DH and I went to a party last night givem by one of my clients, a young producer at TNT. (We're working on some of the SAVING GRACE stuff together.) Because they don't have a huge income (his wife working in theatre) they are really into games---board games, acting out games and stuff like playstation.
I had never tried playstation stuff...I always though it was just games where you try to kill each other, but they had one set up in one room that was a karaoke game. You would design your character and choose your performance venue, and then sing along with the track. You would be judged on how closely you matched the pitch, and if you did well, it generated response from the audience. If you completed your song and did well, you ended up with a gold or platinum record. If you scored enouhg points, you ended up with a new outfit for future performaces. You could choose duets, some of which were in harmony, and there were varying degrees of difficulty in the choice of songs and the level at which you were judged. And the whole time, your charachter is dancing to the music.
Little arrows would tell you if you were off-pitch and needed to go sharp or flat.
DH was in aother room, playing something called "Guitar Hero" or something like that. You held a plastic guitar with 6 colors keys and watched a vdieo screen where the notes zoomed towards you, like on a fretboard, and you had to match your finger action to the illuminated dots on the fret board. There were a lot of other nuances to it, like points at which you could "rock out" and hit notes while using a whammy bar or raising the nexk of the guitar for extra points. It's kind of hard to describe, but he really had fun playing it! (Kind of like Dance Dance Revolution but with a guitar.)
I said "What'll they think of next? A whole band playing? Or doing the karaoke AND playing guitar?" Apparently, both scenarios are in the works!
One of the things that made us both feel old was that we barely knew even half the songs offered...
