What do you think is the worst version of rayman 1?

[Adsolution]

Huh, I've never seen any issues with the tile rendering and I've played it on multiple devices. I just booted it up now to double check and looks fine. The only bugs I remember are sounds not looping correctly and you unable to move before starting in the breakout minigame. Otherwise like you said it's a 1:1 port of the DOS version. There's also the fact of controller support not working which is odd. It's controlled through LUA scripts and they for some reason commented out the line which enabled controller support yet it's marketed as having it.

I was using either a Galaxy S5 or S6 at the time, I think the latter. Whatever row of tiles that the bottom of the screen overlapped would get completely culled, leaving the background visible behind them. I'm guessing the game does this one block further down normally so it isn't visible, but something caused the tile rendering area to be a block shorter on my device?

[Hunchman801]

Nowadays this isn't so unknown though and is actually used in any% speedruns to save some time! No one had really ran the DSi version before, but Thextera has been doing it a lot lately and what we discovered on his streams was that you can skip one other cage in the game and have the seventh cage in Bongo Hills count as the 102nd one needed to unlock Mr Dark's Dare. This allows you to skip the slowest cage (in Mr Sax's Hullaballoo) and get this instead, which saves time. You can see it in his world record run here.

There is a catch though - the seventh cage has to be the last one you get! See, the game actually re-calculates the cages whenever you enter the worldmap, and this re-calculation does not include the seventh cage. However, the reason this is possible at all is because the game actually checks if Mr Dark's Dare should be unlocked before re-calculating. So if the seventh cage is the last one you get, and you have gotten every other cage besides one, then the total is currently 102. The game then treats that as you passing the check, and unlocks Mr Dark's Dare, and then after that re-calculates the cage count back down to 101 (but with Mr Dark's Dare already unlocked, so it doesn't matter). Thextera explains it in this short.

That's really interesting, I knew about the seventh cage but I had no idea it could be used to unlock Mr Dark's Dare earlier. I didn't know about the level-skip functionality either, but it sure comes in handy in such situations!

Anyway, I have just updated the wiki with this information. As for the worst version, I suppose I'll go with Rayman Advance. While I have fond memories of playing it on my GBA, it is objectively inferior in many aspects.

[mikemoron]

why is the gbc version included?

[Greengoop]

Because it’s technically still a R1 version

[Mortamon Saturn]

why is the gbc version included?

Why would it not? As different as it is, it's still Rayman 1.
It even has throwbacks to the original game in its level design (like the trumpet section in Airy Tunes 2) and shares most of its enemies/objects, gameplay elements and a similar progression structure.

[The Jonster]

why is the gbc version included?

Why would it not? As different as it is, it's still Rayman 1.
It even has throwbacks to the original game in its level design (like the trumpet section in Airy Tunes 2) and shares most of its enemies/objects, gameplay elements and a similar progression structure.

True, the only thing it clearly doesn’t share is its music, which is Rayman 2 based.

I don’t know what’s more amusing, the web demo (which I never considered playing amongst other things on this list), or the fact some random person called Rayman Redemption the worst port of Rayman 1

[DaveRattlehead]

Oh no, the web demo... I haven't played some of the versions listed there, but I'm very sure the web demo is the worst of them. Do you remember when I had some problems emulating Rayman 1? Well, I found that web demo and I gave it a try. Mother of god, that was awful!! The game was running at very low FPS, constantly glitched, with the audio messed up... I wouldn't recommend playing this game in the web demo. Sure, you can give it a try to see how fucked up it is

[Mortamon Saturn]

I don’t know what’s more amusing, the web demo (which I never considered playing amongst other things on this list), or the fact some random person called Rayman Redemption the worst port of Rayman 1

Well, here's a little reminder to that person

And I guess we could also add the distinct PDA versions of Rayman GBC (PPC/Symbian, Palm OS Color/Palm OS Greyscale) and add Rayman Redemption... but anyone who would pick that one as the worst must be declared a heretic and be sentenced to be publicly incinerated

We don't know who you are... We don't know what you want... If you are looking for ransom, I can tell you that you won't have Tings. But what we do have are a very particular set of skills, skills we have acquired over a very long career. Skills that make us a nightmare for people like you.
If you let Redemption go now, that'll be the end of it. We will not look for you, we will not pursue you...
But if you don't, we will look for you, we will find you, and we will ban you.

