Publisher: SCEA
Platform: PlayStation 2

Fans of the SingStar franchise have no doubt been waiting for the next follow-up in Sony’s karaoke series. Singstar 90’s brings another 30 songs to the table and some (not entirely welcome) new features that make little changes to the game.

The heart of a music game is always the music. At first glance, Singstar 90’s song list holds true to the name – 90’s music. With songs ranging from rock to rap, everything seems to fit well. After closer examination, the song list reveals how a good karaoke series can make a really sharp wrong-turn. With songs from highly credited artists such as Boyz II Men, Paula Abdul, Wilson Phillips and En Vogue, the choice of songs is incredibly lackluster. Nothing quite seems to work out for this version of Singstar and if you aren’t fond of rap music, seeing entries from Vanilla Ice, Sir Mix A Lot and MC Hammer will make you cringe.

A new feature to Singstar 90’s is the Rap Meter which judges your performance on the areas where rapping is actually involved. It can be cool yet it can also be an annoyance as accuracy takes on a whole new meaning when tossing out fast lyrics that many people still can’t seem to get right nearly a decade after these songs were hits. Not to completely bash the song list, there are quite a few hits such as En Vogue’s ‘Free Your Mind,’ ‘Torn’ by Natalie Imbruglia and ‘I Touch Myself’ from the Divinyls. Ultimately, for a party game, your party will soon be ready to pop in another version of Singstar as the night draws on.

Visuals from Singstar 90’s are top-notch. The music videos provide for the nostalgia while the interface keeps it all on track. Unfortunately, there are no new modes of gameplay to be found here and that leads you to fall back on the (wait for drum roll…) song list for anything new.

Unless you’re really hardcore about the Singstar series, skip this one and wait for the upcoming PS3 Singstar game coming soon.