Karaoke is a strange beast; people happy to sit in a pub listening to extrovert individuals murdering songs by Frank Sinatra, Abba or Gloria Gaynor whilst thinking they sound like the bee's knees.

Since 2004 however, there has been a way of saving the embarrassment of singing in public by investing in the SingStar series for the PS2. The premise behind SingStar is to use the two USB microphones included (the game is available with or without microphones, depending on which versions you've purchased in the past) to sing along to a variety of tunes, following the lyrics and watching your singing abilities, monitored by the speech-bubble equivalent of Simon Cowell. On-screen you see the accompanying music video, the lyrics and a display showing which notes you should be hitting and for how long. There's also your score and a bar that gets fuller the better you sing, scoring you more points if it reaches the end section. You can also earn more points by certain words depicted by a star-filled bar. Basically, the aim of the game is to sing in time and in tune to rack up points and beat your high score or your opposition.

That's been the premise for all the SingStar games and it's no different for the latest, and ninth, entry, subtitled '90s. Featuring thirty tracks from - you guessed it, the Nineties - this game allows you to regress to the decade that quality forgot and cheesy tunes stamped their mark on the music chart. A game like this lives and dies on its choice of music. Past instalments have received mixed receptions with their choice of tracks, but this one is definitely above average. There are the classics of Love Shack by the B52s and Wet Wet Wet's Love Is All Around; the pure cheese of Aqua's Barbie Girl and Baby's Got Back from Sir Mix-A-Lot; and the anthems of Everybody Hurts from REM and Wannabe by the Spice Girls. There's even the inclusion of U Can't Touch This by MC Hammer, which, like several other tracks, replaces the singing score with a rap meter that fills up as you rap with the music, during such sections. And you don't even need any baggy trousers!

However, there are some odd choices. Step by Step from the New Kids on the Block instead of The Right Stuff? Hey Jealousy by Gin Blossoms? Unskinny Bop by Poison? These were obviously included to flesh out the genres of the decade, but I would have preferred some more famous and popular tracks from the Nineties, maybe Culture Beat's Mr. Vain or some Steps, Take That, Shaggy, Will Smith, Robbie Williams, Westlife… the list goes on. I suppose it's down to personal choice and Sony can't cover everything, but some more popular tracks would have been welcome. Some tracks are also difficult to sing because they lack an overarching melody - I'm thinking REM's Everybody Hurts and songs like Meredith Brooks' Bitch, which are only known for their chorus. But for every so-so track there's an Achy Breaky Heart or Lovefool of a song so, overall, what is here is good and this is definitely worth a purchase if you have previous SingStar games.

There are some nice touches on offer. Some lines are 'freestyle' - lines you can speak or sing but aren't included in the score. These include the intro and outro to Aqua's Barbie Girl ("Hi Barbie, Hi Ken…" [If you want to see the funniest ever rendition of this then go to YouTube and type 'x factor chicken' into the search box! Ed]), the long spoken intro to Never Ever by All Saints and a few other places. You can even say the infamous lines from Love Shack: "Tin Roof… Rusted"! There are plenty of options to choose when singing the songs too; you can let the game pick a random song or you can sing along to one of several medleys of songs, where tracks are merged together. There are short versions of all the songs if you can't quite manage the full versions too, and on songs with duets you can pick whose vocals to sing to.

To be honest, it's unlikely that you'll spend much time on the single player, as it is a party game after all, designed to play with your mates - probably with some alcohol involved! Songs that are insufferably hard in single player mode - even with three difficulty options to choose from - become a breeze in multiplayer. Where trying to sing all five parts of Wannabe is a heart attack in waiting in single player, through the three multiplayer options it becomes fun.

Duet splits the song equally between two people. If the song is a duet itself then the vocals are split between you and your friend, but if it's not then the lines are divided up between the players, including singing together at times. At the end your scores are combined to make the final score. Battle allows both players to face-off and sing the whole song - whoever has the most points at the end wins and, like all the modes in the game, is given a breakdown of scores based on tunefulness and accuracy, with an opinion such as 'amateur' or 'hopeful'. The third multiplayer option is Pass the Mic, which allows for a maximum of eight players, split into two teams of four, with the microphone passed to a different member of your team after a certain number of lines. But if receiving scores and feedback isn't good for your confidence - and with the quality of my singing, it's the option I should have preferred - you can sing all songs in one or two player mode without any scoring.

SingStar '90s also has a few other tricks under its belt. All scores are saved in a ranking system, shown after each song and available via the main menu. You can also name the players to keep track of your and your friends' singing. You can even fill up your memory card with saved songs and have the pleasure of listening to your attempts at a later date, although this should carry a health warning on the pack! And for those with the EyeToy camera, you're can see yourself singing as you're playing, if that sort of thing floats your boat!

Graphically the game isn't that impressive, but it does what it needs to do. It's a singing game and doesn't really need fancy graphics. The music videos that accompany the songs are of DVD quality - although you're often too busy watching the lyrics and scoring to notice them - and the game menus have a clean look to them. Scores, lyrics, bars and other on-screen graphics are displayed clearly and never comes across as cluttered. The sound is also fine, with songs delivered in good quality audio, at least before they're slaughtered by the players' "interesting" vocals. For those playing who are up to the standard of early X-Factor contestants, their vocals aren't given a great prominence over the artist's vocals via the television speakers.

One option I would have liked to see is the ability to remove the artist's vocals, so the players who can actually sing get the benefit of it. There are a few other things I'm not keen on, including the difficulty at times of keeping an eye on the lyrics, bars and score at the same time, but this is a problem with the series as a whole, not this particular version. I would also have liked to see some more "cheesy" tracks on the compilation, but again, this all comes down to personal taste!

Whether you enjoy SingStar '90s or not depends on a lot of factors. I enjoyed it because, even though my singing sounds like the murdering of a cat [He just Simon Cowelled himself! Ed.], I like karaoke, enjoyed the songs on the disc and I don't mind making a fool of myself in front of friends with a microphone. If you're quite shy, prefer traditional games or didn't enjoy previous iterations of SingStar then this probably isn't for you. If you've experienced the SingStar series before then you'll know what to expect and for fans of the series, '90s is a worthy addition to the collection that, for another £20, will extend the lifespan of 'SingStar' that little bit more. Again, you can swap discs with this one to move between the songs on this volume and others in the series. Soon SingStar for the PS3 will appear, where songs can be downloaded from the Internet. That will probably seal the fate of this generation of karaoke games but, until then, it's difficult to find a better party game for the PlayStation.

Reviewed by Philip Lickley for AceGamez (All Rights Reserved).