syntheticgerbil said:
The game doesn't need to fit any pigeonholes, that just comes with the territory of making cutesy games. It's the same with any kind of media like that. It's not as if Rayman 1 went the full Earthbound route with complete juxtaposition, where the Charlie Brown look made sense in contrast to the storyline. Rayman 1's tone tends to be halfway there in my opinion.
That’s exactly what I meant – Rayman 1 does not make sense. It’s not a conventional game. On the surface it appears to be a children’s game, but any child who plays it is unlikely to complete it until they are in their teens. I would hazard a guess that many older players who are introduced to the game would be put off by its deceptively kid-friendly appearance. Rayman 1 does not seem to have been designed with any particular audience in mind – it doesn’t match up with any demographic as far as I’m aware.
syntheticgerbil said:
I really don't think the first Rayman is as original as you think. I'm guessing you aren't incredibly familiar with the Amiga games many European companies were putting out in the early 90s, but just search Mobygames for that period and you'll see a plethora of games where ultra colorful games were mixed with music of much more major productions to any kind of game style. There's a reason this didn't make a ton of sense to people outside of Europe and why only certain Amiga games tended to get ported for American consumption. Ancel and his team were coming straight from this design style, they certainly didn't pioneer it.
The thing that sets it apart from most ultra saturated Amiga platformers is the design is completely solid. Had it been another aimless game like this,
http://www.mobygames.com/game/dos/trolls/screenshots it would not be remembered.
I’m well aware of these early Raymanesque games – I have played a number of them for research. Zool and Plok both have some interesting Rayman parallels. But that’s not what I was talking about – I don’t believe that Rayman 1’s enduring popularity is caused by its use of such surreal environments as were not uncommon at the time. It’s the atmosphere. The atmosphere is the reason people keep coming back to the game. It’s not easy to describe it but I’m sure you know what I’m talking about. The same sort of vibe is present in varying degrees in all of Ancel’s games. The soundtrack is a big part of it, and so is the art style. For the most part the game has a feel of ‘cartoonish fun’, but this is accented with a more unusual ‘mysterious’ or ‘magical’ quality, which sometimes comes from the sound and sometimes comes from the visuals. The overall effect has not been matched by any other game I have played.