The Magician (Rayman 1)

The Magician
Other names	{{{other names}}}
Alignment	Good (Rayman) then bad (Rayman Origins)
Appears in	Rayman, Rayman Junior, Rayman Origins
Location	{{{location}}}
Portrayed by	Chris Bénard (Rayman; unconfirmed) Douglas Rand (Rayman Origins)
Sex	Male
Species	Teensie
Status	Magician
Relatives	{{{relatives}}}
Unlock criteria	{{{Unlock criteria}}}

With his help, Rayman can enter secret worlds. But note that this magic stunt has to be deserved, and it will cost you 10 Tings to take advantage of it.

—Manual, Rayman

The Magician will help you throughout your quest. He's always willing to trade you Electoons for Lums, which will help you unlock new worlds and maps. At your service, his magic hat will provide tips and tricks galore to help you survive.

—Manual, Rayman Origins

The Magician is a major character in the Rayman series. He makes his first appearance in the original Rayman, where he seems to be a member of Rayman's limbless species. His next major role is in Rayman Origins, where he is revealed to be a Teensie. (According to unused dialogue from this game, his real name is Ales Mansay.) In the intermediate years, the Magician also appeared in several educational spin-offs of the original game, such as Rayman Junior and English with Rayman.

Throughout the game, the Magician can be found hiding inside his top hat.

In exchange for ten Tings, he will transport Rayman to a bonus level.

Character description

Appearance

In the original Rayman, the Magician appears to be part of the same limbless species as Rayman. He bears all of the signature traits – lack of limbs, large nose and white gloves. He has long blonde hair that nearly reaches the ground, and his eyes are always covered by his long black top hat, which shines in blue and purple and has a gold star on the front. (He often retreats into this hat, and can be found hiding inside it in many levels.) He has also been seen wearing shirts of two colours – in the introduction sequence of Rayman, he wears a purple shirt with two blue buttons, but in the game itself, this is blue with golden buttons. The colour of his shoes – purple and orchid – remain the same, but with different stripe patterns. He is also noticeably shorter than Rayman is in Rayman, but in the educational games, he is approximately the same height as Betilla the Fairy. According to English with Rayman, the Magician has a cousin named Andrew.

In Rayman Origins, the Magician is no longer a member of Rayman's species – like several other characters, he has been redesigned to better fit the world established in the Rayman sequels. The Magician is now a grey-haired Teensie who wears a purple shirt and a black coat. He still has his signature, star-adorned top hat, and can still be found hiding inside it in various levels.

Video game appearances

Rayman

The Magician first appears in the introduction of Rayman, in which he tells the story of how Mr Dark stole the Great Protoon and brought about the collapse of the valley's natural stability. He calls on Rayman to go and free the Electoons from the cages that hostile beings had imprisoned them in, as well as bring the Great Protoon back from the Candy Château.

Rayman can come across the Magician's hat several times throughout the game. The Magician only emerges from it if Rayman has at least ten Tings; if not, he will clearly indicate with his hand that the hero will need them. If Rayman does have at least ten Tings, he automatically reaches out and drops them into the Magician's outstretched hand. The Magician then teleports Rayman to one of his bonus levels. In these secret areas, Rayman must collect all the Tings within the time limit. If he succeeds, he wins an extra life. Only a single life can be won in each bonus level. Subsequent victories in the same bonus levels are purely for fun, and also record the time taken by the player so that they can attempt to beat their records if they wish.

Rayman Junior

In several of the educational versions of the original game, such as Rayman Junior, the Magician's roles are looked into considerably more. He introduces the story of the game once again, only this time, he tells of how Mister Dark had broken into his cottage, stole the Great Book of Knowledge and destroyed the map to the villain's hideout. Once again, he and Betilla the Fairy call on Rayman to retrieve the pieces of the map and the book.

