A day at Rare

by Paul on Oct 20th, 2010

They say you should never meet your heroes. They’ll tell you that the reality will never match the lofty expectations you’ve spent a lifetime building up in your mind. I’m here to tell you that this little maxim is not true if our trip to Rare last week was anything to go by. You’ll no doubt be sick of hearing it by now but we were lucky enough to be invited to a special event hosted by Rare last weekend where they held a Kinect Sports Day up at their Twycross studios; a chance for the fan site community to play the game at their leisure and to speak to the guys who made the game.

You couldn’t hope to meet a nicer bunch of people, all giving up their free time to report for duty at the weekend to play through and demonstrate a game they are no doubt sick to the back teeth of by now. Nothing was too much trouble; want a drink? Help yourself to the fridge full up with cans of almost every type of fizzy drink you can imagine. Want something to eat? How about a huge selection of food including bite-size burgers, pizzas, fish and chips wrapped up in newspaper just like the good old days – all beautifully presented – and more cakes than is healthy when playing a game like Kinect Sports. Got a question that you’re sure will make you look like a stupid noob? No problem, there’s no hint of mockery as a calm and patient response is given (my thanks to Rare devs Tom and Dave for that. Yup, I had not one but two stupid questions pop into my head during the day!).

This article is focused on the visit itself; here’s as much detail as I can remember about our day at Rare! You can read about our full impressions of the game in a separate feature coming soon.

The day kicked off with a half seven departure from where we live in south London for the drive up to Twycross, some two and three quarter hours away. It’s a nice drive up and it passed fairly quickly. We had the Viva Pinata and Banjo-Kazooie soundtrack CDs in the car which helped make the time fly by. As you approach Twycross, the turning for Rare’s HQ is a real ‘blink and you miss it’ moment. It’s just off the main road and there’s no signage or clues that this is the main entrance for our favourite developer, just an imposing metal gate. A quick chat with the security guard over the intercom to confirm who we were and that we were allowed in and we’re through the gates and driving up a long and winding path to the main building, passing through some truly magnificent surroundings.

Straight away there’s a pond on your left with a variety of ducks and geese sitting by the roadside and then you look up to see acres and acres of green space and trees. The view is astounding and it must really be a really inspiring and peaceful place to work. And then you see that iconic building. I’ve seen it many times in photographs online but it’s not until you see it in the flesh that the scale of the place can be appreciated. It’s a marvellous building and looks really smart. We continue on following the winding road through the trees until you come round the bend and there is the front reception of the building with lots of car parking bays to your right. We bundled out of the car and up to the front door where we were buzzed in by the guard and Dave, a Rare software dev, was waiting in reception. We signed ourselves in the visitor book and Dave briefly disappeared somewhere to alert the rest of the Rare team of our arrival.

While he was gone we had a chat with the guard; he’s definitely got some amazing stories to tell! The mind boggles about all the things he must know about the company and its games. He obviously couldn’t tell us any specifics but you could tell that he had enough stuff to keep talking all day. He told us some really interesting titbits of info about the huge mural that Nintendo gave to Rare back in 1999. It starts all pixellated at the bottom of the mural before dissolving into a beautifully woven clear image at the top showing storks flying up into the distance with the sunrise as a backdrop and it symbolises Rare’s history developing on the NES (the pixellated base depicting those 8 bit games) up to the current next gen. titles it is working on.

We also used this time to peek into the glass cabinets in the reception area that are absolutely crammed to bursting with Rare merchandise and memorabilia. What would I give to get into those and grab few things? I’m sure I was doing a Homer Simpson-style drool at one point. Dave then returned and took us through to Rare’s canteen where the proper introductions would take place. He sat down with us to confirm our names on the register and then we had a quick chat about where we were from and the site we worked for and his role at Rare and his work on Kinect Sports.

It was at this point that everyone else started to arrive. Dave had to nip off to help with getting people checked off on the list and pretty soon the room was full of people all representing different fan sites. It was at this point that Mike Wilson, Rare’s website producer, was able to pop over and say hello. We’ve spoken to Mike many times via e-mail and it was nice to actually finally meet him and speak in person. He gave us a bit of a more detailed timetable for the day and then got up to formally introduce the event. Rare had set up a Xbox 360 / Kinect kit in the canteen in front of a large projection screen and kicked off the day by quickly running through the six main events so that we had a vague idea of how to play.

