re
extremely competitive about it.”
He has
already preordered his copy of SingStar 90s.
Sony
doesn’t seem to like it much if you refer to SingStar
as a karaoke game in conversation. Jeff Reese,
director of software marketing at the company, says the
k-word has “negative connotations” among consumers.
Reese
said the company hopes the game’s broad appeal will help
its game consoles crack a more mainstream market of
consumers.
“We see
this as appealing to a new audience for us,” said Reese.
“It really serves to bring in nontraditional gamers.”
In a few
months, Sony is set to launch the first PlayStation 3
version of the SingStar games, along with an
online store for the game. While the SingStar
games have been limited in holding about 30 tracks on
each game disc, the PS3’s hard drive will allow fans to
buy and download as many songs as they like. Fans will
also be able to upload their recordings.
EA has a
new-ish social networking-style site based on karaoke,
called the Sims on Stage, where users
occasionally win perks from EA such as concert tickets.
The company wouldn’t say exactly how large its community
is so far, but EA vice president Ranah Edelin said users
are posting thousands of new recordings every day.
“Not
being a [good] singer doesn’t mean you can’t get up and
sing,” said Edelin. “As some of our users have shown.”
I’ll
stay far away from any upload features, thanks, but that
doesn’t mean I don’t get a complete chuckle out of
rapping along to Vanilla Ice on the latest SingStar
or trying to channel Ozzy Osbourne on the
American Idol game on a Saturday night.
The real
Simon Cowell, by the way, did not return calls
requesting actual comment. |
