Calorie Rivals – Second Course
Don’t be deceived by their cute smiles and oh-so-delicious flavours, the Calorie Rivals are sporting titans determined to push you to the limit.
Last week we revealed some original concept designs for Steady Celery, Chunky Chocolate and Peppy Pizza, three of the mascots from the Kinect Sports Calorie Challenge DLC. Now it’s time to dip back into the cobwebby vaults of concept artists Peter Hentze and Ryan Stevenson to see how the remaining three Calorie Rivals went from grocery store to Xbox LIVE Marketplace.
Anyone who knows him will tell you that Peter Hentze was the perfect choice to bring Mighty Milk to life. He isn’t lactose intolerant and he also knows that milk is a great source of nutrition, as long as you don’t foolishly keep it next to the radiator.
Peter explains: “We hit the nail on the head with these guys pretty quickly. In the case of Mighty Milk we just had to add a finishing touch to make him a little more sporty – a nice towelling headband – though we also tried shorts and other sporting items.”
Read More
May 2011
Kinect Sports World Records for May
As we’re quickly reaching 200 days since the release of Kinect Sports, we thought we’d better fiddle with our servers and output the latest world records to find out how good you really are.
Turns out, you’re pretty darn good.
Someone has managed to up the ante and stop an incredible 164 shots in Super Saver (we’ve passed on their details, so they can expect a call from Fabio shortly), while another gamer has destroyed nearly 3,500 Pinvaders in one sitting, thrashing the previous record of 564.
The Kinect Sports Facebook app can help track your progress if you’re on the hunt for a record, but if you need a bit of help, check out our YouTube channel for hints and tips straight from us.
May 2011
Top 5 Literal Rare Eggs
- This content was made available in advance to Rare newsletter subscribers. Sign up here!
Ah, Easter – symbolic of rebirth and new life, with bunnies and little chicks frolicking merrily in the tender rays of a golden sunrise. It’s also the season of sneezy tree pollen death, which made it easier for us to track down Chris and wring this month’s top five out of him.
Having already covered metaphorical Easter eggs in a previous newsletter, we now serve up a holiday-inspired Top Five of actual eggs from Rare’s library. There have been a lot of ovoid candidates over the years, from the disobedient ingredients in Cookie through to the infamous Stop ‘N’ Swop items, but these are some of our favourites.
TOP 5 LITERAL RARE EGGS
According to… Chris Allcock
5. Raptor Eggs – Conker’s Bad Fur Day
Yes, Conker acquires an oversized raptor hatchling during his single-player journey – but the eggs themselves took centre stage in a frantic multiplayer mode. Players could choose to play either as the cunning Ugga Buggas, a tribe of cavemen for whom the eggs represented a healthy breakfast, or as the lumbering but powerful raptor parents who – rather understandably – wanted to return the eggs to their nest.
Each side had a unique play-style; the Uggas put their opposable thumbs to good use fashioning a variety of weapons that gave them the advantage at a distance, but were easily gobbled up by any infuriated raptor when fighting close-quarters. Just think, the entire egg heist and subsequent caveman-slaughter could have been avoided if the Ugga Buggas had bought a few sandwiches, rather than wasting all of their money on a dino-sized frying pan…
May 2011
Calorie Rivals – First Course
How do you give calories a personality? That was the tricky question we posed to the Rare art team, tasking them with the creation of six new mascots for the recently released Kinect Sports Calorie Challenge add-on pack.
Top scribblers Ryan Stevenson and Peter Hentze came up with some great concept designs for the Calorie Rivals, making them into the kind of sporty snacks that look not only fun to beat, but good enough to eat. Here’s a look at some of the original artwork from Ryan’s vault – we’ll rustle up the other three rivals for you soon.
Chunky Chocolate went through at least 11 iterations before reaching his final form. The designs that came after those above were mostly variations on a theme, but had him in a range of different sunglasses. The Chunky Chocolate that made it into the game is a cool customer, but we do miss his tiny head. Bonus insider fact: he was almost called Cheeky Chocolate, and Chocolate Challenger before that.
Ryan really liked the ‘pointy-headed’ look (centre) for Peppy Pizza, but he proved too difficult to animate with the hands coming out of the front. The solution was simple – turn his face upside-down to make a more flexible body shape. As you can see, his twinkly pepperoni eyes have been there from the start.
Steady Celery got a friendlier look as time went on, and went through lots of different clothing styles. The final version ended up being a lot less leafy, though his face was set almost from the start (after Disapproving Celery was ruled out). Bonus insider fact: Steady Celery almost never existed at all, Turbo Tomato was originally pencilled in as the first Calorie Rival…
See also: Calorie Rivals – Second Course
May 2011
Calorie Challenge Guide
Have you been making a meal of the Calorie Challenge DLC? Have you bitten off more than you can chew? Enough with the bad puns. It’s time to show those Calorie Rivals who’s boss, and we’ve got some top tips to help you attack those snacks with relative ease…
Even though the timer continues to count during the menu screens, you don’t have to worry about the time at all. The ‘workout duration’ is just a rough guide – there are actually a fixed number of games for each Rival. When you’re in the menus or waiting to start a game, you can take a rest whenever you want, which is highly recommended for the longer sessions. If you’ve already started a game, you can pause the action by using the standard Kinect Guide gesture or pressing the Guide button on your Xbox 360 controller.
