Good old May, inspirational last full month of spring. That’s why there are so many characters, songs and cultural items named after it, like Nuts in May, Maggie May, Peter Parker’s Aunt May, Brian May and Devil May Cry. Is that good enough for an intro? No? It’s all you’re getting.

So what was heating up the Rare sociosphere throughout May 2012? Now you’re asking. Besides the All Access Pass, Develop award nod, PALA participation and Game My Summer promotion with its Candy Sports game and laser-bright custom consoles, Kinect Sports: Season Two also filled up our latest subscriber newsletter with that indefatigable DLC catalogue, while YouTube highlights included 20 minutes of Brazilian Quick Play mascot grudge match action and the winning, if slightly unsettling, tactics of Coach Ted. The original Kinect Sports also resurfaced not only in the Xbox 360 Celebration Pack but in spirit on Britain’s Got Talent, apparently.

The ’90s came bouncing back in many disparate ways: a soothing DKC remix as a backdrop to Marty from 1UP’s efforts to convince his colleagues that DKC was better than SMB; GoldenEye-era Bond showing up in a multi-game instakill re-enactment as seen on Game Informer; Spike from Blast Corps making an unlikely VO ‘comeback’; a Banjo-Kazooie fan blog stuffed with arty tributes; and a cuss-fest Jimquisition piece on Viva Piñata being the best-looking game of a generation. Alright, that’s not from the ’90s. It fits better in this paragraph though.

List features came in thick and fast from Rare Gamer and the newly rebranded RFDB, with Top 5 Terrors of the Deep, Oddball Sports, Doomed Cruises, Stubborn and Pushover Bosses, Rare DJs and Pointless Collectibles alongside timely Top 7 lists of Rare Mothers, Veterans and Villains (challenged by Twitter-based Ultimate loyalists, who probably appreciated this dusty bit of fanart more than most). Other subjects touched upon, collided with and tripped over: Fable Heroes! Tweet milestones! Haiku reviews! Blooding knuckles! Loud honeycombs! Social media gold.

And finally, the irregular Community poll results: according to our vertical slice of the collective internets, the Season Two sport with the finest set of activities (pre-Challenge Pack #2) is Golf, after a late surge put it way ahead of Tennis with 33% of the vote compared to Tennis’ 26%. Coming in behind were Baseball, Darts, American Football and Skiing. People obviously enjoy a bit of Ocean Driver – even after we took the mascots off the targets so you couldn’t drown them. Get behind your favourite add-on pack in the new poll!

Goodbye, then, to May with its thoughtful double bill of British bank holidays, at least when there’s not a Jubilee on. To see the events of June occur in real-time like Jack Bauer’s life but with less terrorism and stabbing, stalk us on Twitter or Facebook (at Rare or Kinect Sports). 58… 59… 00.