Avatar Sports was a sports game in development at Rare Ltd. in 2007 / 2008 before Kinect development started. It used an unpublished motion controller that can be compared to the Wii Remote. Little is known about this title apart from the use of Microsoft’s Avatars and the inclusion of tennis. Development was halted when the motion controller was abandoned and first Kinect/Natal prototypes emerged. Rare then started to create their Kinect Sports, released in november 2010.
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Kinect Sports (codenamed Natal Sports) was Rare Ltd. first Kinect title. Development started in late 2008 and fully started in early 2009 when the studio was restructured to fully focus on Kinect Software. It was Rare’s second try to produce a sports title on Xbox 360, their first attempt used an unreleased motion controller, similar to the Wii Remote, which remained unpublished.
Thanks to Moren for the contribution!
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In the development of Wii Sports, Nintendo tried to use Mario characters in place of the Miis, but found out that people liked the simple Mii style better. The current Mii design is based on traditional Japanese wooden dolls (known as “Kokeshi”). Before the final design, there was also different one. Courts looked very different than beta and final release with the wii package! So turn on your wii with wii sports inserted into your wii keep this page up in your web browser play tennis then look at the difference!
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