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
Season Two Pre-Launch Publicity Potpourri
With only a fortnight to go (less in some territories), promotion is underway in earnest and the fair name of Kinect Sports: Season Two is surfacing in all kinds of situations. TGS, EG Expo, GAMEfest, GAMES11 and rAge were among the last wave of public gaming events, so let’s rummage like maddened raccoons to unearth what’s been going on since then.
The G3 (Gaming and Giving for Good) fundraisers in the US were a big deal, with actors, musicians and sports stars ranging from Anthony Anderson to Ryan Merriman via Brea Grant and Carol Rodriguez stepping into the G3 Miracle Lounge to field Kinect and Xbox 360 Game With Fame challenges from online competitors in aid of a great cause, Children’s Miracle Network Hospitals. That was a big sentence. Meanwhile, Kinect Sports went solo in GameStop’s own G3 Game With Fame, inviting people to meet and compete against basketball stars Shawn Marion, Andrew Bynum, Brandon Roy and Landry Fields in four different stores from New York to West Hollywood.
CollegeFest 2011 drew a few diverse faces of its own into the Sports fold, while Canada went with football stars for its own official event – the Kinect Sports: Season Two All Star Challenge, still live at the time of writing – which offers entrants a chance to hike over to Toronto and face off against Damon Allen and J.P. Arencibia.
In the UK, Season Two picks up where Kinect Sports left off in sponsoring the latest series of Sky’s knockabout sports quiz A League of Their Own on Friday nights, and also joins the ‘Your Kinect’ Experience in ferrying its fashionable booth from the Metro Centre down to London’s Westfield and the Clothes Show Live in Birmingham, luring in thrilled gamesplayers and alarmed shoppers to get hands-on and “play Kinect in your own personalised room”.
Also in the UK, press and Xbox webmasters recently headed down to The Gathering 2011 preview event in Reading to play games, watch presentations, mingle and compete with the Xbox EMEA team and devs including Rare’s own “Big Fun” and “The Missile”. Far-flung Singapore then got its own Kinect Magic holiday preview event where the likes of Beatrice Chia and Mark Richmond turned up and got stuck in. We’re a bit envious of the Singaporean contingent’s fancy Season Two decor.
The TV ad for Season Two is now circulating online, so you should be seeing that pop up on your actual telly very shortly. In the meantime, let’s not forget that Kinect Sports (original flava) is nominated in the Best Sports category at this year’s Golden Joysticks, or that pre-ordering Season Two through listed retailers in certain territories will get you the Bonus Old School Avatar Pack. Superstylin’.
(Image credits: Casey Rodgers/AP Images for Microsoft, Graeme “The Badness” Boyd)
Oct 2011
Top 5 Kinect Sports YouTube Fails
Since the UK weather has taken a nosedive recently, we’re in desperate need of some cheering up. And what better way of doing that than by compiling a list of Top 5 Kinect Sports Fails? Many thanks to the hundreds of you who’ve uploaded your not-so-finest moments to YouTube and given us plenty of LOLs, ROFLs, LMAOs and whatever other Internet acronyms for mirth are knocking around.
TOP 5 KINECT SPORTS YOUTUBE FAILS
According to… Neal Clark
1. Room to manoeuvre
Kudos to this chap for even attempting to play Kinect Sports in what looks like the least suitable gaming environment ever. And whilst I’m loving his monochromatic tile-work, I suspect a grippier shoe might be in order next time.
Sep 2011
Top 5 Kinect Sports Flickr Photos
If there’s one thing that Kinect Sports is particularly good at, it’s making us look like raving lunatics during enthusiastic bouts of full-body gaming. Unfortunately my flailing limbs have yet to be captured on camera (not a pretty sight), so instead I’ve trawled through the cavernous archives of Flickr to bring you this quintuplet of hilarious mildly amusing photographs of Kinect Sports gamers in action.
TOP 5 KINECT SPORTS FLICKR PHOTOS
According to… Neal Clark
1. Birthday Bruiser
Boxing on Kinect Sports brings out the repressed pugilist in all of us, and never has there been a better example of ruthless determination and steely-eyed focus than demonstrated here by Daniel Piché. Balboa should be quaking in his silky shorts.
TRUE FACT: This photo was taken using a Canon EOS Digital Rebel XTi, which is probably a fancy-pants camera, but sounds more like a supercharged death ray from a post-apocalyptic future.
Photo by Terriko
2. Mind Over Matter
We all know there’s something magical about Kinect Sports, but this really takes the metaphorical biscuit. Unbeknown to his (now headless) fellow gamers, the youngest of this trio seems to have developed mind-bending powers of telekinesis that even Anakin Skywalker would be proud of.
The force is strong with this one.
Photo by wynner3
Aug 2011
Kinect Sports World Records for June
Could it be that the Kinect Sports World Records for May 2011 will stand as the zenith of our sporting skill? Those incredible results have proven stupidly hard to beat, with just a handful toppled over the past few weeks.
Since the release of Kinect Sports last November, the Xbox LIVE community alone has run a mind-blowing 10,682,799 Sprint races, which is roughly the same distance as running around the world 40 times. You could also run to the moon and back twice!
Players have also chucked the Discus more than 33 million times, played more than 14 million games of Boxing and spent more than three million hours Bowling online.
So without further ado, here are the excellent new World Records for June. There may not be many, but they’ve definitely pushed the envelope until it ran off crying. Don’t forget that the Kinect Sports Facebook app can help track your progress if you’re on the hunt for a record, but if you need some friendly advice, check out our YouTube channel for hints and tips straight from the team.
[Cheers Ben, you'll be missed, despite your freakish disapproval of chocolate cake – Leigh & Mike]
Jun 2011
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
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
