Rayman is a 1995 platform game developed by Ubi Pictures and published by Ubi Soft. The player controls Rayman, who must pursue Mr. Dark to recover the Great Protoon that used to keep the balance between nature and the people of Rayman's valley. The player must navigate the valley, defeat enemies with abilities gained throughout the game, and free captured Electoons, while also encountering a boss at the end of each thematic world.
Michel Ancel originally conceived Rayman as a teenager, and was later able to realise the concept after being hired by Ubi Soft in 1989. The game initially targeted the Atari ST, and then the Super NES CD-ROM, but development was moved to the Atari Jaguar after the peripheral's cancellation. Ancel incorporated several childhood memories into the design and was soon joined by a larger development team. Ubi Soft made Rayman a launch title for the PlayStation in North America and Europe to compete with Japanese platform games on the console.
Rayman was first released for the PlayStation on 7 September 1995, and shortly thereafter for the Atari Jaguar, Sega Saturn, and MS-DOS. The game received positive reviews, with praise going towards its atmosphere, visuals, and soundtrack, though some criticized its high difficulty and lack of originality. Rayman became one of the best-selling PlayStation games and would become the first entry in the Rayman series. A 30th Anniversary Edition for modern platforms featuring bonus content and a compilation of ports, including a prototype of the cancelled Super NES version, was released in February 2026 in partnership between Ubisoft and Digital Eclipse.
Gameplay
Rayman is a side-scrolling platformer. The player controls Rayman, who must navigate six thematic worlds. Each level hides six cages of captured Electoons that Rayman can free. Additionally, he can collect blue crystals, "Tings", and gain an extra life whenever he has obtained 100 of them. If the player loses their five lives, they would need to load their save file or restart the game. Rayman occasionally gains new powers, including the ability to fly, run, and hang from platforms. Modifications to his detached hands include grabbing and punching distant entities, the latter known as the "telescopic fist".
A boss must be defeated at the end of each world, requiring the use of the previously gained abilities. Rescuing all Electoons in the first five worlds grants Rayman access to the final world, the Candy Château, the hideout of the final boss, Mr Dark. When Rayman interacts with the Magician, who is hidden in various levels, he can access hidden rooms that grant him Tings or extra lives if beaten in a given time.
Plot Rayman lives in a valley that, thanks to a magical orb known as the Great Protoon, has the people and nature living in harmony. One day, Mr Dark steals the Great Protoon and defeats its guardian, Betilla the Fairy. As a result, the Electoons that used to orbit the Great Protoon scatter and many are imprisoned by villains that appear in the Great Protoon's absence. Upon Betilla's request, Rayman sets out to recover the Great Protoon and free the captured Electoons. Mr Dark observes as Betilla guides Rayman though his quest and eventually kidnaps her. Rayman, having retrieved all Electoons, confronts Mr Dark in the Candy Château. However, Mr Dark takes away Rayman's telescopic fist and traps between walls of fire that close in on him. Electoons return Rayman's fist at the last moment, such that he can defeat Mr Dark and retrieve the Great Protoon. In the epilogue, Rayman takes a vacation with his friends and former enemies.
Development and release
Early concepts and design
Rayman was created by French video game designer Michel Ancel. He conceived the character as a teenager in the 1980s, when he was learning to draw, compose music, and program to pursue his dream of making video games. In 1988, his animation skills led him to be one of the early hires for the nascent publisher Ubi Soft, which at the time was operating with from Montreuil with six developers. One of Ubi Soft's founders, Yves Guillemot, encouraged Ancel to pitch game ideas to the company leadership. He worked one his own developing a game prototype based on his concept of Rayman for the Atari ST, including six months spent on building an animation system. He teamed up with Frédéric Houde and, during a meeting with Serge Hascoët, Gérard Guillemot, Michel Guillemot, and Yves Guillemot, the duo pitched their idea using "a picture of a big, giant trombone and you had to imagine the player inside". Although the presented technology was in its research-and-development stage, Hascoët pushed for the game to enter into production, which Michel Guillemot agreed to take on.
Rayman was greenlit in 1992, and Michel Guillemot gave Ancel and his team artistic freedom. The game's style was inspired by Celtic, Chinese, and Russian fairy tales, as well as Ancel's childhood, having spent a lot of time by rivers, chasing insects, and climbing trees. When Ancel started work on the game, he began with trees and creature designs. Having become interested in rendering tools such as Autodesk 3ds Max, he chose to incorporate 60 Hz animations. Houde considered this impressive for a time where most games used sprites animated at five frames per second.
