Top 5 YouTube Rare Remixes
Ordinarily, remixes are confined to sweaty provincial nightclubs or motivational dance compilations beloved by people who exercise. Fortunately, YouTube is also a goldmine of fan-made rejigs of classic console tuneage. So, inspired by the Electro Fizz, Wobble Dub and Big Beat Bonanza remixes included on the Kinect Sports Eyes on the Prize 12″ single, not to mention talented medley-making, tune-reworking YouTube folk like this fellow, we invite you to get your groove on with a sick selection of Rare-inspired sounds. Brap! Brap! Etc.
TOP 5 YOUTUBE RARE REMIXES
According to… Neal Clark
1. B-K: Rusty Bucket Bay (Dubstep Remix)
Ah, dubstep… how far your signature brand of electro gloom-wobble has spread. So much so, that even the likes of Britney and, er… Jinjos are now getting in on the act? As they (apparently) say in dubstep circles, ‘wait for the drop’.
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
Top 5 Japanese Rare Boxart Variants
Sounds a bit niche, doesn’t it? This was originally set to be a straight Top 5 boxart list, but some of the territorial variations uncovered along the way demanded their own spotlight. There’s no clear-cut policy: sometimes the whole world shares the artwork, sometimes Europe and North America differ, sometimes Japan goes its own way. So from those we stumbled across by happy accident to those bigged up by someone involved, let’s have a look at five of the Eastern standouts.
TOP 5 JAPANESE RARE BOXART VARIANTS
According to… Leigh Loveday
1. Perfect Dark
Probably the most recognisable one on this list, and not just because it was desktop wallpaper on the site for a while due to popular demand. A very different approach to the eventual US and European covers (which in themselves were a lot better than some of the initial ideas, we can assure you), reflecting the very different title almost adopted for the Japanese market, Red & Black.
2. Star Fox Adventures
Unusually for Japan, this one swapped out the hand-drawn scene that everyone else got for a montage of rendered artwork, but the restrained colour scheme and lurking SharpClaws for balance rounded out a well-planned composition. Japan was also gifted with some spontaneous comic book frames and bursts of double exclamation marks on the back. “Bad luck!! General.”
3. Viva Piñata: Trouble in Paradise
Cover artwork has tended to be global throughout Rare’s Xbox years, with very few exceptions. This was one of them. The original Viva Piñata retained familiar boxart in Japan, but for the sequel we received a request for something different to the striking rest-of-world version. “The Japanese marketing team liked the idea of showing it in the style of a boardgame, as it’s all about tactics,” recalls the game’s producer Adam Park.
Jul 2011
Top 5 Rare Characters Who Improved With Age
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Many returning characters, in both lead and support roles, have ambled in and out of Rare franchises over the years. Sometimes their appearance remains the same, sometimes they change drastically; sometimes they have the same MO as always, sometimes they snap and go a bit mental. We’ve picked out some returnees who grew nicely over time (or shrunk, in one case).
TOP 5 RARE CHARACTERS WHO IMPROVED WITH AGE
According to… Ben Talbot
1. Sabrewulf
Being stricken with lycanthropy isn’t all bad. Sure, you might end up accidentally devouring your own family in a fit of bloodlust, but on the plus side you get a really hairy back (perfect for the winter), plus some kick-ass fighting skills.
Despite having the same name, Killer Instinct’s furry blue bad boy isn’t the same beast who appeared in the 1984 Speccy classic Sabre Wulf. He’s actually the cursed alter-ego of Count Von Sabrewulf, an unfortunately named man who probably should have seen it coming.
The scoundrels at Ultratech tempted him into entering the first Killer Instinct tournament with the offer of a possible cure, but only if he won… unfortunately, he ended up being beaten half to death and experimented on to the point of madness. In between this and Orchid accidentally sending everyone back in time in Killer Instinct 2, Ultratech somehow had time to augment him with two cybernetic arms, giving him an approximately 4% better chance of winning. At the end of the saga, he ended up drinking some strange blue gunk that didn’t really do anything. Some people are just born unlucky. Still, the arms did look pretty cool.
Top insider fact: he was also called Cyberwulf for a while, which was probably where the whole idea came from.
2. Dr. Caroll
Sabrewulf might have had both arms hijacked, but that’s nothing compared to Dr. Eustace Caroll who lost all his fleshy bits and became a floating laptop.
In Perfect Dark Zero, Dr. Caroll was working aboard dataDyne Corporation’s Trinity Research Platform, using Neurodrive technology to suck all the cool secrets out of people’s heads. This was particularly handy when Jo Dark dropped by, needing to remember some spoilerific secrets that Jack Dark mentioned earlier in the game. Unluckily for the good doctor, he ended up being shot in the stomach and ‘put on ice’ by end boss Zhang Li.
Jun 2011
Top 5 Literal Rare Eggs
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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
Top 5 Homemade Viva Piñata Things
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It’s natural for the game teams at Rare or any other developer to become attached to and evangelical about the games they work on. In the case of Viva Piñata, the team went above and beyond in their efforts to show support for their baby, with of course the odd contribution from PR and Marketing. Let’s recall (or in some cases show for the first time) a handful of their creations…
TOP 5 HOMEMADE VIVA PIÑATA THINGS
According to… James Thomas
1. Piñata pumpkins
There’s a steady hand gone into these. The first Halloween after Viva Piñata‘s release saw a multitude of carved tributes, from all corners of the garden.
I feel they were badly pitched, though. This one was carved just after Pester had destroyed my wife’s pride and joy, her Chewnicorn. I don’t think she was too impressed to see the villain of the piece then immortalised in veg.
Images: Pester Pumpkin lit / unlit
Apr 2011
Top 5 Kinect Sports YouTube Videos
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YouTube is only six years old, but it’s already hard to remember what life was like without it. In that dark age before the online video site launched, we’d never have been able to watch our friends fall over while doing the Long Jump or bowl a perfect game dressed as Spider-Man.
While Kinect Sports might not yet have found its Star Wars Kid or Tron Guy, there are still some brilliant replay videos out there, and this month we’re taking a look at five of the best.
TOP 5 KINECT SPORTS YOUTUBE VIDEOS
According to… Ben Talbot
1. Pin Rush to the Max
When we first downloaded the server stats to put together a high score list, we thought that the leading result for Pin Rush must have been a mistake. As it turns out, drpatazi’s score of 14,270 was totally legit and he’s just an absolute demon of the lanes. We’ve never seen a bowling style quite like it.
Mar 2011
