The original Rayman is a 2D platform game developed and published by Ubisoft on September 1995 for the PlayStation and Jaguar. Early in its development, Rayman was planned for the Super Nintendo and the game featured a 2 players coop mode and different graphics. It seems that Ubisoft decided to move the project to the new CD-Rom consoles and they hired animators from a cartoon company which has considerably improved the graphics. [Info from Wikipedia]
TYKUN found some images from the unreleased Super Nintendo version in french magazine Pix’N’Love #13. In the article we can read:
Long before the Jaguar and PlayStation versions, Michel Ancel and his team were working on Rayman for the SNES. Even if it was in advanced development, the game was stopped in favor of the CD support. As exclusives, here are a few pictures from this aborted version
The original story was going to be about an eleven-year-old boy named Jimmy. Jimmy takes advantage of the realms that he discovers within his computer to create a fantasy world called Hereitscool.
Thanks to Adamis and TYKUN for the contributions! A few more details on the cancelled SNES version of Rayman can be found in Pix ‘n Love book “L’Histoire de Rayman” (french only) by Michaël Guarné, you can buy it from Amazon FR, Amazon USA, Amazon UK or Amazon IT.
Images:
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Wow, nice find. that’s a SNES proto I’d love to see in action.
I like its colorful style *.*
I’d like to find this proto too :)
I wonder if there was a playable version of this… and if it was saved by someone
In Rayman Origins, Ubisoft brings back the 2 player Co-Op idea from this! Genius! Is that a girl ray-person?
It would be awesome if Ubisoft would add a video of the SNES version into Origins :P
Hasn’t anybody thought of trying to contact michel ancel to see if he still has this I know its impossible but its worth a shot.
From: Retro Gamer Load 90, ‘The Making Of:Rayman’:
Michel Ancel talks of:
Not doing Rayman on:
The Atari ST, as interest in that format was starting to wane.
The SNES, as he thought it’d struggle with the huge amount of data he wanted to put into the game.
So it was decided to move it to the SNES CD, this was scrapped, so he moved it to the Jaguar, as he felt it was the best console (at that time) capable of displaying the graphics he/the team wanted to do.
He also said:
Playstation was more powerful than Jaguar, easier to code for and the CD capacity was ideal for storing games giant textures..
And that game took far longer than planned (2 years) as the constant change of hardware, from 1 console to another, proved to be by far the biggest technical issue the team faced.
Hi. This was recently updated on GameSpot – the original creator found the unfinished prototype and uploaded 4 new images to his Twitter (or was it Instagram?) account. Yes, you can find those images in the GameSpot article.
ENJOY!
Hi everyone, Idem on the french website Jeuxvideo.com, who shows this amazing treasure today : http://www.jeuxvideo.com/news/556824/michel-ancel-retrouve-une-version-snes-de-rayman-dans-ses-cartons.htm
I wonder if Michel Ancel will dump this one and only existing prototype cartridge of the game, to save it…
http://www.geek.com/games/rayman-snes-prototype-discovered-by-creator-michel-ancel-1676274/
Rejoice everybody! The ROM has been finally dumped :-D https://twitter.com/ocornut
http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/2017-07-04-raymans-lost-snes-prototype-unearthed
I hope Frederic Hodue can somehow find the more far along ROMs that features multiplayer, enemies, bosses & more :-)
http://www.arcadeattack.co.uk/frederic-houde-rayman/
Superb interview here.
I’ve asked Arcade Attack to see if there’s any truth to the claim Ubisoft were at 1 stage considering releasing Rayman on Jaguar CD, sometime after the cartridge release.
There’s a French interview with Fred Markus from 2000 in which, if Google translation is correct, he states the Jaguar version was started as soon as they saw the Jaguar Hardware demos…but they knew Saturn and Playstation would have similar or better 2D capabilities. ..
Sony and Sega saw the Jaguar version and wanted Rayman on their consoles.
Would be a little surprised if this is 100% true of Sony as going by what Team 17 said about difficulties convincing Sony to allow Worms on Playstation, Sony seemed keen to promote the Playstation on it’s 3D strength.
2D was seen as yesterday’s news.
Sega by comparison still very keen to promote 2D, in Japan especially.
Still..food for thought and nice to hear comments on the game from someone new.