Rayman (video game)

Rayman is a 1995 platform game developed by Ubi Pictures and published by Ubi Soft for MS-DOS, Atari Jaguar, Sega Saturn, and PlayStation. It is the first installment in the Rayman franchise. The player controls Rayman, who must recapture Electoons and the Great Protoon from Mr. Dark. The gameplay involves rescuing Electoons and gaining new abilities throughout the game.

The game was designed by Michel Ancel and produced by Gérard Guillemot. Ancel originally designed Rayman as a teenager with additional contributions by programmer Frédéric Houde and artist Alexandra Steible. Ancel pitched a demo for French software developer Lankhor before being hired at Ubi Soft. In later development, Ubi Soft decided to make the game a launch title for the North American and European releases of the PlayStation as a way to compete with Japanese platform games.

Rayman was critically acclaimed upon release, with praise going towards its visuals and music. Some reviewers warned that the game's aesthetic belied its high difficulty level. The graphics received mixed responses from critics, who wrote that the game was showing off the Atari Jaguar's capabilities. The game has appeared on other systems, including the Game Boy Advance, DSiWare, and mobile devices. Due to its commercial success, the game spawned the Rayman franchise, with its sequel, Rayman 2: The Great Escape, released in 1999.

Gameplay
Rayman is a side-scrolling platform game that displays a two-dimensional graphics engine, incorporating hand-drawn animation and multi-layered worlds with enemies. With the player controlling the titular Rayman, their main objective is to rescue Electoons trapped in cages, with six of them hidden in each of the levels. Throughout the game, Rayman gains new abilities such as the ability to fly, run, and do a "telescopic fist", an ability acquired early in the game that allows him to punch enemies from a distance. Other abilities include a grabbing fist and the ability to hang on platforms.

The completion of each world requires defeating a boss with special abilities at the end of the level. Defeating them allows the player to move on to the next world. After rescuing all of the Electoons in the first five worlds, the player can enter Candy Chateau, where they have to attack Mr. Dark. If the player loses five of their lives, they would need to load their save file or restart the game. Hidden in various levels, the player can interact with The Magician, who can teleport them into secret worlds where they either earn Tings or an extra live, as long as they finish the level in the limited time given.

Plot
The people living in the valley, in Rayman's world, are harmonious thanks to the Great Protoon. However, Mr. Dark steals the Great Protoon to use its power all for himself and spread havoc and chaos, and this causes all the Electoons to scatter over the world. Betilla the Fairy, a guardian of the Great Protoon, battles Mr. Dark to protect the Great Protoon and the Electoons, but unfortunately fails and asks Rayman for help by assigning him the task to rescue the Electoons and defeat Mr. Dark. Betilla frequently interacts with Rayman as needed to give him additional magical powers along his journey.

After he rescues all of the Electoons, Rayman faces Mr. Dark, who attacks with various disorienting spells. Rayman arrives in a hall, where Mr. Dark traps him with walls of fire. At the last moment, the Electoons restore Rayman's ability to punch after Mr. Dark disabled it, with the latter continuing the fight by transforming himself into a hybrid of the bosses previously fought by Rayman. Upon Mr. Dark's defeat, Rayman rescues Betilla and recovers the Great Protoon, thus restoring balance to his world. Rayman then takes a vacation with friends and former enemies.

Conception
Rayman was created by French video game designer Michel Ancel, who has first designed Rayman in the 1980s when he was a teenager as he was learning to draw, compose music, and program in order to follow his dream of making video games. Ancel would later formally revisit his initial designs and begin to work on Rayman with additional contributions to the character's final design by programmer Frédéric Houde and artist Alexandra Steible. During development, he created a demo of the game for French software developer Lankhor.

By 1988, French video game publisher Ubi Soft, founded two years earlier by the five sons of the Guillemot family, had hired around six developers and operated from Montreuil. Ancel was one of Ubi Soft's early hires, having caught the attention of the Guillemot brothers for his animation skills. Yves Guillemot encouraged Ancel to pitch ideas for new games, which led to a meeting between Ancel, Houde, designer Serge Hascoët, and Gérard, Yves, and Michel Guillemot after Ancel and Houde had teamed up and worked on the Rayman concept further. Hascoet recalled the pair presenting a "totally strange" design of a large trombone that the player had to imagine themself inside and an animation system that Ancel had developed for roughly six months, which he praised for its fluidity. Despite being in the research and development stage, Hascoet pushed for the game to enter formal production, and Michel Guillemot agreed to take it on. After Rayman received the greenlight in 1992, Ancel said that "[t]hat's when everything changed."

