SingStar '80s

Anyone looking forward to this new release? I know there will be some detractors who'll say that the gameplay isn't as good as that of the Karaoke Revolution series, and/or don't like the fact that SingStar requires the purchase/use of their propriatary USB microphones rather than be able to use the ones that come w/ KR...but the songlist is pretty impressive...I have to admit I have a thing for '80s music.

Re: SingStar '80s

Billy Joel -- Uptown Girl
Men At Work -- Who Can it Be Now
Billy Ocean -- Caribbean Queen
Nena -- 99 Red Balloons
Blondie -- Heart of Glass
The Pretenders -- Brass in Pocket
Culture Club -- Do You Really Want to Hurt Me
R.E.M. -- Stand
Cyndi Lauper -- Time After Time
Run D.M.C. -- It's Tricky
Dead or Alive -- You Spin Me Round
Simple Minds -- Don't You Forget About Me
Dexy's Midnight Runners -- Come on Eileen
Soft Cell -- Tainted Love
Duran Duran -- Rio
Squeeze -- Tempted
Erasure -- Respect
Starship -- We Built This City
Europe -- The Final Countdown
Survivor -- Eye of the Tiger
Flock of Seagulls -- I Ran
Tears for Fears -- Everybody Wants to Rule the World
Foreigner -- I Want To Know What Love Is
Thompson Twins -- Hold Me Now
Kim Wilde -- Kids in America
Tina Turner -- The Best
Madness -- Our House
Twisted Sister -- We're Not Gonna Take It
Madonna -- Material Girl
Wham -- Wake Me Up Before You Go Go

Re: SingStar '80s

I have to admit I'm not entirely familiar w/ "Brass In Pocket" and "Respect", and vaguely recall "Stand"...but am totally familiar w/ the rest of the songs on the list; IMHO this release offers a more-appealing list of songs, compared to past Singstar offerings (granted that some of them were non-North America releases).

Re: SingStar '80s

Update--I bought it, and knowing very little about the specifics of the SingStar gameplay beforehand, I have discovered one very critical shortcoming--I would even go as far as call it a flaw: it is not possible to mute/lower the vocals of the original video. IOW--you'll always hear the original singing voice in the "background", which IMHO ruins the karaoke aspect of the gameplay quite a bit. In that regard, the Karaoke Revolution series--even though it doesn't have original vocals and music videos built into the gameplay--is still the better karaoke video game.

There are other things about SingStar that I can nitpick, but the inability to lower/mute the original vocals is a killer...

Re: SingStar '80s

Aaron--it goes w/o saying that Singstar's main--if not only--selling point is that the songs include the original music videos (where available--there is no accompanying music video for "Eye Of The Tiger") and original vocals/music, vs. the synthesized music and vocals not sung by the original artist/group w/ KR. The basic gameplay options are available--solo, duet, solo/duet karaoke-only (i.e., no scoring); three scoring/difficulty levels; abbreviated and regular-length song version option; and medley gameplay. I think there are one or two other gameplay options (one of which is some sort of "rap meter" type game play); also, unlike KR there is no character customizing options since SS does not offer you to select a "character" to represent you during scoring competitions. It does make decent use of the Eye Toy camera--you can set it so that it uses live video in place of the original music video; you can also use it to take a picture of yourself to use as a sort of picture ID for identifying high score entries.

I will say one thing about SS '80s--for whatever reason, it is less forgiving than KR when it comes to pitch accuracy, even when playing in "Easy" scoring mode; either that, or the SS mics are way too sensitive when it comes to picking up/detecting pitch--if your pitch wavers even just a wee bit or if you can't hold certain pitches long enough, SS will pick it up and score you accordingly...KR is a bit more forgiving in that regard...at least in "Easy" mode.

There is one nice SS feature that I don't believe KR offers (I'm not sure about KR-AI, but the previous KR versions didn't have it)--it can play back your singing performance...meaning that you can listen for yourself as to how good (or, how bad) your singing was.

Coincidentally--I was playing KR-AI just yesterday; I achieved some more unlockables, to the point that the only unlockables remaining are the duet Platinum record unlockable (easily achievable--just gotta get my wife to do a duet w/ me) and the 20/30/40 Diamond records unlockables, which is pretty much impossible for me--to get Diamond on a song you have achieve a perfect score for the song...and unless you know each and every song inside and out, AND have a really good vocal range--getting Diamond on all 40 songs is very difficult (I've gotten only 12 Diamonds).