Rayman Pirate-Community

I've recorded a playthrough of the early Rayman M demo for PS2. For the first part of the video, I play through the game normally to show what the demo would normally offer. After that (starting at 13:14), I apply a hack that gives me full access to the demo's menus, including a debug menu that appears when you start a race. This allows me to show various changed and scrapped content that has never before been seen. Here's a list of what I found:

• An options menu is available like in the final, but changing them has no effect.
• The OK button in the centre of the individual options menus are blank.
• The video settings allows the player to toggle between 50 and 60Hz, as well as 4:3 and 16:9. In the final, the refresh rate was locked to 50Hz in PAL regions and 60Hz in NTSC regions.
• The control settings only allows the battle controls to be configured. In the final, the race controls could be configured as well (there IS a way to configure the race controls in the demo though, as we'll see later).
• The audio settings and menu settings are almost identical to the final, barring text differences.
• The language settings allow you to select English, French, Italian, German, Spanish and Japanese. Japanese and English use the Japanese flag and the US flag as their icons, while the rest of the languages use a drawing of the country the language originated in. Japanese is not available as a language in the final.
• When "Continue" is selected in the main menu, the player can select from eight save files, named "save___1" through "save___8". Selecting different save files has no effect on gameplay.
• When "New Game" is selected, the player is asked if they want to create a save file. Selecting "Yes" brings them to the name entry screen. Unlike the final, the player can enter an infinite number of characters as their save name. Attempting to enter a number or symbol will just add the "A" character.
• Whether single player or multiplayer is selected, the player is brought to a character selection screen with nine characters (one more than on the final). Rayman, Globox, Razorbeard, Henchman 800 and Tily all have icons, while the rest are represented by a question mark. Only Rayman and Globox have character models.
• When single player is selected, the player can see the names of the characters. Henchman 800 is named just "Henchman", the Teensies are named "Teensees". Razorwife is named "???RazorWife???", Henchman 1000 is named "???NemHenchman???" and the ninth character is named "???Dark Globox???", confirming that he was originally meant to appear in the PlayStation 2 version.
• When any character apart from Rayman or Globox are selected, the game will load Rayman's model instead.
• In the level select menu, each of the Leagues are simply named Zone 1 through Zone 4. In each Zone, the races are listed in reverse order than in the final. No bonus league levels are included.
• Many races and battles have image previews showing them in an unfinished state, although certain previews are missing.
• In single player, the races have four modes: Training, Run, Lums and Targeting. In Multiplayer, the player can set the number of laps of the race, and toggle an option named "Bonus".
• In both single and multiplayer, the battles have four modes: "Lum Fight", "Spring Lums" and "Capture the Fly".
• Selecting any race will take the player to Nebulous Tower, while selecting any battle will take the player to Shadow Plains.
• The debug menu that appears before a race has the following options: "Training", "Race", "Lums", "Target", "Multi Off Line", "Multi On Line", "Crossing", "Load Last Config" (this is permanently disabled), and "Options".
• The "Options" menu has two options: "Config. Pad" and "Config Bot" (this is permanently disabled). "Config. Pad" allows the player to select the pad configuration used in race mode for each controller. These are identical to those found in the final. Eight controllers are supported.
• Selecting any race mode will take the player to a menu where they can select the character and skin for each player. Selecting any player other than Rayman or Globox will load Rayman's model. Selecting any skin other than the default will load the default skin.
• In this menu, Razorwife is named "Razor Wife", and Henchman 1000 is named "Henchman 2".
• Selecting "Race" or "Lums" will bring you to a menu to configure the "Bot Level", with the options "Ultra Easy", "Very Easy", "Easy", "Medium", "Hard", "Nightmare" and "Insane".
• Race mode acts much like in the final. Pressing the circle button will bring up a display in the bottom right corner showing the current position of the other players, as well as statistics about them.
• After completing any of the modes, the podium area that displays is very glitchy and can break in many different ways.
• Lums mode acts much like in the final. There are three opponents in this mode as opposed to the final, where there is only one. Even if the player does not collect all the lums, coming in first will still count as a win.
• Target mode is the equivalent to Popolopoi in the final. Instead of butterflies, the player must shoot cages as they go through the level in order to gain more time.
• Selecting "Multi Off Line" or "Multi On Line" will allow the player to select how many other players there are, how many laps to complete (1, 3, 5 or "Infiniy", Kill Time (this option is permanently disabled), and enable a Bonus Mode (allowing for item usage by collecting the various item panels scattered around the track).
• There are various items, and I'm not sure about the functionality of most of them.
• In any mode, the player can access the pause menu via the Select button. The pause menu has the options "Back to Main Menu", "Restart the map", "Sound", "Cheatmode", "Memory Data" and "Continue".
• Choosing continue exits the pause menu.
• Choosing "Memory Data" brings the player to a menu where they can select from "Part 1" to "Part 5". Each "Part" contains different information about in game options.
• "Cheatmode" contains four different options (at first), "Invunerability", "Super Helico", "Super Speed" and "Optimisation". Only the first and the last option have any affect. "Invunerability" will make the player invulnerable to all hazards, while "Optimisation" will act as if the optimisation button is being pressed as fast as possible.
• "Sound" allows the player to customise how sound is played. The volume meter uses the same texture as the health bar in Rayman 2.
• By holding down all four shoulder buttons and all four face buttons, a meter (again using the same texture as Rayman 2) will appear at the bottom of the screen. Once it is filled all the way, it will add a new option to the cheat menu: "Increase Speed". This does not appear to have any effect.
• When a "Multi On Line" match is started, it will end immediately with the message "Connection Lost !!!". This could mean that the PlayStation 2 version was originally going to include online support.

Wow, that's a lot of hidden content for a 45 MB demo of Rayman M! I'm surprised there was even that much content on it. I actually tried to find hidden/unused content from this demo myself a few days ago by attempting to extract some of the assets like sounds, textures, but didn't really get anywhere because none of the tools that I have that work with all the other versions of Rayman M/Arena work with this one at all.

If anyone is curious as to where this demo came from, it was included in the Official PlayStation 2 Magazine Demo Disc 13 for the UK. It's not really available on the internet anymore, but if anyone wants to play this demo, PM me for the link.

Thank for showing these great findings, RibShark! It is really interesting to see the changes done in its development, especially when betas of Rayman M/Arena/Rush are really scarce. It was a really odd decision at first to represent languages with the countries themselves, I am glad it got changed in the end. From what I could see in the screenshots of the tracks/arenas there was a lot of work done posteriorly in the lighting and its colour. Other elements got polished too.