Karaoke Revolution (PlayStation 2)

Karaoke Revolution is a karaoke simulation game developed by Harmonix, being the first series of Konami's "Bemani" rhythm games to be developed and released entirely outside of Japan. Notably, the technology from this series would later be reused in Harmonix's own Rock Band series.

Unused Graphics#

Menus#

ui\image\gen\venue1.bmp.gz is an earlier version of the icon for the Club Avalanche venue. It can be seen in the July 2003 prototype.

George W. Bush#

The Enormobowl (venues\stadium), The Party (venues\party) and Club Avalanche (venues\mediumclub) venues contain a placeholder graphic reserved for the screens, labeled vid01.bmp.gz. While the variant in The Party's folder merely consists of a placeholder, the others contain a picture of the then-current American president George W. Bush.

Karaoke Revolution Logo#

In addition, the Enormobowl, Club Avalanche and Superstar TV (venues\tvstudio) venues contain a texture meant to display the logo of the game, labeled kr_logo.bmp.gz, but only their palettes remain. The Enormobowl and Superstar TV palettes are identical.

However, the folder arena contains a file with the same name that is not blanked out, and consists of an earlier version of the game's logo, as seen in the E3 2003 Press Kit and the July 2003 prototype. It uses the same palette as the blanked out Club Avalanche graphic.

Central Station Ads#

The Central Station (venues\subway) venue displays "ads" for Harmonix, Konami, the in-game Superstar TV venue, and DDRMAX2: Dance Dance Revolution, which was also published by Konami, in the background; their texture files are labeled as ad01_combo.bmp.gz and ad03.bmp.gz. However, other textures for more generic ads can also be found unused. They can, however, be seen in the July 2003 prototype.

ad01.bmp.gz

ad02.bmp.gz

ad04.bmp.gz

Unused Song#

Of the folders in the songs directory, one of them, heyevery, belongs to an unused song; a cover of Hey Everybody by Jennifer Love Hewitt, which is present in the July 2003 prototype. However, only its .dtb (script) and lipsync .rnd files remain; all other files have since been deleted, and no other references to this song can be found.

Unused Code#

Unused Genre#

As defined by config\gen\kara.dtb, each of the game's songs have internal genres, in the order of Slow (00), Rock (01), 80s (02), 70s (03), and Dance (04). However, the latter two genres are effectively "combined", using the former's ID but the latter's videos.

Unused/Unseen Parameters#

As also defined by config\gen\kara.dtb, each of the game's songs have parameters for titles, length, and difficulty levels, which are displayed in the song selection screen, as well as gameplay parameters such as which backing characters are displayed, at what speed the lyrics scroll, at which size the lyrics appear, and the sound that plays should the player fail a stage. However, there are also two parameters which define the songs' original artist and BPM display values, also meant to be seen in the song selection screen. It's worth to note that the artist parameter is displayed in the July 2003 prototype, and that while the BPM parameter does seem to be used to define which animations should play during gameplay, the values themselves are never actually seen.

Unused Videos#

The folder arena\movies contains each of the videos associated with the songs' internal genres, as well as certain venues. However, there are several videos that don't seem to appear at all, as follows:

70s_1.ipu is a video associated with songs that have the internal genre 70s. However, it appears this genre was since "merged" with Dance, and use the movies associated with that genre instead, making it unused.

meta256.ipu is a generic video not associated with any genre. It is seen in some prerelease footage of the game, as well as the July 2003 prototype.

rock_1.ipu and rock_2.ipu are unused variations of rock1.ipu and rock2.ipu, which are associated with the songs that have the internal genre Rock. Compared to the used versions, the unused ones have a dotted effect in the outlines that zoom in.

superstartv_1.ipu is an unused video associated with the Superstar TV venue. While it can be seen in a screenshot seen in the back of the game's box, it doesn't seem to appear in-game.

Debug Display#

Use the code below to display parameters on screen, which includes a memory availability meter, as well as camera, time, and animation values, at all times. This code applies only to the American release of the game.

20270280 00000001

Unused Cheats#

The following cheats are defined by config\gen\kara.dtb, and could be activated during gameplay, but they don't work anymore.

There are also several cheats which would have required a keyboard to be used.

References#