Just like the
Karaoke Revolution games for the other consoles,
Karaoke Revolution Party's control system is very different from pretty much any other game out there. Basically, the game measures your pitch, and as your pitch rises and falls, so does an arrow at the bottom of the screen. The goal is to try to keep the arrow on target as the song's pitch changes (depicted by bars that fly from the right side of the screen.
The Dance Mode works like a mix between KR and DDR. As the song progresses, arrows fly from the right side of the screen (just under the pitch bars), and you need to hit the correct button on the dance pad at the right time to get points. Besides the use of the controller to navigate menus, that is all there is to the game's control scheme.
Okay, so if you own or have seen the GameCube's Mic, you probably noticed that it plugs into the system's memory slot. That's fine, right? When they designed the tool for Mario Party 6, this was great; it allowed you to plug in all four controllers, your memory card and the microphone (after all you really only need one memory card while playing a game). This was a great idea for the party game because it meant that when a player needed the mic, you just passed it to them and you didn't have to worry about changing which port it was plugged into. Unfortunately, the idea doesn't carry over very well to Karaoke Revolution Party’s multi-mic support.
So if you have two microphones and want to sing a duet or play Two-Mic Mode, what do you do? Why, you take out your memory card and plug in the other mic. But what happens when the game auto saves between each and every song? You take the mic out of slot 2 and put your card back in while it saves -- and change it out again for the next song. I found this to be a major annoyance and one of the few things that proves a GameCube version of Karaoke Revolution isn't necessarily the best idea.
Quite frankly, I'm not sure who this game is intended for. If you are already a fan of the KR series, then most likely you own a PS2 or Xbox and you should get this version of the game for that system. If you've never played the game before, then Party isn't exactly the title to start off on since it has a limited Single Player mode and is geared more towards the big-crowd scene (and quite frankly when I think of a party-console, it is not the GameCube). If you are looking into the series, trying to decide if you will like it, then try out one of the other volumes on one of the other systems first. It seems to me the only audience this game is truly applicable to are those gamers who only have a GameCube, but found they liked the game while at a party or friend's house.
Either way, getting this version has plenty of hidden costs. Karaoke Revolution Party comes with one microphone, but if you want to try out the duets or Two Mic Mode, then you will either need to buy a copy of Mario Party 6 or purchase a GC mic separately. The same thing goes for the dance pad. If you want to try out the Song and Dance mode, then you should either have DDR Mario Mix (since as far as I know that is the only dance game out there for the GameCube) or buy a GC dance pad separately.
Bluntly put, this game is great, but it doesn't really have a place on this system. There haven't been enough rhythm games out there to insure that people have the right equipment for it and this is the fourth game in the series. People jumping in here will have missed a lot of great gameplay. If you can get it for another system, do so. If all you have available to you is a GameCube then make sure you can afford the peripherals before deciding on this purchase.