Rayman himself

PluMGMK said:
Or Rabbids either for that matter. But Just Dance is there? Seriously?
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Well, it’s probably a major franchise in terms of sold units. But you’re right, with the two Mario crossovers I would have expected to see the Rabbids there. Maybe those two weren’t that much of a commercial success after all?
 
It would be crazy if one of the members of RPC (or anyone in the Rayman community) ends up working for Ubisoft. About the description not including the Rabbids, maybe it was a mistake?
 
Yesterday I was skimming through the book l'Histoire de Rayman and found information regarding the SNES version of Rayman that somehow has never been discussed before. The book actually has some scans of the game design bible, so I translated the text of these scanned pages. Considering this isn't text written by the book's author (but presumably by Michel Ancel) I assume I am allowed to post these translations:

RAYMAN is an electronic character created by professor HENDRIX for his nephew JIM. He travels through virtual worlds and has exceptional powers. He can command objects at a distance with his fist, pilot flying engines, change size, hang and climb platforms, and so on. He also has special powers with surprising effects. Despite these qualities, Rayman's electronic nature does not permit him to dive into water.

To recover he uses energy capsules. He can then withstand harder hits, for example:
  • A fall from more than 8 times his size
  • Contact with strong electric charges
  • Contact with fire
  • Being crushed
  • Lasers, bombs, rocks, punches...

Thanks to power capsules, RAYMAN can augment the power of his fist and acquire special powers.
  • The magic fist: the basic power, it allows you to destroy certain walls. It stacks with other powers.
  • Invisibility: RAYMAN is invisible -- he does not fear enemies.
  • The Energy Ball: A sphere that bounces off the scenery and destroys enemies.
  • The shield: Three spheres circle around RAYMAN and destroy his adversaries.
  • The RAYDANCE: A dance that paralyzes his enemies.

RAYMAN's energy and power are represented with gauges. The available power and the selected object are represented by icons. For important monsters, an additional gauge is displayed on the right of the screen.
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Work calendar:

5 weeks: Getting used to the SNES + preparation of utilities
  • Creation of the map editor
  • Creation of the sprite editor
  • Creation of the KERNEL 65816 SNES
  • Study of the SNES characteristics (65816, Scrolls, Sprites, Interrupts...)
3 weeks: Creation of the RAYMAN character functions
  • Character movement
  • Animation
  • Creation of following Rayman in an environment
2 weeks: Putting Rayman in a scrolling environment, with collision detection for jumps
RAYMAN IS THEN CAPABLE OF MOVING CORRECTLY IN AN ENVIRONMENT
3 weeks: Creation of step 1 (Getting used to everything + diverse)
3 weeks: Creation of step 2 (Capture + scooter)
7 weeks: Creation of step 3 (The world of charms)
5 weeks: Creation of step 4 (Disguise + combat + recovery zone + combat Virus 1)
4 weeks: Creation of step 5 (Sector IMAGE)
6 weeks: Creation of step 6 (Sector MUSIC)
5 weeks: Creation of step 7 (Sector ENERGY)
3 weeks: Creation of step 8 (Mandibulax)
6 weeks: Creation of step 9 (The virus's lair: Cake, circus and flipper)
3 weeks: Creation of step 10 (Virus end)
3 weeks: Creation of the intro and ending of the game

That makes a total of 58 weeks of development.
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SCENE 4:

Name: The Repartition Room

Description: A large room in the shape of a half-sphere in which there are 6 gates, with 6 symbols below them. The symbol for each accessible gate is a luminous relief, contrary to the closed gates. At this stage of the game 2 gates are accessible: the gate to the control sector (where we came from) and the gate to the synchro sector. But it seems the gate to memory sector is completely destroyed.

Legend:
  • 1_AC: Gate to the control sector (where RAYMAN came from)
  • 2_AC: Gate to the MUSIC sector (closed)
  • 3_AC: Gate to the ENERGY sector (closed)
  • 4_AC: Gate to the IMAGE sector (closed)
  • 5_AC: Gate to the MEMORY sector (destroyed whereas RAYMAN had to go there)
  • 6_AC: Only the gate to the synchro sector is open. RAYMAN has no choice but to enter this sector controlled by the Virus.
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The book also has scans of Michel Ancel's level designs, monster designs (the virus is especially cool, with one of its phases being as a huge blob with 3 moskito faces), pictures of the intro with Professor Hendrix in his workshop and Jimmy being transformed into Rayman, and the Repartition Room (hub room) described in the last quote. I guess these aren't allowed to be posted (even though they're also Ancel's work, not the book's author :/), but they're quite neat.

