Life

Enables you to gain an extra life.

—Manual, Rayman Raving Rabbids (Game Boy Advance)

A life, as seen in the original Rayman game

Lives are power-ups found in the original Rayman game and Rayman Designer, usually hidden in secret areas or activated when certain events occur. They look like small statues of Rayman, with a dark purple base and a number 1 written on it. It is possible to catch them by touching them or throwing Rayman's telescopic fist at them, once he has received the Grappling Fist ability. When Rayman collects a life, the player gains an additional chance to restart from the most recent checkpoint should Rayman die. Any health Rayman has lost is also restored. When Rayman loses all of his lives, the continue screen appears, giving Rayman a chance to use one of his continues to recover his lives. In most of the versions, Rayman starts with 5 lives and receives a new one by collecting 100 tings.

In Rayman Designer lives, known as One-ups, function similarly to the original Rayman game. This time however, the amount of lives the player starts with in a level is determined by its difficulty setting. If it's set to easy the player starts with 1 life, if it's medium the player starts with 3 lives and if it's hard the player starts with 5. Upon losing all lives in a level, the player is sent to the map screen.

A life statue in the Organic Cave, a world in the handheld Rayman Raving Rabbids game

Artwork of the scrapped life from Rayman Origins

In other games

Although life statues do not appear in the Game Boy Advance version of Rayman 3, the White Lums have a similar function.

Lives reappear in the Game Boy Advance adaptation of Rayman Raving Rabbids, where they are silver in colour. Here they serve largely the same purpose as they did in the original game.

In Rayman Origins, lives were intended to make a return. Instead of statues, they appeared to be plush toys of Rayman, resembling more the icon of the Wanna Kick Rayman series from Rayman 3: Hoodlum Havoc. Lives were only seen in a beta version of the game, which also featured some other scrapped elements such as the Photographer. In the beta, Rayman could get a life just by touching special bubbles only found in secret rooms with Electoon cages. These bubbles act as roulettes, scrolling between various other items such as Blue Punches, Lums, and Hearts. With good timing, the players could gather a life, which, weirdly, makes a big Heart with inverted colours appear for a short period.

During final development, the lives (along with the roulette bubbles) were removed from the final version of the game. The developers decided this to get rid of the "arcade era" and provide a new and more positive gaming experience, as the player could lose as many times as necessary to gain skill without having to worry about being ejected from the game. This may suggest that lives won't appear in future games of the Rayman series.