Before embarking on the creation of the settings, characters and animations, Ancel and Houde recruited the illustrator Eric Pelatan and the artist Alexandra Steible. The latter came from an animation studio and was tasked with drawing rough templates of animations and later study the results for them to be digitised. Olivier Soleil, an architecture student, was hired as a graphic designer in 1994 to work on the characters. Ancel initially envisioned a game revolving around the human boy Jimmy, who creates the online world Hereitscool. After it becomes infected with a virus, Jimmy travels into the world and inhabits the body of his in-game avatar, Rayman, to defeat it. This idea was later scrapped. Ancel defined his intent as seeking "a colourful platform game with breathtaking graphics, concrete animations, fantasy, humour and, above all, great playability". During development, four people worked on each world and the synchronisation of Rayman's attitudes.
Production and release
When Ancel noticed the waning public interest in the Atari ST, he pivoted the development towards the Super NES CD-ROM, a peripheral for the Super Nintendo Entertainment System. When Nintendo cancelled the peripheral in 1993, that version of Rayman was also scrapped. It was presumed lost until Houde rediscovered a copy dated 1992 in October 2016. With his permission, the programmer Omar Cornut released it online in July 2017.
Michel Guillemot eventually assigned additional developers to the project and allocated 15 million francs for its development. The production became split between two locations: While Ubi Soft's Montreuil headquarters continued to work on technical tasks, the creative team around Ancel and Houde worked from Ancel's hometown, Montpellier. The project's headcount grew to 100 people. The team moved the production over to the Atari Jaguar, a console they felt could handle the graphics they aimed for. Later, they decided to also bring the game to the PlayStation and the Sega Saturn due to their more capable hardware. Ubi Soft made Rayman a launch title for the North American and European releases of the PlayStation, seeking to outclass competing platformers from Japan by releasing it simultaneously with a new powerful system.
Rayman on the Jaguar was first displayed at the 1994 Summer Consumer Electronics Show. In late 1994, magazine advertisements announced Rayman as a title for the Atari Jaguar with a release in the fall or by December 1994. Pre-release promos of the PlayStation had advertised a release date of Rayman on 13 January 1995 in Japan. Later, Japanese magazines stated a release date for the PlayStation version as being June 1995. Similarly, American magazines reported a Jaguar release by June 1995, as well as versions for the 32X and 3DO, both of which were cancelled.
Rayman was released on 7 September 1995 for the PlayStation in North America. During September, it was published for the Atari Jaguar, and in November for the Sega Saturn. A version for MS-DOS was released in December 1995 in Europe and in North American in April 1996. Also in April 1996, a preview demo with the first of six worlds was released for the PlayStation and Sega Saturn.
The MS-DOS version of the game in particular later received several expansion packs. 1997's Rayman Designer (also known as Rayman's World in Europe) included a level editor alongside 24 new levels by the design team. 1998's Rayman by His Fans amassed 40 fan-made levels created through the level editor. 1999's Rayman 60 Levels contained 60 levels by designers at Ubisoft.
Reception
Rayman received a generally positive reception upon release, with critics praising its animations, atmosphere, and soundtrack. Eurogamer felt there was "no shame in admitting" that it was reviewed favourably. Tommy Glide of GamePro described the game as one of the best for the Atari Jaguar and commended it as a showcase of the console's capabilities, although he considered it inferior to the PlayStation version. Electronic Gaming Monthly similarly wrote that the Atari Jaguar version was an outstanding platformer but paled against the PlayStation version due to the lower audio quality and slow responsiveness of the controls. Glide appreciated the precise controls on account of the constant jumping, ducking, and dodging involved in the gameplay. Captain Squideo, also of GamePro, commented that the PlayStation version was a "dazzling delight" and proclaimed it to be one of the most visually appealing games at the time.
Next Generation, while noting a lack of original gameplay elements, believed the game set itself apart from many other platform games and had a true sense of depth and playability. The Entertainment Weekly writer Bob Strauss felt that the game may be the one that "ennobles the adolescent world of video games" and the likes of Disney animated films like Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs. Strauss exclaimed that the game was a must-have for those with a fifth-generation video game console. Many reviewers commented on the contrast of the game's difficult gameplay to its innocent visual presentation. Sam Hickman of Sega Saturn Magazine criticised the Sega Saturn version because of what he considered an overabundance of levels that played similarly with only varied attacks or an increased difficulty used as differentiation. Hence, he regarded the game "a bit too dull a bit too often", while also being "plain irritating and damned difficult" on occasion. Game Informer, while praising its visuals, believed the game was "the height of platforming challenge", with its high difficulty making it less memorable.