Rayman first hit the Atari Jaguar in September 1995 before being ported to the Saturn with slightly rebalanced gameplay and a superior Red Book soundtrack for a November release. The game received very positive reviews and went on to sell buckets of copies, becoming UbiSoft’s very first bona fide worldwide hit. A colorful platformer, the game is charming, whimsical, and very difficult — but in a good way.
The evil Mr. Dark has captured the Great Protoon and imprisoned the many Electoons across six worlds featuring several levels each. Rayman, our limbless hero, must traverse these levels in search of the many Electoons before the final confrontation with Mr. Dark himself. Luckily, he has help along the way — Betilla the Fairy appears at points to grant Rayman various powers, such as a flying fist, the ability to grab ledges, and the power to swing from floating O-rings.
Taking full advantage of 32 bits of processing power (64 bits in the Jaguar’s case… do the math!) the game displays wonderful colors, stylish characters, sweeping music, and cheesy cartoon sound effects. Rayman’s difficulty comes from needing lightning-quick reflexes to negotiate the tricky levels, and while many a gamer has complained that the game is quite brutal, it is by no means unbeatable. Completing it is very satisfying.
2D platformers were the staple of the 16-bit generation, and whilst Rayman doesn’t break any new ground from a design perspective, it takes full advantage of the hardware’s audiovisual capabilities so that it would never be mistaken for a 16-bit title. With great graphics, excellent music, challenging gameplay and high worldwide sales… what’s not to love about Rayman?
Back in 1997, Rayman, Croc, Pandemonium!, Gex, Croc alongside Tryrush Deppy and more were really cool, I remember finishing Rayman at the time, I was about 11yo.
I find it interesting people saying it’s a very hard game, it’s indeed one of those you have to stick with it to progress further.
Thinking of it now, isn’t it curious that a game by a French company has Japanese gameplay qualities to it? I mean, it’s not an Euro platformer, with drops falling to damage/kill you, tons of collectibles randomly put into the stages and whacky overall stage design.
Rayman remembers me almost like a Sega arcade gameplay style, where it delivers on accurate gameplay, akin to Shadow Dancer and Shinobi in many aspects, but without the one hit kills. If the player dies, it’s not the game being unfair. It’s nowhere near NES bonkers hard such as Ninja Gaiden, specially those last two stages, that is bad design.