Instead of providing bonus areas, the Magician now helps Rayman to solve the many problems (spelling and mathematical problems for the young player) throughout the journey. When Rayman starts a level, the Magician will give him an overview of the specific tasks he needs to do in order to complete it. After that, his hat will appear several times, and each time Rayman passes one, the Magician will either ask a new question or remind him of the level's task. At the very end of the last stage in the level, he will appear somewhere once the final task is done, and when Rayman finds him, he mostly does a different performance, such as doing a dance or rapping 90's style, while praising Rayman for what he has done.

Rayman Origins

The Magician in Rayman Origins

The Magician makes his next appearance in the sequel game, Rayman Origins. The Magician is first encountered at the beginning of the game: he is found inside his distinctive top hat, which is sitting on the ground outside the Snoring Tree. Each time one of the players jumps on the hat, the Magician offers a few words of advice. The hat appears in many places throughout the game, and the players can jump on it at any time for tips relevant to their current situation. However, there are some hints at his darker side; he makes sarcastic comments, and has little concern for the heroes, beyond using them as a source of Lums. Sometimes he even questions Rayman's position as a hero.

At the end of each level, he is seen holding a test tube which he uses to count the number of Lums collected by the players. In exchange for certain numbers of Lums, he gives the heroes Electoons, but if the players reach the top of the test tube, they receive a Lum Medal. In these post-level screens, the Magician can be seen fully: he is revealed to be a Teensie rather than a member of Rayman's species, and his hair is now grey rather than blonde.

Mr Dark – possibly the Magician in disguise – as seen in the Rayman Origins trailer and site. He never appears this way in the game.

In The Reveal, the final level of the Moody Clouds and the game itself (excepting the Land of the Livid Dead, a bonus level), the heroes reach what they think is Mr Dark's headquarters, only to find the Magician working the controls of the diabolical machinery encountered throughout the level. Caught, the Magician spins round and gleefully rips the golden star off his hat before pulling a lever, causing the heroes to fall down a trap door, where they must fight mechanical recreations of the Daisy and Mocking Bird bosses. Once these have been defeated, the heroes climb back to the office of the Magician, where he distracts them with a disco number before running away. The heroes must them pursue him through a storm of falling debris and broken machinery as the Moody Clouds begin to disintegrate. Eventually the Magician hops onboard an airship, and the heroes must pursue him on the backs of their mosquito friends. Eventually the airship crashes into the fiery core of the Moody Clouds, causing an enormous explosion. The heroes fall from the sky and land back at the Snoring Tree, where the game began.

The game does not make it clear whether the Magician is an admirer of Mr Dark, or Mr Dark himself. According to an early version of the game's script, a much more complex storyline was once intended. The Magician, real name Ales Mansay, was bullied and ostracised by the other Teensies at magic school for his poor magical abilities. Although he helped Rayman to overcome Mr Dark in the original game, the Magician secretly admired the villain's dark and mysterious nature, and wanted to emulate him. He also developed a hatred for the Bubble Dreamer, whose nightmares had repeatedly overcome the Glade of Dreams and were a constant threat to its inhabitants. The Magician concocted a plan. He hid a microphone in the Snoring Tree, so that the heroes' snoring would irritate and ultimately start a war with the Livid Dead. Throughout the game, he pretended that he was still a friend of the heroes, allowing him to collect Lums from them in exchange for Electoons which they could use to reach new levels. The Magician used these Lums to power his mechas: gigantic machines which he was building to take over the Glade of Dreams, imposing order and eliminating the chaos of the Bubble Dreamer's nightmares. Eventually the heroes reach the Magician's headquarters in the Moody Clouds and put a stop to his plans.

Almost all of this storyline was removed from the final version of the game. It is unknown whether the developers changed their minds about the storyline itself, or removed it for some other reason. In its final state, the game seems to imply that the Magician is no more than an alias of Mr Dark; this conclusion is supported by the game's manual, which claims that Mr Dark is in the game. However, there are some hints that the original storyline may still be the case: a microphone disguised as a flower can indeed be seen in the Snoring Tree, and the walls of the Magican's headquarters are decorated with posters which show silhouettes of a different-looking Mr Dark, with a wide-topped hat and long, spindly arms. One of the Magician's posters even says ‘♥ Mister D’.

Image gallery