Some ten years before Rayman 2, the French artist Michel Ancel was playing with an animation on his Atari ST. The character he drew had big eyes and floppy ears, but no arms, no legs and no neck: his hands and feet simply hung in the air where the limbs should have joined them. Ancel sent the demo to Ubi Soft, which liked it enough to bring him in-house, and some years later the drawing became Rayman, Ubi Soft’s first big hit. The missing limbs turned into the game’s mechanics. Rayman’s fist flies off across the screen to hit things, and his hair spins like a helicopter blade to slow his fall.
Fast facts
- Creator: Michel Ancel.
- Developer and publisher: Ubi Soft, France.
- Released: 1995 for the Atari Jaguar, the PlayStation and the Saturn, and for the PC soon after.
- Price in Britain: £39.99 to £44.99 on the PlayStation.
- Sales: about four million copies by 1999, according to Edge.
- Sequels: Rayman 2: The Great Escape (1999), Rayman 3: Hoodlum Havoc (2003), Rayman Raving Rabbids (2006), Rayman Origins (2011), Rayman Legends (2013).
The first game
Rayman’s world is kept in balance by the Great Protoon until the evil Mr Dark steals it. The tiny Electoons that circled it are scattered and locked in cages, and Rayman has to free them. Computer and Video Games’ Paul Davies explained the catch: each location hides six cages, many of them out of reach until the fairy Betilla grants Rayman a new ability, and only when every Electoon in the first five worlds is free does he get into Mr Dark’s Candy Chateau. Rayman starts with very little. The magazine’s introduction called him a hero “incapable of doing anything remotely special”, and the powers came one at a time: the telescopic fist, “a reach greater than Frank Bruno”, then hands that could grip a ledge and the helicopter hair.
Edge previewed the Jaguar version in October 1994 as that console’s flagship platform game, in 24-bit colour on a 16-megabit cartridge. When it arrived on the 32-bit consoles in the autumn of 1995 reviewers agreed about the look. Computer and Video Games called it “a veritable visual feast” and “superb on Saturn and PlayStation. Cool on Jaguar too.” The Official UK PlayStation Magazine thought it would “probably go down in the history books as the brightest platform game ever”.
They disagreed about the rest. Computer and Video Games found it “a cutesy platform game, but unfortunately it’s not one with a difference: just a jazzed up 16-bit title”, though “a very big game”. The Official UK PlayStation Magazine called it “one of the toughest PlayStation platformers” and complained that Rayman “laboriously waddles” instead of running, with controls that felt unresponsive and little room for error: “There’s a difference between a game being difficult in an enjoyable way and being just plain aggravating.” The difficulty stuck to the game’s reputation.
It sold anyway. By 1999 Edge reckoned that Rayman had “made its way into around four million homes worldwide”, and in 2000 it noted that the PlayStation version, though “not well regarded for its innovation or gameplay”, was “one of the first games to go Platinum”, Sony’s range of reissues for its best sellers.
Into 3D
Ubi Soft took Rayman into three dimensions for Rayman 2: The Great Escape (1999); Nintendo Power previewed the Nintendo 64 version in February 1999, introducing “the limbless star of Ubi Soft Entertainment’s new flagship game”. Edge visited Ancel while it was being finished and found him overseeing the design “from a cramped townhouse office in Montpellier” with no air conditioning. Ancel talked about stories rather than technology. He wanted to keep a core team of no more than 30 people, to get back “that good feeling” of a project made by a handful of people, while admitting that an ambitious, Zelda-like game needed more. Rayman 3: Hoodlum Havoc, announced in 2002 as one of Ubi Soft’s flagship PlayStation 2 games, followed in 2003.
The Rabbids
In 2006 the series changed direction. Rayman Raving Rabbids, from Ubisoft Montpellier, was a launch game for Nintendo’s Wii and also came out on the PlayStation 2. Rayman was captured by an invading race of “cruel idiot bunnies” and forced to play their games. Edge noted that the series had dropped its platforming entirely for a collection of motion-controlled minigames, and that the claim of more than 70 of them was “slightly disingenuous” because many repeated. It liked the rabbits, “a triumph of a collective dark imagination”, more than the game. The rabbits outlived the format and went on without Rayman, eventually meeting Nintendo’s Mario in Ubisoft’s Mario + Rabbids.