Oh no, the web demo... I haven't played some of the versions listed there, but I'm very sure the web demo is the worst of them. Do you remember when I had some problems emulating Rayman 1? Well, I found that web demo and I gave it a try. Mother of god, that was awful!! The game was running at very low FPS, constantly glitched, with the audio messed up... I wouldn't recommend playing this game in the web demo. Sure, you can give it a try to see how fucked up it is

I still have to actually play it, just to see for myself how much of a masterpiece it truly is!
Also I love the way the audio loops and especially the Betilla one, sounds like those meme videos of music never starting!
I don't know what was Ubi's goal when they made that demo... but if it was to advertise Rayman so more people would want to buy the game, then they sure did a great job at doing the exact opposite of that.


On the topic of bad R1 web demos, I just tried the GBC one and it's a joke!
It's basically ~15 seconds worth of content, and it controls so terribly you keep falling accidentally into pits as Rayman stops moving mid-flight (dunno if it's due to playing on a flash emulator...).
The animations look weird, there are no items or enemies, the unique life you start with is pointless since you can't actually game over, and for some reason "Rayman's friend" who you free from the cage is a BAT... No, not an Electoon... A BAT.

To give the R1 web demo some credit over this one, the classic game's demo at least had some content.
Interestingly, it seems to take place in a unique location in the Spellbound Forest, and we don't really see all of it... If we had the whole map, maybe I could do something with it for a bonus in ReDesigner.

[Hunchman801]

On the topic of bad R1 web demos, I just tried the GBC one and it's a joke!
It's basically ~15 seconds worth of content, and it controls so terribly you keep falling accidentally into pits as Rayman stops moving mid-flight (dunno if it's due to playing on a flash emulator...).
The animations look weird, there are no items or enemies, the unique life you start with is pointless since you can't actually game over, and for some reason "Rayman's friend" who you free from the cage is a BAT... No, not an Electoon... A BAT.

Now that's interesting! Maybe this bat cameo is worthy of a mention on the wiki?

[Mortamon Saturn]

On the topic of bad R1 web demos, I just tried the GBC one and it's a joke!
It's basically ~15 seconds worth of content, and it controls so terribly you keep falling accidentally into pits as Rayman stops moving mid-flight (dunno if it's due to playing on a flash emulator...).
The animations look weird, there are no items or enemies, the unique life you start with is pointless since you can't actually game over, and for some reason "Rayman's friend" who you free from the cage is a BAT... No, not an Electoon... A BAT.

Now that's interesting! Maybe this bat cameo is worthy of a mention on the wiki?

Done.

Also the instructions sort of implies that the cage actually contains multiple bats as they display two of them and the text says "Rayman's friends" on two occasions... Yeeeaaah.. """friends""", alright. They're so friendly when damaging Rayman to death in Rayman GBC!
That reminds me of the PPC/PalmOS website referencing some objects and neutral entities as Rayman's friends.
I guess that they wanted to do something similar to the various creatures freed in the PS1 version of Rayman 2, but that's still a weird choice out of all the creatures in the game... Who knows, maybe Rayman had some pet bats all along.

[Hunchman801]

Maybe bats are like people, there's good bats and bad bats.

Anyway, thanks for adding this information! Speaking of which, where can you find this web demo nowadays?

[Mortamon Saturn]

Maybe bats are like people, there's good bats and bad bats.

Anyway, thanks for adding this information! Speaking of which, where can you find this web demo nowadays?

Man, those games are getting deep...

I found it alongside the other demos provided by Droolie in the Rayman Flash games topic. It comes both in a French and English version, so you can have your Rayman GBC demo with either baguettes or fancy hats.



EDIT:

Also I love the way the audio loops [in the web demo] and especially the Betilla one, sounds like those meme videos of music never starting!

Turns out it really works

[Hunchman801]

Thanks, I have also added your screenshot to the page. Now I guess the next step for me is to start documenting both web demos on the wiki!

[Mortamon Saturn]

Well, I did a quick video of the GBC Flash demo in both languages as nobody else seems to have done it, and so you can all see this masterpiece in action!


Shame on Ubisoft for not featuring a billion glitches in this one.
#NotMyRayman1WebDemo!

But there are actually some issues!
I've made some discoveries today which I didn't get to showcase in the video yesterday:
-You can bypass the initial instructions by simply controlling Rayman instead of touching the text.
-Moving your mouse cursor to (most of) the Game Boy's buttons while there are no instructions on screen will highlight them and display relevant instructions for the controls.
-You can crawl... but you can't seem to be able to move.
-You can softlock yourself in some areas. This happened to me in two spots, the first being one of the first platforms (which is tight enough around the ground to cause Rayman to get stuck) and by jumping into the tree.
-You can take FALL DAMAGE! YES! Fall damage... in a 2D Rayman game! To do so, simply jump/fall off from the vine or the tree at the end. Doesn't matter how high you are or if you glide... you *will* take two hearts of damage by landing on anything other than the tree, even if the fall is one pixel high!... What's up with that, does Rayman got a rare condition that causes him to get hurt if he specifically falls off from a plant?
-And even worse: jumping INTO the tree while on the ground hurts you too! Running out of hearts works exactly like drowning so you can't game over by losing health either even if you have 0 lives.
-You can safely leave the vine or the tree by pressing down while at the bottom of the vine, which will allow Rayman to get back on the ground without any damage... Those rules don't make any sense!
-Losing a life near the tree can cause the music to duplicate once the level resets... Probably an emulation issue tho.
-The collisions can get wonky as I fell through the floor and drowned while jumping left while next to the vine. I think this specific location is cursed.
-Punching the Cage once adds it to the Cage tally even if it's not broken.
-Punching the Cage once then leaving by going far enough and returning to the Cage will reset its hit points, allowing you to punch it some more. It will not increase the Cage tally as it never goes beyond 1.
-The Cage's collisions are seemingly way taller than they actually are: you can actually hit it even if you're near the bottom of the vine despite Rayman's fist going through the tree like two meters below the Cage... Also works from the top of the vine, which is slightly above the Cage.
-Rayman can look different while climbing and dancing depending on what his last animation was (climbing, jumping, gliding...). This means he can even dance forever in mid-air or climb while his helicopter sounds and hair animations keep playing!
-Looking at the demo's files through a decompiler, there's a lot more content which can't be seen in the game (perhaps some due to emulating the demo)... including a loading screen, various differently colored GBCs interfaces, unseen animations, the Ting counter going up to 3 (with 2 and 3 being a red number over the 1 added in Paint ), and an identical map except the tree is a bit taller and the vine gets an extra decorative limb... Why is that one even a thing?
-There are also some texts I couldn't trigger, like one for failing despite no game over happening in my case.

Rayman GBC Demo - Ting Counter.png (1.95 KiB) Viewed 968 times

Note: Obviously do not add those pictures to the RayWiki as the first two are inaccurate screenshots taken in a recording while the others were edited together from the game's assets.

Guess I should probably take this to the Game Boy Color topic at this point!
And now that I have the textures, I wonder if I can make a level out of this for Rayman GBC ReDesigned... Probably something for the planned extra world which I intended for the World Maps and Ubi Cliff.

