Maim that tune: video karaoke at home

Sunday nights during my late teens were spent at Griff's Karaoke in the Ram's Head pub. Whatever song we chose, and it was invariably by Take That, Griff would commend us for giving our all to "a hard song to sing", and we would retreat to our vodka and limes wondering how to improve when we only got one shot a week at karaoke superstardom. With its shared mics and highlighted lyrics, karaoke was supposed to democratise pop, yet for me it generated ritual humiliation down the local boozer.

Fast forward 10 years, and thanks to the video game SingStar I can be the karaoke queen of my living room, if not of a Derbyshire village. SingStar, for the gaming illiterate, is a singalong disc packaged up as a PlayStation video game. Seventeen games – all musical compilations – are available to be played on the PlayStation2 or PlayStation3 games consoles. The concept has been gaining ground since the game's launch in 2004 and PlayStation's parent company Sony has pulled off the mother of all karaoke coups in time for Christmas 2008. Enter Abba: The SingStar Game.

Following the runaway success of the Mamma Mia! film Play-Station convinced Universal Music in Sweden and the band itself to collaborate on an Abba karaoke disc. The result boasts 25 classic Abba tracks to get your tonsils round, including "Mamma Mia", "Waterloo" and "Dancing Queen". When PlayStation want to introduce new acts to SingStar, there is always a risk an artist might be too precious to give the green light to the process of transforming his or her life's work into a game for amateur singers. In the case of Abba, the band was so keen that Benny Andersson even composed the menu music for the game.

Abba's enthusiasm (if we discount the royalties for a moment) may well have been down to the integrity with which SingStar games are presented. There are no generic backing videos featuring Eighties fashion-clad couples or sweeping Swiss landscapes here. Every game is accompanied by the original artist videos; manna from heaven for the pre-MTV generation.

Even better, it is 99 per cent Luddite-proof. SingStar is a two-player game and comes with two microphones. Put the disc in, choose a track, and you're away, scoring points against your opponent for the accuracy of your rendition. The graphics running across the screen in blue and red help you to hold notes for the right length of time and adjust your pitch, and flashing commentary – "cool!", "bad!" – keep up the momentum. Unlike pub karaoke, where you have to join the back of the queue after each performance, with SingStar you can belt out Kate Bush back to back without being booed off stage.

Over the past four years the SingStar phenomenon has developed into much more than a CD packed with catchy tunes. There were karaoke DVDs before SingStar and more have appeared since, but in addition to the 13 million discs sold worldwide, SingStar has an online download service – SingStore – from which more than 2 million tracks have been purchased – and the weird and wonderful My SingStar Online, on to which karaoke fiends can upload videos of themselves performing their favourite tracks, and get in touch with other members of the SingStar community.

If you can't wait until 14 November for the Abba disc, Queen songpacks have just become available on SingStore including "Bohemian Rhapsody", an all-time top karaoke tune.

Creating a competitive singing game out of an emerging karaoke fad has brought gamers to karaoke and wannabe Pop Idols to PlayStation. The original concept had singing at its heart but was set against a fantasy-style animated background, explains Kevin Mason, one of SingStar's designers. It was Mason who came up with the germ of the idea which eventually developed into the game. Over the Christmas holidays in 2000 he found himself wishing there was a group game his grandmother could play which required very little explanation.

This was the birth of "social gaming", which has dragged the hobby down from teenage boys' bedrooms and into the front room. "Once we put in the real artists' videos and made the decision to have two microphones in the box it became very social right from the start," says Mason. This also enabled PlayStation to attract new audiences. For their average game, nine players out of every 10 are male. For SingStar this evens out to a 50/50 male-to-female ratio, and all age groups like the game.

"I think one of the reasons we have been such a success is because it's so simple," says Tamsin Lucas, a senior producer who is giving me a privileged tour around the SingStar HQ in central London. And if I can use it (and I haven't touched a gaming console since my GameBoy died circa 1991), anyone can.

The PlayStation crew make reluctant comparisons with the Nintendo Wii. I have witnessed a granny fight her grandson for a Wii control, and a glance at the videos on My SingStore Online suggests that similar scraps are breaking out over SingStar microphones.

Lucas has been exchanging emails over the upcoming game with Benny from Abba, but the outstanding highlight of the job for the SingStar team is logging on to see what fans are up to on their community website, only available to PlayStation3 users. "For developers, to be able to see people actually playing your game is great," says Lucas. "We can watch them every day and it is usually groups of people playing. It's the kind of game people buy and play with the family, or invite people round to play. When we launched last year there were lots of families around the Christmas tree with dad impersonating Elvis."

In the year since it launched, My SingStar has attracted 37,000 users, of whom 15,000 log in to the platform each month. 75,000 videos have been uploaded with 6.5 million views. The lengths fans have gone to is astounding. For Blondie's "Call Me", one user has coloured his hair fluorescent pink, done his nails and make up in other dayglo tones and performs against a pitch black backdrop. Three scruffy student-types have recreated Supergrass's "Alright" in their kitchen. On The X-Factor they would get their 15 seconds before enduring a mauling from Simon Cowell. On the SingStar forum, which Lucas describes as a MySpace-YouTube hybrid, most comments are complimentary or encouraging, however awful the video.

If anything proves the success of gaming in making the transition from what was seen as a terminally anti-social hobby into an incredibly social event, it was the competition SingStar ran earlier this year, in which the winning karaoke troupe got the chance to perform at the Glastonbury Festival. Maybe Benny can be persuaded to hold a singalong with some of his fans once they have road-tested the new Abba game.

Greatest hits: More noisy toys

Guitar Hero £69.99

The Guitar Hero series is the highest-selling music game franchise on the market. The games use a plastic guitar to simulate playing, with players pushing buttons instead of strumming strings. Coloured notes appear on the television screen, and gamers try to press the corresponding coloured buttons on the guitar. Available on the PlayStation 2, PlayStation 3, Xbox 360 and Wii – over 21 million units have been sold worldwide.

Rock Band £129.99

Developed by Harmonix, the same company behind Guitar Hero, Rock Band re-uses many gameplay elements of its predecessor. The emphasis is more on groups of players, with up to four people using plastic imitation guitar, bass, drums and mic to reproduce songs. The most common mode sees groups form bands and try to rise up through a virtual music world.

Guitar Rockstar £14.99

Taking the air guitar concept in a different direction is Guitar Rockstar. Infra-red rays beam out from a handheld imitation guitar head, allowing gamers to play along to songs by 'strumming' the air. Originally from Japan, Guitar Rockstar was released in Europe this year. The game is significantly cheaper than console equivalents, but only comes with eight pre-programmed songs – far fewer than its rivals.

Wii Music £39.99

Wii Music, a music game exclusive to the console, is set for release in November. Unlike most other games in the genre, it will not feature imitation guitars. The game instead produces sounds corresponding to the motion of players' hands 'playing' (ie strumming and drumming) the controllers. Although Wii Music abandons the competitive element of its rivals, it will feature more than 60 instruments to play around with.

Harry Byford