Rayman 2

[dr_st]

4:3 is nothing, I have a 5:4 1280x1024 monitor hooked up to my old Windows 98 PC.

Yes, these were popular for 17" and 19" sizes in the early years of LCDs.

[Mortamon Saturn]

That always did bother me in honesty, why was it region locked? Not that it's a big deal these days considering how easy it is to employ alternative means, but it does boggle the mind.

Same problem with Rayman Arena... Why was it exclusive to North America?
Heck, it even has French and Spanish languages options if I'm not mistaking, so why not release it in France, Spain and the UK at least?

I fully understand why we didn't get the PS2/PC release of it as we already had the near identical M on those systems and we also had Rush, but we had no version of the game on GameCube and Xbox... So, for this game, they missed out on all the Nintendo and Microsoft shares of the market here!

The entire concept of region-locking is pure corporate evil with nothing to justify it.

"B-but, wat if there's an issue with teh media in another countree? We can't guarantee dat it will wurk, soo lets lock it altogever until wee randomly change our mind 4 nextgen! We R stoopid, so anyway, trust us as we thrust you, and jus giv moar mooney! "

Also reminds me how we recently didn't get the PS4/PS5 port of Daxter, only in France for some reason...
Despite the game being on PSP/PS Vita here, and thus I should have got the new ports for free as usual, but NOPE!...
So I "relocated" myself to Belgium to get it after I accidentally got a region-locked prepaid card for said country

[dr_st]

Yeah, I see your point. Region-exclusive is not the same as region-locked, though. The age of digital distribution has muddied the waters somewhat, but not being able to take your physical, legally-purchased product when you move, temporarily or permanently, to another country, and use that product there - without resorting to "extra-legal" means - represents a particularly nasty kind of customer abuse.

And, as usual, it only hurts legitimate, paying customers. I haven't seen or heard of any pirated release of a movie or a game suffering from region locking.

[RayCarrot]

Rayman 2 and Tonic Trouble are coming to the Switch as N64 games!! This is the first time Tonic Trouble has ever been re-released!

[RaypersonNikol]

Rayman 2 and Tonic Trouble are coming to the Switch as N64 games!! This is the first time Tonic Trouble has ever been re-released!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uAVh2BgUkxA

WE ARE SO BACK, RAYMAN AND TONIC TROUBLE NATION

[Reese Riverson]

I have a friend who has been wanting this for quite some time!

[RayGamer99]

So the blurred art theory was right after all; how exciting! I'm not sure if I'll be double-dipping Rayman 2 on NSO (I'm more of a Rayman 2 Revolution guy myself), but I'll definitely get into some Tonic Trouble next week!

Who knows, perhaps this is just the start of Rayman's presence on Nintendo Switch Online? It'd be awesome if we got Rayman Arena and Rayman 3 on the GameCube library, for starters.

[Cinnamon1234]

Even though I don't have Nintendo switch online plus, I think this is a pretty cool idea for rayman. As rayman 1 says when you reach a sign:
"Yeah!"

[Mortamon Saturn]

Great! For the modest price of 40€ every year, we can get to emulate them and not even keep them like on Virtual Console or for free on PC.

...Nah, this is something genuinely good to see, especially when Tonic Trouble has been left in the dust since 1999/2000, and same goes for the original N64 version of Rayman 2 which only got a flawed handheld port!
I'm hoping this will lead to more proper ports/remasters on other platforms in the future!

[lyndo64]

This is cool to see! Don't have a Switch Online subscription anymore but if I did, I would absoutely be playing this right now. Oh well, guess I'll have to stick with the dirty old N64, ew, old things are weird!

[Droolie]

Here's a little fun fact I just discovered.

In l'Histoire de Rayman in the section about Rayman 2, there's an image showing the design of the E3 1999 stand.
It's not that interesting at first glance, but you should zoom in on the logo at the top. Is that... an early subtitle, from before "The Great Escape"?
It's deformed so part of it is hard to read, but it ends with "du grand pouvoir". ("of great power")

(Yes, this is a scan of the book, but considering it's just a small image and very zoomed in to boot, I hope it's allowed to post this much. Please delete it if it isn't.)