Origins and Legends
Rayman came back to 2D in Rayman Origins (2011), made by Ubisoft Montpellier with Ancel. Edge called it “the first proper Rayman game in six years”, “a bounding, joyful and unapologetically old-school 2D platformer”, and admired its “lavish, painterly look”. Up to four people could play together, dropping in and out at will.
The look came from a new engine. UbiArt Framework, Edge reported in 2013, was originally built for Rayman Origins, partly funded by the French government as a contribution to the arts, and let an artist’s drawing move in the game within minutes, with the computer working out collision from the level art. Ubisoft also used it for Valiant Hearts: The Great War.
Rayman Legends (2013) was planned as a Wii U exclusive. Shortly before its planned release Ubisoft delayed it by six months to release it on other consoles as well, even though, Edge reported, the Wii U version was already finished. “Fans are furious, and so are the devs — series creator Michel Ancel included.” It was rescheduled for September 2013.
After Ancel
In September 2020 Ubisoft announced that Ancel had “decided to stop working in video games in order to focus on other personal projects”. Ancel’s own announcement said: “After more than 30 years, I’ve decided to stop working on video games and fully focus on my second passion: Wild Life!” He left to run a wildlife sanctuary in France, and the Montpellier studio carried on with his unfinished Beyond Good & Evil 2.
Sources
- Edge issue 13, October 1994, p. 37: Jaguar preview (24-bit colour, 16 Mbits, publisher Ubi Soft, developer in-house).
- Paul Davies, review of Rayman, Computer and Video Games issue 168, November 1995, pp. 34–35 (the story, the Electoons and Betilla, the abilities, the five worlds and the Candy Chateau, the verdicts).
- Official UK PlayStation Magazine issue 1, November 1995, pp. 84–85: review (price, Rayman’s missing limbs, the fist and hair, difficulty, the lack of a run).
- PC Zone issue 34, January 1996, p. 15: Rayman due for release on the PC.
- Edge issue 76, October 1999, pp. 84–85: interview with Michel Ancel (the Atari ST animation, joining Ubi Soft, four million homes, the Montpellier office, team sizes).
- Edge issue 91, December 2000, pp. 57–60, Ubi Soft feature: Rayman as “one of the first games to go Platinum”.
- Nintendo Power volume 117, February 1999, pp. 24–25: Rayman 2 preview. Official PlayStation 2 Magazine (Australia) issue 3, 2002, p. 30: Rayman 3: Hoodlum Havoc announced.
- Edge issue 171, January 2007, p. 74: Rayman Raving Rabbids review (Wii and PS2, Ubisoft Montpellier).
- Wireframe issue 39, May 2020, p. 42: Mario + Rabbids.
- Edge issue 235, Christmas 2011, p. 118: Rayman Origins review.
- Edge issue 252, April 2013, p. 63: the delay of Rayman Legends.
- “Intelligent design”, Edge issue 258, October 2013, p. 16: UbiArt Framework.
- “How the UbiArt Framework encourages risk at Ubisoft”, MCV, 17 September 2013 (web, secondary): UbiArt and Valiant Hearts. https://www.mcvuk.com/business-news/publishing/how-the-ubiart-framework-encourages-risk-at-ubisoft/
- Ubisoft, “An update on Beyond Good & Evil 2”, 18 September 2020 (web, secondary). https://news.ubisoft.com/en-us/article/6ptJuA0jx7qhvhTnSosl8L/an-update-on-beyond-good-evil-2
- Chris Wallace, “Rayman creator Michel Ancel leaves the games industry to work on a wildlife sanctuary”, MCV, 21 September 2020 (web, secondary). https://www.mcvuk.com/business-news/rayman-creator-michel-ancel-leaves-the-games-industry-to-work-on-a-wildlife-sanctuary/