Michel Guillemot realised that additional staff was needed to see the game through and organised the company accordingly. He also injected money into the project, with Ubi Soft setting aside a budget of 15 million francs. Development then split into two offices, with more automated tasks done in Paris and the artistic work completed by Ancel, Houde, and their team of designers at their own facility outside Montpellier. Founded in 1994 as Ubi Pictures, the studio became Ubisoft Montpellier.

Design
Rayman 's styling was inspired by Celtic, Chinese, and Russian fairy tales as well as Ancel's childhood, having spent a lot of time by rivers, chasing insects, and climbing large trees. When Ancel started work on the game, he began with trees and strange creatures. In the early 1990s, Ancel became interested in the computer graphic technique of ray tracing and rendering tools such as Autodesk 3ds Max. It inspired him to incorporate it into the character animations with 60Hz animation, which Houde said was very impressive at the time when other games used sprites that animate at five frames. This resulted in the designs of Rayman himself, with his name alluding to the aforementioned technique.

Before embarking on the creation of the settings, characters and animations, Steible drew rough models of animations and once the attitudes has been worked on, Steible studied each of the attitudes in its smallest details for It to be scanned and reworked on a computer. Ancel originally envisioned the game's story to involve Jimmy, a human boy who creates an imaginary online world named Hereitscool. After it becomes infected with a computer virus, Jimmy travels into the world and inhabits the body of his in-game avatar, Rayman, to defeat the virus. The idea was scrapped during later development. Ancel defined the main idea of the game he wants to create as "a colourful platform game, breathtaking graphics, concrete animations, fantasy, humour and, above all, great playability." During development, four people worked on each world, the levels of the game, and the synchronisation of Rayman's attitudes. Rayman later became the game that its designers had envisioned, which they considered a success.

Completion
Ancel initially produced Rayman for the Atari ST and worked alone on every aspect of the game. Following Houde's arrival on the project, Ancel noticed that public interest in the system had started to wane and looked to the Super NES CD-ROM, a CD peripheral for the 16-bit Super Nintendo Entertainment System. However, in 1993, Nintendo cancelled the system before its hardware was produced. Ancel and Houde ruled out a release for the cartridge-based SNES game, doubting its ability to handle the large amount of information they wanted to incorporate into the game. The pair switched their focus towards newer and more powerful consoles, cancelling the SNES version of the game. This led to the decision to produce Rayman for the Atari Jaguar, a console that the team felt could handle the graphics they wanted. In late 1994, magazine advertisements announced the game as a Jaguar exclusive title. Between 1993–1994, Rayman was originally submitted to Apogee Software by Ancel; however, the publisher rejected it as the game was still in early development. During later development, Sony announced the PlayStation, and the team decided to port the game to the PlayStation and Sega Saturn due to its better 2D capabilities. Ancel noted that "the thing that has not changed in video games is the way that it is changing all the time", as he remember working on the game for the Atari Jaguar when the PlayStation was announced which he indicates that "[e]very year there is something new arriving - a new console, a new market" and developers have to rush to adapt.

Ubi Soft decided to also make Rayman a launch title for the North American and European releases of the PlayStation. Yves Guillemot noted that the PlayStation version of Rayman is a way of "beat[ing] Japan on platforming games" by releasing it simultaneously with a new and powerful system. Ancel recalled that the number of developers working on the game began to increase. Later in development, a version for the Sega Saturn was produced. Versions for the 32X and 3DO were also announced but were never released. In October 2016, an early build of the prototype for the Super Nintendo Entertainment System, which had been considered lost, was rediscovered by Ancel, who posted pictures of it on Instagram. On 3 July 2017, developer and programmer Omar Cornut released the build online with Ancel's permission.

Reception
By the end of 1995, 400,000 copies of Rayman had been sold in Europe. It has sold 900,000 copies worldwide after two years of release. In 2006, the game would become the best-selling PlayStation game in the United Kingdom, as Eurogamer felt it was "no shame in admitting" that it was an acclaimed platformer. According to Gamasutra, Rayman Advance's sales neared 600,000 units during the first half of the 2001–2002 fiscal year alone and then reached 770,000 copies by the end of March 2002.