I asked Got4n what the rest could be and his guess was "la porte du grand pouvoir". ("the door to great power").
I think this (or some variation like the plural, "les portes du grand pouvoir") would make a lot of sense as an early version of the game's story revolved around a magic soup that would "open the doors to great power". We know this from a press release included in an old press kit, images of Polokus brewing soup, and it's mentioned on the French RayWiki as well:

Rayman parvenait à se libérer et se mettait en quête des ingrédients d'une soupe magique, qui permettait d'ouvrir les portes du "Grand Pouvoir".

Anyway, yeah.
Rayman 2: The Door to Great Power.

[PluMGMK]

Never noticed that! I guess they sorta recycled that concept for the Dreamer's Door in Origins, but I'm not sure where they were going with that soup thing…

[Droolie]

Well, I didn't think I would just find 2 new pieces of information in a few hours, but here we are.
I just found some more cool early Rayman 2 details that are completely new to me - and I think no one noticed them before.
On the press kit disc I linked in my previous post, you can find the press release about the magic soup leading to Great Power in different languages. I thought about checking the other languages, and interestingly, the Italian version is a lot more detailed. It seems to describe many ideas for the game that were never developed.
I've included it as an attachment so you can check it out.

Ray2it.rtf

(21.83 KiB) Downloaded 7 times

I'll quote some of the more interesting parts that I ran through Google Translate.

Rayman's magic fist is practically a fully-fledged character: he grabs objects, pulls levers, acts as a grappling hook and a torch, pushes characters, taps them on the shoulder before delivering a punch that will send them spinning!
Rayman evolves: as he frees his friends, he can use their powers, but he also acquires new ones of his own. Thus, at the end of the game, Rayman becomes super-skilled and can see through walls and discover unexplored parts of the temples. His mana increases as the player progresses through the game, providing additional possibilities!

The seeing through walls thing is completely new to me, and seems like it would be a cool idea adding to the mystical atmosphere of the game. I know for certain that mana was a thing in early versions, and they wanted to make it a thing again in Rayman 4 (Rabbids) before that was cancelled. The grappling hook and pushing mechanics had been implemented in early versions as well. So it's very believable that all of these things came from an early design of the game.

The characters come to life around Rayman, lead their own lives, and are crucial to the story.
Rayman's friends have been imprisoned by pirates... Once freed, they lead Rayman to different levels. This way, he can ask them to use their powers to overcome difficulties caused by certain obstacles.
Globox causes rain (which is harmful to robots) if Rayman feeds it.
Lums are hooks for the grappling hook. They show the right path and allow Rayman to access previously inaccessible areas. With the help of Lums, Rayman can gain health points or mana.
Polochus, the magician, can levitate stones (to create a path). He can also draw water from a pond, transform it into a rectangle, lift it, and create a path.
Clark can grab Rayman and throw him.
Ly can immobilize characters and objects.
Rayman's enemies are terrifying: piranhas, pirate robots, zombie chickens, and two-legged missiles don't give him a moment's rest! They do everything in their power to sabotage the player's efforts, hindering Rayman in any way they can. And of course, the player will have to face the ten end-of-level bosses, introduced by an animated sequence using the game's engine, each more surprising than the last.

This is incredible. Using Rayman's friends to get past obstacles is in the final game, but it seems they had bigger plans for it!
Rayman having to feed Globox to use his rain powerup in return sounds very in character somehow. (I have a new theory: Globox is designed the way he is to be able to fit a a big plum into that huge mouth. If that was the idea, it would explain where they got the idea for Globox's plum juice addiction in R3!)
Polokus and Ly would actually play a more active role in gameplay, with some very interesting powers!

Suspense... and unexpected developments!
Who is the leader of the mysterious association?
What unknown power will Rayman discover during his search?
Are some of Rayman's friends traitors?!!

Some teases about where they were going with the story for the game. (I bet the traitor was going to be Clark. )
I wonder why the leader behind the mysterious association that created the intergalactic zoo would be such a big surprise?

• 3 gigantic worlds ensure surprising replayability!

