Karaoke Revolution and its many sequels are video games for the PlayStation 2, PlayStation 3, Nintendo GameCube, Wii, Xbox, and Xbox 360, developed by Harmonix and Blitz Games and published by Konami in its Bemani line of music games. The Original Concept for Karaoke Revolution was created by Scott Hawkins and Sneaky Rabbit Studios. Technology and concepts from the game were subsequently incorporated into Harmonix's game Rock Band.
The Japanese versions of the game are developed by Konami themselves. The gameplay also differs significantly. Rather than a game per se, it is merely a karaoke system for the PlayStation 2, with no judgments.
The game does not attempt to understand the singer's words, but instead detects their pitch. As such, singers can hum to a song or sing different lyrics without penalty. The game adapts to the player singing in a different octave than the song, to accommodate players whose vocal ranges do not fit the song.
The songs in the game are covers of pop hits frequently sung in karaoke bars. This contrasts with the SingStar series from Sony Computer Entertainment Europe, which features only original artist recordings along with the music videos, where available. However, the 2009 remake of the game (titled Karaoke Revolution, just like the original) features all master tracks.
The player is depicted as a character on-screen performing at a public location. The words to the song scroll bottom to top 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 star" shows the pitch which the player is singing and provides feedback on whether they're hitting the notes. A "crowd meter" shows the mood of the crowd as the player sings; if they do 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.