American Idol on WII

Have you ever played "American Idol" on WII? I did, a couple of weeks ago. Hannah, who is now based in Costa Rica, and Mike, based in the US, were both here recently so we decided to have a mini-reunion. We had dinner at Raffa and Joh's house. They prepared barbecue and pansit and provided drinks, I brought dessert, and Pia and Hannah ordered Pritchon. After a heavy dinner (and watching the American Idol elimination night during "Idol Gives Back" week), we headed to Joh and Raffa's entertainment room where we played American Idol.

The American Idol WII game is basically like videoke, but instead of seeing only the lyrics, you can also see the pitch of each note. The highest score possible for a full song is 100,000. And if you select the American Idol style game where you have auditions, semifinals and weekly eliminations, after each performance, the judges give you very accurate critiques! And with the voices of Randy, Paula, and Simon. It's uncanny really.

It was a really fun night! We were supposed to play 4-5 rounds I think. I did well with "How to save a life" by the Fray during the auditions (all of us except Mike passed LOL). Then I decided to sing Phil Collins' "In the air tonight" thinking I knew the song but apparently I didn't know the phrasing of the verses so I got a dismal score LOL. Hannah started teasing me saying I would get eliminated because of my low score, but for some reason she chooses to sing the Guns N' Roses version of "Knockin' on heaven's door" and does even worse on that song than I did on mine so she gets the lowest score LOL.

Then for some reason we ended up resetting the game so we started a shorter version. This time I sang Soft Cell's "Tainted Love" and I couldn't get the phrasing of the verse again and got another bad score. It was interesting though that in both songs that I bungled up, the judges commented that I started shaky and ended strong - which was pretty darn accurate coz I knew the chorus of both songs but not the verses. Their comments were pretty accurate as well for the other folks.

Other memorable moments:

• Bohemian Rhapsody - Hannah first tried it out, then Raffa and I did it as a duet, and we didn't score well on either occasion LOL. I'm still trying to figure out which voice is being used during the bridge (or well you know that part that goes "I see a silhouetto of a man, Scaramouch...") coz we kept getting scored poorly while singing that part.
• Joh getting a perfect score! Apparently, "My heart will go on" is the easiest song to get a high or even perfect score with, as everyone who tried singing that song did extremely well with it. That also wasn't Joh's first time to score a clean 100 thousand on it. Way to go Joh!
• I scored 97,000+ on "Irreplaceable"! The phrasing of this song is tricky, but I've listened to it so many times already that I know how the verses are sung. So I ended up getting my highest score of the night on that song. I also got 96,000+ from Fuel's "Hemorrhage" although my score would have been higher if I didn't end up singing Chris Daughtry's version - he sings at a higher key in the end - and so I missed the pitch completely for a few seconds LOL. I also got 90,000+ on "I don't wanna miss a thing" and it could also have been higher if my throat wasn't tired and dry by then coz I couldn't sing some of the really high notes in the end anymore LOL.
• There's a battle game option in American Idol where two people sing the same song at the same time. Whoever gets a higher score wins. This was so funny, especially when Pia and Hannah had their show-downs.

All in all it was a great night, and when we left, apparently Joh and Raffa kept on singing LOL. Too bad that both Mike and Hannah aren't here in Manila anymore. It would certainly be great if we could have played that game again. :)