Leading Rayman through the 10 maps (+1 hidden map) takes about 40 hours of gameplay across 3 gigantic worlds.
Each world has its own atmosphere, thanks to the considerable work done on lighting and textures.
- Rayman's paradise world is made up of swamps, forests, a coastal area, shelters, and caves.
- The four great temples: Archaic, Sea, Wind, and Fire.
- The pirate world with prisons, bastions, machinery, and of course, pirate ships!
The program includes numerous twists and turns and numerous surprises...
Furthermore, the game's multi-depth features and secret levels give Rayman 2 real replay value.

A wind sanctuary. That's all.

PS: A lot of that disc's Italian press releases are super detailed like this. This includes D-Jump, the cancelled CPA game taking place in Egypt. Its Italian press release has a lot of plot info for it that I've never seen before. It even "spoiled" a powerup you get at the end of the game for some reason (yeah, it really goes that far into detail). Maybe it would be a good idea to check other Italian press releases for Rayman games?

[Master]

I wonder what it means by 10 maps across 3 gigantic worlds? Would that imply Rayman 2 was initially going to have much more open level design compared to the more constrained A -> B design of the final game?

[Droolie]

I wonder what it means by 10 maps across 3 gigantic worlds? Would that imply Rayman 2 was initially going to have much more open level design compared to the more constrained A -> B design of the final game?

It could just mean that these 10 levels would use 3 major themes, but I think that yes, it's quite likely that there existed an early idea for Rayman 2 to have a more open world. After all, this is an idea that they tested for Tonic Trouble, with its hub world - and that game was made as a practice run for Rayman 2.
The same "3 worlds" structure is mentioned in the other language versions of this press release as well (but it's not clarified what the worlds are), but I've never seen it in later descriptions of the game, so it definitely seems like it was an idea they had that was toned down/removed later.

[Master]

Ahh I see, I do remember thinking that the levels shown in the earliest Rayman 2 trailers did feel more open compared to the levels we see in the final, I do wonder if those were vestiges of this approach...

[dr_st]

It could just mean that these 10 levels would use 3 major themes, but I think that yes, it's quite likely that there existed an early idea for Rayman 2 to have a more open world. After all, this is an idea that they tested for Tonic Trouble, with its hub world - and that game was made as a practice run for Rayman 2.
The same "3 worlds" structure is mentioned in the other language versions of this press release as well (but it's not clarified what the worlds are), but I've never seen it in later descriptions of the game, so it definitely seems like it was an idea they had that was toned down/removed later.

They brought it back in Rayman Revolution, sort of.

[Game Ze 2]

• 3 gigantic worlds ensure surprising replayability!

Leading Rayman through the 10 maps (+1 hidden map) takes about 40 hours of gameplay across 3 gigantic worlds.
Each world has its own atmosphere, thanks to the considerable work done on lighting and textures.
- Rayman's paradise world is made up of swamps, forests, a coastal area, shelters, and caves.
- The four great temples: Archaic, Sea, Wind, and Fire.
- The pirate world with prisons, bastions, machinery, and of course, pirate ships!
The program includes numerous twists and turns and numerous surprises...
Furthermore, the game's multi-depth features and secret levels give Rayman 2 real replay value.

I previously read this information in a Chinese game magazine.

[Hunchman801]

Rayman 2: The Door to Great Power? Looks like Rayman would have had to explore all four sanctuaries to find the ingredients needed to open the door in question, and this "great power" would have allowed him to defeat the pirates. It's not so different from the final game, where Polokus (who got upgraded from a magician to a god) ended up replacing the "great power", and the masks the ingredients.

All this information about the game's early gameplay is really interesting too. I would have liked to see some of it make it into the final game. Regardless, it looks like our Rayman 2 early production article on the wiki is in dire need of an update...

I previously read this information in a Chinese game magazine.

Indeed, this checks out with that you shared here. Did the Chinese magazine also mention anything about Rayman's friends and their abilities?

[Game Ze 2]

Indeed, this checks out with that you shared here. Did the Chinese magazine also mention anything about Rayman's friends and their abilities?

The magazine says that Magician will strengthen Rayman's fist power.That mentioned 3 worlds too.