When it comes to mixing Singing + Video Games I find usually that their are 2 camps. The “I love to sing” people, and the “I need to be a certain level of intoxication, then I will oblige”.
For me it depends where I am, and with whom as to whether or not a drink or several for dutch courage is needed for a self confidence boost.
Whilst Karaoke is roughly over half a century old now, the video game counterpart is only just about in it’s teens. The first major home console karaoke game is Karaoke Revolution which hit Japan in 2003 (this might actually be the legitimate first one as I’ve come across no others, and the PC counterparts are hazier to keep track of, with a lot of the earlier entries being more akin to the service you’d find in a karaoke bar as opposed to the gamification Karaoke Revolution and so forth brought to the table).
Karaoke Revolution was developed by Harmonix (who we’ll talk more about later) for Konami. It was the singing alternative to Konami’s hugely successful Dance Dance Revolution games that you’ve undoubtedly witnessed or even played if you’ve been in any arcades over the past 15 years.
Whilst the game wasn’t scoring you on if you knew the words, the mic was simply listening out for if you were singing words at the right pitch equal to what was found in the song you’re covering. This would become a common practice among singing based games going forward.
Thanks to video game media allowing for more storage, along with an easier way to implement 3rd party peripherals Karaoke Revolution and SingStar came and ushered in many a 3rd party counterpart. Any home video game system that had sold well and also proven to do well in selling games to the multi-player crowd got it’s share of karaoke games. Perhaps most notably of these systems would be the PlayStation 2 and the Nintendo Wii.
Parallel to the rise of Karaoke games came the boom of music games in general. Harmonix developed the original Guitar Hero and it’s sequel, then split with Activision to then start the Rock Band franchise under EA.
It was with the birth of Rock Band that perhaps the greatest step came in terms of really hitting the ball out of the park for mainstream karaoke gaming came, followed shortly after with Guitar Hero: World Tour.
Whilst SingStar and others were already popular sellers, they would sell to those whom had an outright affection for singing. Rock Band, and then Guitar Hero snuck into many a homes and brought out all those people who kept their singing strictly to private confines of the shower or car stereo. To add to this Rock Band and Guitar Hero kept a steady flow of new music coming through downloadable content so you could potentially build a huge library of music catered to you and your friends musical tastes.
Throughout a period of the late 2000’s to early 2010’s it was pretty much guaranteed that out of a collective group of friends that played video games, at least 1 person in each group(s) had a full setup, and given the opportunity to host a party w/ gaming at their place, it was almost a given that the plastic instruments would come out.
It’s a hard fact that for a few years these games did wonders for social video gaming. Instead of sitting solitary at home communicating over headsets and playing online, you and several friends would be side by side having fun with music (even if you hated some of the songs).
It’s easy to file Karaoke video games into ‘Winter is Gaming’ for the same reason a handful of others have this month… They’re great with parties, and through the simplicity that comes with following rhythm and a broad range of difficulty settings to help ease in newcomers, they’re practically accessible to all.
On top of that through downloadable content at your disposable, and SingStar, Lips especially have a number of Christmas songs up for purchase, and depending on what version of Rock Band or Guitar Hero you have you’ll likely have some options there.
For the joy of christmas cringe. Here’s a 6 years old video upload of mine singing some Christmas classics >_<