Rayman 2

[Hunchman801]

As I pointed out, the last quarter of the game after The Sanctuary of Rock and Lava does feel like they ran out of time and had to cut a lot of stuff. The Tomb of the Ancients is great, but Beneath the Sanctuary of Rock and Lava, the Iron Mountains/Gloomy Island and Prison Ship feel very lackluster compared to it.

Interestingly enough, I feel the same way about the whole Echoing Caves/Precipice/Top of the World segment.

[deton24]

With this Baby Globox it's Revolution exclusive, right?

[Hunchman801]

It's clearly not in the original version.

[Steo]

The only other place I remember them in other versions is the Woods of Light, Globox Village, Tomb of the Ancients secret, and the Iron Mountains, but you can't really do anything like that in those areas anyway.

[Henchman1028]

An interesting little detail I noticed in the PS2 version, in The Sanctuary of Stone and Fire, the Mini Jano makes a creepy laugh/snarl when it approaches Rayman when he turns his back to it in that version, unlike in the other versions.

[PluMGMK]

Tbh I never succeeded in being frightened or even on edge during that fight – until I played in first-person mode, that is!

[Henchman1028]

Tbh I never succeeded in being frightened or even on edge during that fight – until I played in first-person mode, that is!

Yeah, that is one of the fights the first person mod makes a lot more tense. You can't see it coming out or how close it is to you when you turn your back in first person, so you have to rely on your ears to determine when to turn around and attack.

[PluMGMK]

The strange thing about this conversation is that I'm pretty sure a few minutes before I got up and read that post, I had a dream that involved me telling someone "Look, I'm not afraid of Jano, okay?"
(Followed by my game glitching and me going Win+Shift+Q (i3 equivalent of Alt+F4) to avoid anything scary happening in the glitched state)

[Fifo]

Win+Shift+Q

I’m sure you meant Meta instead of Win.

[PluMGMK]

Yeah, but my keyboard has a Windows logo on it, so what are ya gonna do?

[Fifo]

Yeah, but my keyboard has a Windows logo on it, so what are ya gonna do?

Haha, I know.

Don’t worry, I won’t bite.

[Hunchman801]

You might remember that in Report N° 20Z from the old Rayman 2 website, Ly was said to dress like the People of Prhys.

However, I recently noticed that in the French version, it is "peuple des Prhys", which could mean "Phrys people" or possibly "people of the Phrys" (Phrys being plural here). The difference is interesting, as the English version kinda implies that Prhys is a place, while the French one makes it sounds like Prhys is the name of the people in question (or possibly a plural location, like "the Lakes").

Not a very useful peace of information, but still food for thought.

[RayCarrot]

A week back someone uploaded the Ubisoft 1999 press kit which has a bunch of interesting content for Rayman 2, the animated show and Tonic Trouble. I've uploaded it on the wiki for those who'd like to check it out:

Rayman 2
Rayman: The Animated Series

The most notable differences are the following:

Early Iron Mountains screenshot where you actually fly


Early cover mock-ups

[PluMGMK]

That Iron Mountains screenshot looks miles better than what we got in the final version! I wonder why it ended up being so pared-back. Were there programming issues with the environment that made it good enough for a screenshot, but not fixable into a production-worthy game?

[Hunchman801]

Nice find! It would have been great indeed to fly the shell in the Iron Mountains, though I can imagine it might have been much more complicated for the developers than to have us fly through the linear, tunnel-like environments of the final game.

[RayCarrot]

Yeah I'm not sure how they would have implemented it tbh. The flying shell doesn't allow you to get off once you're on it, so the entire area would basically have to be flying only. The area appears fully open too, which would prove hard to make interesting gameplay for considering how limiting the flying shell really is.

[PluMGMK]

Yeah, tbh I'm happier that we were left with the non-flying shell, but even the scenery looks much better. I mean, there's actual water, instead of a landmass just mysteriously floating in space! Yeah, I know everything was floating in space in Rayman 1, but Rayman 2 seemed different up to that point…

[RayCarrot]

Robin, Hakyra, Droolie and I have been working on making it possible importing high-resolution textures into Rayman 2 and 3 and today finally got it working. Here's an example (go to 00:24): https://streamable.com/ckv3j
There are still some minor issues, as can be seen, but overall it's now possible which is amazing! It involved a lot of file editing, which can automatically be done in the next Rayman Control Panel update. This update will also feature a tool to remove the pirate head DRM as that gets triggered when editing these files (because the checksum changes).

[Hunchman801]

Well, I think this might be the occasion to replay those games after so many years!

[raymanHUN]

This is amazing! I haven't played Rayman 2 in 2020 yet, might as well do it early this year (yes, I replay Rayman 2 every year)