[ChronicTraitor]

Oh wow, it's been a bit since I thought about the GBC flash demo. I remember playing it on some random website somewhere, it always seemed like an odd little novelty to me. The little visual touches really add to it though, like the gameboy screen border and the game boot-up sequence. Owning the actual game made me appreciate the recreation of it, even if it was a shoddy one.

I recall it being just as janky too, that ledge grab is super loosely animated compared to the real thing. The fall damage I forgot about, though I'm amused that it probably predates R3 also having fall damage!

Those unused assets are...interesting. The MS-Paint Ting counter is really just something else.

I do know that the flash demo is still accessible through Flashpoint also. It's definitely in one of my playlists somewhere. I ought to mess with it later just to play it again. I wonder how 'well' it would translate to ReDesigner with it's quirks intact...

[Hunchman801]

That's a lot more than meets the eye about this demo!

This reminds me that the web demos are still to be documented on the wiki. While not of the utmost interest in themselves, there is still a lot to say about them, as shown by Saturn's post!

[Mortamon Saturn]

Well, I'm a month late for sharing this due to being busy moving house (which I also just did in the GBC topic), but here are my discoveries in action!

Oh wow, it's been a bit since I thought about the GBC flash demo. I remember playing it on some random website somewhere, it always seemed like an odd little novelty to me. The little visual touches really add to it though, like the gameboy screen border and the game boot-up sequence. Owning the actual game made me appreciate the recreation of it, even if it was a shoddy one.

I recall it being just as janky too, that ledge grab is super loosely animated compared to the real thing. The fall damage I forgot about, though I'm amused that it probably predates R3 also having fall damage!

Those unused assets are...interesting. The MS-Paint Ting counter is really just something else.

I do know that the flash demo is still accessible through Flashpoint also. It's definitely in one of my playlists somewhere. I ought to mess with it later just to play it again. I wonder how 'well' it would translate to ReDesigner with it's quirks intact...

They definitely went the extra mile for the visuals at the very least! Not like what happened with the original Rayman Advance 1 demo

In all seriousness, I wouldn't really call it fall damage since it doesn't happen when jumping anywhere else... but it was my only way to "explain" that completely nonsensical damage when getting out of the tree and the vine
It also reminds me of the SNES prototype where Rayman had animations for falling from a bit too high and which stunned him for an instant.

It feels like they may have scrapped some planned features like the Tings at the last minute, which would explain the MS-Paint stuff they did with some of the assets
Maybe the map with the bigger tree was their take on a "hard mode"... and climbing it wrong would damage Rayman so badly he would be torn to atom-sized pieces by the plants' wrath!

While I can't replicate everything, I did a few "special" things with some of the level's collisions if you mess around enough!
It also has a unique size compared to the original GBC maps, so it does not fit ReDesigner as perfectly and some very small edges go beyond the only fitting width/height I could pick in ReDesigner, but it's not really anything you would notice in gameplay anyway.
Regardless, it does work and I'll try to make two versions with one being more of a "proper" level!


Btw, I realized someone else did play the Flash demo: Ryemanni who did it on stream, and his comments resonate very well with my gripes about this game's janky controls!

This reminds me that the web demos are still to be documented on the wiki. While not of the utmost interest in themselves, there is still a lot to say about them, as shown by Saturn's post!

That's definitely something to consider for later!
Should we make fully dedicated articles or just detail them on the relevant already existing pages?

[Hunchman801]

Should we make fully dedicated articles or just detail them on the relevant already existing pages?

I think the List of Rayman demos article is probably the best place for this.

[Mortamon Saturn]

At long last, the objectively bestest version of Rayman 1 finally got its dedicated full soundtrack video!!! The Rayman Web Demo OST is here!


(GBC Flash demo six second loop included for extra suffering )

I am not responsible for any ear bleeding or loss of faith in humanity you may experience after viewing this

[The Jonster]

Ewwwwww nooooooooo whyyyyyyyy the loooping noooooooo THIS IS SO TERRIBLE AHHHHHHHH!!!!!!