When I started working on a Rayman game, it all started with trees and strange creatures.” “When you’re a child, everything seems huge and extraordinary. “As a child, I spent a lot of time close to the rivers, chasing strange insects, climbing on big trees,” begins Ancel when asked about the distinctive look of Rayman’s world.
You get to ride this cute looking chap on one of Rayman’s shooting sections. The end result was that rather than feeling like last-gen technology – both the Mega Drive and SNES’s popularity was slowly starting to fade – Rayman felt fresh, exciting and new. By far the most interesting aspect of Rayman, though, is the fact that when the press and public were fully embracing 3D, the game’s stunning 2D visuals made it stand out from the crowd. Rayman’s distinct stylings came from a number of different sources, with Ancel citing Celtic, Chinese and Russian fairytales as a major source of inspiration for the vibrant world and the unique characters that inhabit it. The talented Ancel soon procured himself a bigger project in the form of Brain Blaster, which was eventually published by Ubisoft in 1990, paving the way for his cherished Rayman project. Ancel soon met up with Nicolas Choukroun in Montpellier and began creating the visuals for some of his games, including Pick ‘N Pile and The Intruder.
#RAYMAN SHOT SOFTWARE#
He’d fulfilled his dream of working in videogames at the tender age of 17, when he created a demo for French software developer Lankhor.
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“At the time I was simply trying to teach myself to draw, make music and write code in order to realise my dream of making videogames.”Īncel later returned to those early sketches in 1992, when he began work on Rayman. “I first drew Rayman when I was just a teenager,” recalls Ancel when we questioned him about the quirky character’s early origins.
#RAYMAN SHOT FULL#
Rayman’s beginnings are shortly due to come full circle thanks to the incoming release of the episodic Rayman Origins for Xbox Live Arcade and PSN, so we felt it was the perfect time to catch up with developer Michel Ancel and find out how the original tale began. Rayman’s distinctive 2D visuals made it stand apart from many other early PlayStation games. It might not deliver many new mechanics, but the uniqueness of its hero, its gorgeous-looking visuals and the cleverly designed stages all combined to make Rayman one of the PlayStation’s most popular games, and it went on to spawn two 3D sequels and numerous other popular spin-offs, including the aforementioned Rabbids franchise. Here, Michel Ancel recalls how the limbless hero came to be.įirst appearing on the PlayStation right at the beginning of the machine’s life, it’s gone on to become a massive success for Ubisoft, with conversions of the original game appearing on everything from the PC to the Game Boy Advance and, more recently, Nintendo’s DSiWare service. Rayman is one of gaming’s success stories, catapulting creator Michel Ancel into the limelight and creating a massively successful spin-off in the form of the Raving Rabbids games.