Sony Announces SingStar Party

The latest in SCEE's arsenal of mainstream winning ventures named as SingStar Party.

Sony this week invited gamers to "get the party started" with a souped up version of its runaway mainstream hit, SingStar.

SingStar Party is the second title in the popular SingStar series from Sony's London Studio, the guys behing EyeToy, The Getaway and more besides. The sequel invites players to turn every social occasion into a spontaneous singing session with their friends - described as "the perfect way to ensure the fun carries on all night long" but Sony, Party is sure to sell by the bucketload when it hits shelves this November.

Yes, you too can imitate George Michael.

SingStar Party builds upon the concept of the first game, adding a wide variety of multiplayer game modes for between two and eight players. A new competitive Duet Mode enables two players to each sing one vocal part of a duet, competing for the highest scores. New "Pass The Mic" team games, featuring a variety of different singing challenges - solo rounds, combined duets, random battles and surprise singer selections - ensure that everyone at the party has a chance to show off their superb singing skills.

SingStar Party features fully licensed music from a wide variety of artists and also includes footage of many of the original videos for each song. To compliment the new multiplayer gameplay modes, SingStar Party features many traditional duets, such as "Don't Go Breaking My Heart" by Elton John and Kiki Dee, but every song in the game has been split into two parts so that it can be played as a duet, if desired. In solo mode, the player can sing a duet with the original artist, for example, if you're singing as Elton John, Kiki Dee will join you.

EyeToy compatibility allows players to see themselves singing within the game in place of the artist's video. Once players have had their photo taken, it will pop up whenever it's their turn during Pass the Mic, and photos also appear within the game menus, on the high-score screen for example. Singers are also recorded at key moments during their performance so they can replay the highlights afterwards.

Innovatively, fans of the first game can take advantage of a special cross-disc compatibility feature that allows them to insert the first SingStar disc at the carousel screen and automatically update their collection with the 30 songs from the original, increasing their SingStar jukebox to 60 songs and also allowing players to sing all of the old songs as duets.

Expect SingStar Party to further Sony's position as the leading format, and don't be surprised to see further market-broadening initiatives in the future either.

Adam Doree
Director, Kikizo.com