Each event was demoed by a member of the Rare team with Ben Talbot, Rare’s Community Manager, on the mic talking us through it. For each event they had a volunteer from the assembled crowd to get up and have a go. Cue many embarrassed faces as these guys were made to sprint on the spot, jump and chuck imaginary javelins in front of everyone! Good fun and it was a great way of introducing the day. Demo done, we were then told that a load of consoles had been set up down the hall and were free to play, with Rare staff on hand to answer any questions, for the next hour or so. Lots of excited rushing for the door followed!

On the way out we were able to collar Ben and say hello to him as well. As with Mike we had spoken with Ben via e-mail many times and it was great to be able to meet, say hello and speak to each other properly. Anyway, we were taken through to a huge room with at least eight Xbox 360 consoles all set up in individual booths with Kinect Sports ready to go on all of them. I totally geeked out when, bumping into Mike in this room, he told me it was the old motion capture suite that was converted some time back into a testing facility for Kinect. This room was where they did all the motion capture for Perfect Dark! I swear the grin on my face must’ve reached from ear to ear when I realised what room we were in! Anyway, motion capture is sooooo 90s and the room got stripped out and converted some time ago. Motion capture, I am reliably informed, is now all out-sourced to other companies.

It was at this point that I had one of the highlights of the day take place; I got talking to none other than the legend that is Leigh Loveday. We had a nice chat and it was a real honour to meet him. In fact I think I embarrassed myself a little too much while describing what an honour and pleasure it was to meet him. I got into real fanboy mode! Anyway, he’s a really nice guy and I’m so chuffed to have met the man who I’ve written to so many times in the past, hoping to get my letters to appear on the Scribes page.

Anyway, we then spent the next hour with Dave as our guide playing on Kinect Sports and getting to grips with the different events plus the mini-games in the Party Mode. I’m going to gloss over this bit as my thoughts on the game will be in a separate feature. However, I will say that I had seriously underestimated Kinect Sports before this event. It is great fun and it looks amazing graphically. The Kinect device is also a really smart piece of kit and it works really well. In the time I had I was blown away by the accuracy of the device and for the potential it holds. Nintendo should be seriously concerned because Kinect blows the Wiimote out of the water in terms of mimicking your movements. I haven’t tried Sony’s Move so I am unable to comment on how that compares but I’m in no hurry to, such is my pleasure with how Kinect performed. Who needs Move after this? Sure there’s the odd moment where Kinect loses you or does funny things but no more than what I have experienced on the Wii.

After an hour or so it was time for lunch and all that sumptuous food I mentioned at the beginning of this feature; really tasty and Rare deserve a huge thank you for laying on such a nice spread for us. During lunch they had the ‘Making of the Kinect Sports Theme Tune’ video playing on the projector screen with Robin Beanland playing on his flumpet. Lo and behold the man himself entered the canteen to grab a bite to eat as he had kindly popped in to see how the event was going. A bit later on we would be able to grab a quick interview with him; look out for that elsewhere on the site soon.

After lunch it was back into the playing area for more time with the game but this time we had been arranged into teams and would take part in a special mini Olympics. The winners of this would go on to play the Rare staff who made the game with the promise of a very special prize! It was during this afternoon that the true extent of the potential of the game could be seen. Great fun, and it really got everyone involved. Our team didn’t win although it was a close-run thing by all accounts, but the eventual winning team went on to suffer only a narrow defeat at the hands of the Rare staff. The special prize was signed artwork plus a copy of the game each; I was very jealous of them! We also had a very special visitor; Rapid Robot, one of the Kinect Sports Party Play mascots, made a grand entrance with a cake that was too good to eat! It was in the shape of a Xbox 360 console with miniature mascots made out of icing on top of it. When they started carving it up I could have cried. I’m glad I got a photo of it before the knife was dug into it.

This brought the day to a close and it was time to set off. We said our thanks and goodbyes and were all given a Rare t-shirt as a parting gift. I took a medium size thinking that large would be … well, too large but surprise surprise it’s too small for me. Typical … but it doesn’t matter; I have a Rare t-shirt and that’s all that matters! After that there was nothing left but to bid farewell to everyone and make our way back to the car. It was the end of a fantastic day. I wish we could have stayed longer but sadly we had the journey home to deal with (we got in about half seven I think – damn traffic on the M25!). We’ve said it to the guys up there a thousand times since the event but once more won’t hurt; thank you so much for a brilliant day. You’ve made a couple of Rare fans truly happy!

Categories: Features, Special Features