New information in this:

  • The full world outline for (a version of) the SNES version. The game would have had 6 worlds/sectors: control, music, energy, image, memory, synchronization. The music sector is very similar to Band Land (judging from the images), many designs and even enemies from the prototype made it into the final game, such as the red drummers. I assume the image sector is also very similar to the final game's Picture City. Candy Chateau was always (part of) the Virus's lair, and the book shows a level design for the SNES version of it.
  • Some of Rayman's powerups were quite similar to the final version's, but there were a lot more of them.
  • Rayman was Jimmy Hendrix's personal virus scanner all along.

By the way, I also wanted to point out that the information from l'Histoire de Rayman in this RayWiki article is about a completely different prototype: https://raymanpc.com/wiki/en/Rayman_4_(cancelled_prototype)
(The part about robo-pirates returning, and about Cielle). I would recommend structuring it like the French version of the article or just putting it in another article entirely. I'm not very familiar with wiki editing so I'll leave that to you guys... :p
 
Oh man, I'd forgotten all that stuff… Thanks for bringing it up Droolie, I'll have to reread that section for sure! And indeed, there was always Cake in the Virus's world – somehow I was under the impression that that was a later addition after the electrical world was scrapped. So not only was the "Hansel & Gretel" thing in there from the beginning, we now have confirmation that Rayman had a cake-obsessed malevolent power taking over a computer, well over a decade before Portal was a thing :fou:
 
Ah, I see Jimmy's been mentioned again! :mryellow:
I had no idea that Rayman history book had so much SNES proto-stuff in it, and even art of it!
Shoot, makes me wish I had gotten a copy so I could see for myself...

Admittedly I knew about quite a bit of this posted here thanks to a certain Tumblr page, down to the powers, sections, scenes and characters. I'd love to know what the big bad virus looked like.
Funny how Player 2 seems to be completely unmentioned here!

Small Edit: I can't help but feel like the whole "kid who is friends with a scientist and gets turned into something" reminds me of SNES' Claymates...Maybe just a huge coincidence. :winkgrin:
 
Thanks for bringing this to our attention, Droolie! I did skim through the book but I must have overlooked this part, which tells a lot about the way the game was originally meant to be structured. I love the virus artwork, too!

Also, could it be that the repartition room was eventually repurposed into Mr Dark's hideout? The two look very similar.

Droolie said:
By the way, I also wanted to point out that the information from l'Histoire de Rayman in this RayWiki article is about a completely different prototype: https://raymanpc.com/wiki/en/Rayman_4_(cancelled_prototype)
(The part about robo-pirates returning, and about Cielle). I would recommend structuring it like the French version of the article or just putting it in another article entirely. I'm not very familiar with wiki editing so I'll leave that to you guys... :p
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Yeah, boombo did a great job (as usual) of differentiating between the various prototypes. Hopefully one of us will find the time to fix this soon!
 
I don't know if it has been shared here before, but Rayman makes a cameo appearance in a Brazilian comic called Turmu Da Monica:

E8oXTFqWUAUD6k4.jpg


Source:
https://twitter.com/x/status/1425977850650402820
 
I don't know what is the volume and the page, I seen that on Twitter, but thank you.

I assume we could ask for these details to the source of the tweet.

Great find to you too! :) These things would be worth a mention on the Wiki.
 
I've already added both cameos to the wiki. The Dofus cameo was already mentioned in the spanish wiki, but I guess I forgot to add the image and update the english article.
 
I don't know if the Incrediballs will become more popular than Rayman as Rabbids did.
It is just a laggy browser game, I don't know if people would have fun playing it, I've tried it myself and I haven't enjoyed it, I'd rather playing Slap, Flap and Go :lol:
 
I still have Adventures and personally I never really cared for the Incrediballs myself. I don't even really use them anymore unless I need invincibility to shortcut things. Ought to try their "game"...

At least the Rabbids have character and a weird charm about them, plus in terms of RRR1 they're fun to punt into the stratosphere, or whatever else the minigame lets you do! :hinhin:

I've never heard of that particular comic before but wow that's a ton of different game characters in one place! That Lemming is just too adorable! :mryellow:

Smol edit: Yeah, that was terrible AND laggy. What's with their Bomberman clones lately?...
 
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