Poor Rayman. Poor, poor Rayman. The guy can’t seem to catch
a break. His first game debuted on the original Playstation at a time when
anything less than cutting edge 3D graphics were looked down upon. Thankfully,
some saw that the game could hold its own, playing as well as any 2D platformer
at the time and using the PS1’s graphical capabilities to create a matte-painting
aesthetic that still holds up today. Hardly something you could say about the
“cutting edge 3D games” so many were distracted by when overlooking Rayman’s
first Playstation adventure.
Rayman still was able to spark a franchise; just one that
didn’t quite understand where it stood in the world. Later games tried to push
into 3D, completely abandoning the gameplay and art style that made the
original so charming and fun to play. Then after a few sad Gameboy launches (and
even a Rayman golf game), the final blow came when someone at Ubisoft decided
that the best way to revive Rayman was to fill his next title with a bunch of
annoying, babbling ‘Rabbids,’ effectively turning the franchise into a series
of mini-games designed to show off Nintendo’s motion controls. The new games
sold decently, mostly due to the first Rabbids game debuting on the enormously
successful Nintendo Wii, but in the process, losing the platformer audience
that the series appealed to from the beginning and ultimately losing its new
casual audience after the demand for such trivial compilation games reached
sequel saturation. Poor, poor Rayman seemed destined to fade away.