Rayman was critically acclaimed upon release, with reviewers praising its animation, atmosphere, and soundtrack. Tommy Glide of GamePro described the game as one of the best for the Atari Jaguar to date and commended it as a showcase of the console's capabilities, but considered it to be inferior to the PlayStation version. He also appreciated the precise controls on account of the constant jumping, ducking, and dodging involved in the gameplay. Captain Squideo, also of GamePro, commented that the PlayStation version was a "dazzling delight" and proclaimed it to be one of the most visually appealing games yet. Next Generation, though noting a lack of original gameplay elements, agreed that the game separated itself from many other platform games and had a true sense of depth and playability. Entertainment Weekly writer Bob Strauss felt that the game may be the one that "ennobles the adolescent world of video games" and the like of Disney animated films like Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs. Strauss also stated that the game is a must-have for those with a fifth-generation video game console.

Many reviewers have commented on the game's difficult gameplay despite the innocent visual presentation of the game. Electronic Gaming Monthly assessed that the Atari Jaguar version was an outstanding platformer on its own terms but paled against the PlayStation version due to the lower audio quality and slow responsiveness of the controls. Sam Hickman of Sega Saturn Magazine criticised the Sega Saturn version because he felt that the game designers decided to create too many levels of the same gameplay and then tried to hide them by adding weapons and making some of the levels really difficult. Hickman stated that if a person were watching someone else play the game, they could easily be tricked into thinking this was the best game for the Sega Saturn for a while. However, its lack of interest and excitement led the game to be "plain irritating and damned difficult."

Reviewers wrote mixed reviews of the game's graphics. GameSpot writer Jeff Sengstack compared the game to Donkey Kong Country or Pitfall! and considered it to feature "wonderfully clever gaming elements, engaging and humorous characters, terrific music, and heaps of whimsy", although he faulted the lack of frequent save points. GamePro writer Scary Larry felt it was what players wanted for the Sega Saturn and compared it favourably to previous "hop-n-boppers" Bug! and Astal. He noted that while the graphics and music sometimes seem kiddie-oriented, the challenge is oriented towards veteran gamers. He also felt the lush visuals were impeccable and made particular note of the version's between-level effects. Next Generation praised the graphics, solid game speed even on low-end PCs, "multitude of challenges", and charming player character, and said the game made a good change of pace from other PC releases. Next Generation found the Atari Jaguar version impeccable, saying that "[w]ith its vast color palette, detailed sound effects, and overall playability, there is nothing about Rayman for the Jaguar that falls below the mark of excellent."

Legacy
The commercial success of Rayman later spawned a franchise that spawned several sequels, including Rayman 2: The Great Escape (1999), and some of the game's elements would influence Rayman Origins. The game would be ported to the Nintendo DSI and mobile devices. On 29 October 2018, Sony revealed that the game would be one of twenty games on the PlayStation Classic, which was released on 3 December 2018. The titular character Rayman would become one of the most recognizable video game characters and discussions were made about Rayman as the mascot for Atari Jaguar.

Rayman has been ported to the Game Boy Advance as Rayman Advance in 2001. Rayman Advance received mixed reviews. Next Generation stated that "the familiar-yet-solid gameplay remains the same, with Rayman running, jumping, climbing, and punching his way through level after level of lush, colorful environments ranging from a jungle and a moonscape to a musically-themed wonderland. The sound and controls are solid, and the game's peculiar personality remains intact." Eurogamer writer Martin Taylor praised that the game's visuals are impressive and probably one of the most visually appealing for the Game Boy Advance available at the time.

Rayman also inspired a fan remake under the title Rayman Redemption by Finnish game developer Ryemanni, which features new worlds, levels, and minigames compared to the original. It was hosted in Game Jolt, and the development initially began three years before its release for the Rayman series' 25th anniversary. The game was made as "a reimagination of the original Rayman from 1995." The game received praise from reviewers, with PC Gamer and Kotaku praising that the game had an option for casual and masocore players and considering it a fortune for players traumatised by the original game's difficulty. Kotaku also praised how Ryemanni decided not to just recreate the original game but also added new additions to it.