Braving the Birmingham Bolt
On February 22nd, Rare dispatched the athletic equivalent of a hardcore SWAT team to the Birmingham National Indoor Arena. The reason for this was the Birmingham Bolt, a charity sporting event for UK Midlands businesses to compete and raise money for charity. With us having a couple of Kinect Sports games under our belts, it seemed rude not to.
Ex-Olympic 400m and relay runner Daniel Caines was on hand to commentate: no pressure then. But one hotly contested afternoon later, as the event drew to a close and the smoke cleared in and around the charity Thunderdome, the Rare squad had left their mark by finishing third overall. Contributing to this result was the long jump gold claimed by our man Simon, along with Eoin’s second place in the 400 metres. Not half bad!
Congratulations and thanks to all who took part, both for the result and the money raised. The full entry fee went to The Birmingham Civic Society’s Next Generation Awards, which works with over 13,000 young people in Birmingham to help them make a positive contribution to the city. Meanwhile all sponsorship money raised by Rare (and boosted by Microsoft) goes to our nominated charity for this event, Cancer Research UK.
Enjoy the pics of our dashing team in action. Or loitering around, or posing… but mainly in action.
Feb 2012
Mini-Scribes: February 23, 2012
Mini-Scribes, coming and going
I watch you look at me, watch my fever growing
I know just where I am…
Q: How about doing a ice sledge hockey game or even a ice hockey game cause that would be cool to play and there’s lots of hockey fans around the world you’d make a profit
Cheers
Nige
A: Come on now, Nige. Ice sledge hockey isn’t even a real thing. And that’s because, whatever it is, it sounds TOO GOOD to be a real thing. Oh wait – just looked it up and it’s a real thing.
Well, a lot of sports were prototyped for both Kinect Sports and Season Two, and along with popularity and demand, viability of mechanics was another major factor in deciding which ones made it through to the dozen released to date. It’s entirely possible that hockey or ice hockey were in the mix somewhere. As you say, they’re a bit more popular than bog snorkelling or chess boxing. So you never know.
PS Chess boxing. CHESS BOXING. My new favourite thing.
Q: Dear Scribes, or to whom it may concern bothering to answer…
I’ll make this short and simple. Who would win in a fight. Ortho or Navi?
Kathryn Hadley
A: Chris from the Kameo design team ponders and responds, with admirable impartiality:
”You’d think Navi would win on account of having hands. But the Wotnot Book can fly and would just clamp shut on her.”
Feb 2012
January Social Jamboree
Yeah, let’s get rid of the ‘Twitbook’ tag. It was vaguely amusing the first time. Now, as the white-hot ash begins to settle in the aftermath of January’s robot apocalypse, we… oh right, they decided not to bother in the end. Worth mentioning for consistency though.
January! Month of Midnight Mountain and some other stuff including DeSean Jackson’s End Zone Dance Off, Adrian Lewis’ Season Two Darts drubbing, a Kinect Rose Parade float, a Dueling Banjos charity marathon and a bunch of contract and permanent jobs added to the Rare Careers page. People also seemed to be enjoying the Maple Lakes Golf Pack, posted handy footage of the Midnight Mountain Ski Pack and let the excitement of a hole-in-one get to them a little bit. We witnessed the growth of Kinect Sports into the classroom and, less convincingly, the beginning of a grassroots campaign to set up Blazing Banana as the new Ryu. Why not?
Many other upstanding citizens from the Rare back catalogue stuck their heads over the parapet during January, most notably in Famitsu’s Top 50 Nintendo Games, Game Informer’s GoldenEye Replay and ScrewAttack’s Best Ever Retro Bosses. Rareware Archives apparently found a method of working that didn’t involve stopping to breathe, pumping out Top 5 lists on Party Tracks, Winter Wonderlands, ‘Helpless’ Characters, Motif Melodies, Best DLC and Punishing Bosses.
Less directly applicable topics of conversation this month included the fine work of both Bob Holness and Liam Neeson, while in Rare internal developments – the kind you don’t see in press releases and generic corporate reports – the threat of our possibly lethal fridge was nullified while we made a point of showing off our advanced office transition equipment. Then, as always, there was some mail worth sharing. And more mail. And more… and more.
Here on the site, our latest community poll asked how you most regularly play Kinect Sports: Season Two, trusty old single-player coming out on top with 45% of the vote. Local multiplayer and LIVE multiplayer followed, tailed by Challenge Play and Quick Play. Interesting stuff. New poll up now! Which sport has the best activities? Go on, blurt it out, we won’t pass on names to the designers.
Done for another month! And now you’ve only got a week to find your missus/bloke a Valentine’s present so you’d better get on the case. Follow us on Twitter or Facebook (Rare or Kinect Sports) for more relationship advice (please note: no relationship advice actually given and it’s for the best). Let us know how it went down when we see you next month for the full February round-up.
Feb 2012