You can easily burn off the most calories in the ‘high intensity’ challenges, which come up every two or three games depending on the Rival. However, it’s a good idea to set yourself an average calorie target for every game you play – making it easier to keep track of how you’re doing. Here’s a list of targets for beating each of the Calorie Rivals.
Steady Celery (4 Games) – 6.5 Cals per game
Blazing Banana (8 Games) – 7.9 Cals per game
Mighty Milk (12 Games) – 7.6 Cals per game
Super Soda (16 Games) – 8 Cals per game
Chunky Chocolate (20 Games) – 8.9 Cals per game
Peppy Pizza (24 Games) – 9.9 Cals per game
May 2011
Mini-Scribes: May 10, 2011
This is what you waited for, no rehearsals, no more stalling, Mini-Scribes
Have it tattooed on the inside of your pink and sleepy eyelids, Mini-Scribes…
Q: Ahoy there! I had some questions about the credits area of Banjo-Kazooie on XBLA. What exactly does ‘Moving N Shaking’ mean? It’s spoken by Gnawty the Beaver in the credits. Does it mean getting rid of the ‘N’ logo at the game startup maybe? Only logical explanation I got. By the way, thank you for releasing B-K, B-T, and PD on XBLA. So awesome! Love the nostalgia!
Derek aka Firebomb 87
A: King of Banjo Mr. G. Mayles says: “‘Moving n’ shaking’ was an ‘hilarious’ category name for the credits, in the same way that the programmers were known as ‘keyboard tappers’ and the artists as ‘scribblers’. ‘Moving n’ shaking’ was the ‘bigwigs that sorted non-game stuff out’ category – like Tim, Joel and so on. The use of the ‘n’ was simply a ‘cool’ replacement for the word ‘and’.”
Q: So here we are again. Another year has (almost) passed and we nostalgic not-so-few are still wishing, nay, DEMANDING, you give us once and for all a decent sequel to Donkey Kong Country, and… wait… whoa. Did that really happen? Well, never mind. Don’t think even for a second that we will stop bugging you. Never. Jamais. Nie. Nunca. Mai. Not until we get GoldenEye 007 on W… what the… did the Lord Of Games get drunk or something?
But still, I have to see the day you loonies decide to release a controller-free, motion sensing, casual-ish, even-those-that-think-Mr. Pants-is-an-underwear-brand-can-play game. Ha. That would be rid– oh. Holy Sabreman, this year was strange. Never saw all this coming. But that isn’t necessarily a bad thing. Isn’t it?
Well, all I have left to say is: A Very Merry Christmas To Everyone! Or whatever you celebrate. Or don’t celebrate. But let it be Very Merry. And of course, Best Wishes and Happy New Year. You people deserve some great Holidays, after all, it’s you who made the formula that endures in these games all these years later. Mine sure will be great. Barrel-blasting, banana-saving, tiki-bashing, nostalgia-reviving great.
Timelessly yours,
The Ghost Of Christmas Future Past (currently stuck in the present)
PS Still waiting for Tomorrow Never Dies though.
A: What’s all this about Christmas? Why are you talking like it’s December when it’s clearly May? Are you insinuating that there’s a months-long backlog of Scribes questions that we dig into at will? Just as well, nobody asks us anything printable any more. Oh, and cheers, by the way. Though of course we can’t take the credit for the hard work done by Retro and Eurocom in this generation. Feel that Christmas spirit! Happy New Year, fellas! You know, for four and a half months ago.
PS Current thinking is to make it a match-three puzzle game. Check back with us in another 14 years.
May 2011
April Twitbook Agitation
What royal wedding? We’ve had far more important things to keep us occupied over the last few weeks, but all the same we won’t say no to the free day off, cheers. It’s the Rare social media round-up for the inappropriately summery month of April 2011!
In between all the public holidays thrown at us with no regard for weather or workload, we managed to squeeze in discussion of subjects including brand new DLC pack Calorie Challenge, a successful Guinness World Record attempt and the gathering of Kinect Sports Superstars that kicked it off. Meanwhile, Rare Sports bigwigs Shin and Scott sat down to talk shop with GamesTM and GI.biz respectively.
Rare classics from out of the ’90s saw a nice little resurgence in April as the XBLA versions of Perfect Dark and Banjo-Kazooie were both treated to a half-price run. As it turns out, these two and Banjo sequel Tooie are all still riding high in the Top Rated XBLA list. Tidy. We even fielded a couple of maverick candidates in GamesRadar’s 100 best games, while other list appearances were linked by a food theme: eggs and cheese for starters. Ha ha, starters. Do you… never mind.
Surrounding all this was the usual horseplay that (for better or worse) forms the cement of our social media presence, addressing such hot topics as Skynet, biscuits and Kinect Sports lookalikes. We persisted with misuse of Twitter tags, supplied pictures of amphibians and fruit by popular demand (sort of) and got saddled with more correspondence that we felt obliged to share.
For the full sustained daily effect rather than a subjective scattershot selection box, keep up with us on Twitter and Facebook (where Kinect Sports has its own profile if that’s all you’re after, you vultures). Now back to your regularly scheduled programming.
May 2011
