The earliest karaoke-based music video game, called Karaoke Studio, was released for the Nintendo Famicom in 1985, but its limited computing ability made for a short catalog of songs and therefore reduced replay value. As a result, karaoke games were considered little more than collector’s items until they saw release in higher-capacity DVD formats.

Karaoke Revolution, created for the PlayStation 2 by Harmonix and released by Konami in North America in 2003. This game and subsequent sequels give a singer direction on their pitch and rhythm and scores the player on accuracy. Get too far off, and the player is booed off the virtual stage.

The game soon spawned several follow-ups including Karaoke Revolution Vol. 2, Karaoke Revolution Vol. 3, Karaoke Revolution Party Edition, CMT Presents Karaoke Revolution: Country and Karaoke Revolution Presents: American Idol. While the original Karaoke Revolution was also eventually released for the Microsoft Xbox console in late 2004, the new online-enabled version included the ability to download additional song packs through the console’s exclusive Xbox Live service.

A similar series, SingStar, published by Sony Computer Entertainment Europe, is particularly popular in the European and Australasian markets. Other music video game titles that involve singing by the player include Boogie and its sequel Boogie SuperStar, Disney Sing It, Get On Da Mic, Guitar Hero World Tour, High School Musical: Sing It!, Lips, the Rock Band series, SingSong, UltraStar, and Xbox Music Mixer.

Other Karaoke games followed including “Boogie” for Wii, which included a dance aspect; “Get On Da Mic”, which features hip hop songs only; and the popular “Rock Band” titles, which also allow playing along on drums or guitars with special controllers.

This console device uses a wireless, motion-sensitive controller that allows players to use their motions to control and play the game using a totally new controlling concept – no buttons, no cursors – the machine simply tracks the movements in space.

The architecture inside the Nintendo Wii uses technology very similar to your laptop and wireless router. It uses MEMS technology for motion detection and uses SD card technology to help players transfer saved games, photos and other data to a secondary storage unit. There is also in use a variety of peripheral capabilities and different ports for connection while the Nintendo Wii uses Wi-Fi to talk to a wireless access point for Internet access.

The remote controller is very fast. You can move from one side of the screen to the other with a quick flick of the wrist. It is is very accurate: Things respond exactly as you expect. And it lends itself naturally to new game-playing paradigms. Playing a sword-fighting or fishing game with a joystick is clunky. Playing it with a controller that can be swung like a sword or a fishing pole is completely natural.

Using motion sensing technology in its controllers which look like TV remotes, Wii offers a new and easy way to play plus creates a new genre of gaming. The Wii Remote can be used as a handheld pointing device and detect movement in three dimensions. Wii does not use any button combinations. You can create your own Mii (pronounced ME) character to star in Wii games, surf the web, view photos, and even check the weather on Wii. Another distinctive feature of the console is WiiConnect24, which enables it to receive messages and updates over the Internet while in standby mode.

Wii offers legendary Nintendo franchises like Mario, Zelda and Metroid, as well as all new classics like Wii Sports and Wii Play.

The ADVCs only support standard NTSC (3.58) and standard PAL. Formats like NTSC 4.43 are not supported. PAL 60 is a non-standard format, which makes it hard to capture. Some capture cards with a certain Brooktree chipset are able to capture it in combination with Dscaler.

Older TVs designed for the European market had no expectation of needing to display PAL 60 were therefore not designed to cope with it.