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: