Rayman has quite a significance to the legend of Ubisoft. The brainchild of artist Michel Ansel, this lad without limbs turned a middling French developer into one of the premier European names in gaming. His series of games went strong from his debut in 1995 all the way to 2006, then things started to get a bit more furry and rabbid-y. Since then, Rayman has come and gone, due to his never getting the foothold he once had. Rayman has been left in the shadow of the house he helped build, as franchises like Far Cry and the Rabbids eclipsed him.
So, imagine my surprise when Digital Eclipse revealed a re-release of the original Rayman to celebrate the character’s 30th anniversary. It was quite the shock to see something like this from Ubisoft to celebrate the milestone, especially since the company did nothing for the franchise’s 25th birthday. Acknowledgement is appreciated, but what’s the deal with this new game? As someone who has played the original Rayman too many times, I eagerly dove right in.
Rayman 30th Anniversary Edition is a welcome tribute, as it assembles 5 versions of the original game in a slick container, as well as pairing it with an in-depth documentary on how this 1995 game came to be. As of right now, I would call it the best way to play the original game, but that still doesn’t mean some improvements could be made.
A (Mostly) Graceful Return
Rayman, on its own, is still a very fun game even 30 years down the line. A culmination of European platformers that made a home on the Amiga and Atari ST, Rayman brings amazingly detailed sprite work and backgrounds to fantastical worlds of wonder that just so happen to contain some of the most difficult platforming to grace the 5th generation of consoles.
There’s something very intrinsic to Rayman that you can see all the way from his first entry, and that’s the focus on atmosphere. While some worlds have bright and cheery music alongside colorful environments, other locations are dark and moody, with deep synths and environmental noises to accompany the ambience.
The details of the environment and the fluidity of the animations make it feel like you’re playing a cartoon, one that has a fully realized world for you to explore. You feel thrust into this world filled with living instruments, space mamas, and a candy chateau, and it doesn’t feel strange at all. It just works, and that sort of atmosphere permeates through each Rayman game. That, combined with the tight controls and intense level design, makes Rayman a joy to play still in 2026.
This collection holds 3 home console versions of Rayman from the original PlayStation, Atari Jaguar, and MS-DOS. It also includes 2 portable versions that were initially released on the Game Boy Color and Game Boy Advance. With how many versions of Rayman there are, and the small differences between them, having them in a collection like this makes it super easy to switch between them and see those differences firsthand. I’ve never played the Jaguar version of Rayman, but through this collection, I was able to try it out and actually discover that the game is easier on Jaguar than it is on PlayStation.
All of the games have representative screen filters and borders as well, for those who want an experience similar to looking at the screen you would’ve been playing each version on. Home console ports having borders that look like old school CRTs, and the portable ports looking like Game Boy screens, was a very cute detail.
Generally, the emulation quality present in this collection feels pretty good. I didn’t notice any hang-ups, hiccups, or graphical bugs while I was playing. Having these games available on modern platforms with great performances is a great relief and the perfect excuse for fans to replay the games or try them for the first time. I do wish that video enhancements like native widescreen were implemented with the emulation, but for what we have, it is more than serviceable.
All games have the ability to rewind a few seconds using the triggers, a highly welcome feature for this game. Rayman is notoriously difficult, containing spikes everywhere, damage, knockback, physics-based momentum, and the inability of being able to control yourself very well while in the air. You will die. There is no avoiding it. That is, unless you use one of the many optional enhancements Digital Eclipse has included.
These include infinite lives, infinite continues, max HP, or even just unlocking all the levels and abilities from the get-go. Much like the rewind ability, having these enhancements is a highly welcome feature, especially for accessibility. There might be some Rayman experts out there who can blast through the game, but for the people who might be revisiting the character’s debut, or the first timers who haven’t experienced the game before, it allows them to experience the entirety of what the game has to offer without too much frustration.
Now, to get to the elephant in the room: the music. The soundtrack of the original is one of the most iconic pieces of its identity. Remi Gazel crafted music that perfectly fit the tone of each area you explored, whether it was a dark jungle or a land made of giant art supplies. He understood the emphasis on atmosphere that made the game unique and supplemented it with tunes that’ll keep your head bopping while hopping around, thanks to a mix of fun big band tunes mixed with softer ambient tracks. Remi passed away in 2019, and it seems like there might’ve been some trouble with the rights for the music, because Christophe Heral, the composer of Rayman Origins and Legends, has completely redone the music in the PlayStation and DOS ports of the game.
The omission of Remi’s original tracks is devastating because it holds so much importance to the experience of playing Rayman. That’s not to say Heral’s music is bad, far from it, but it’s something that you can’t just replace. The music Heral composed is good and goes for a much more whimsical feeling, but his talents are much better used in a new Rayman game than trying to mask itself as something old. It also doesn’t help that it felt like the timing of the new music was off, as tracks would randomly meander in and out of existence as I was playing. It might sound strange to say, but it broke the immersion that the older game had on lock.
Thankfully, these aren’t the only new offerings in the anniversary edition. Alongside the extra quality-of-life features and changes to the soundtrack, you can also look through behind-the-scenes videos and scroll through content that never made it into the final version. While I loved these additions, much like with the other new features, they are not without flaw.
Discover the Origin of the Icon
This isn’t just a collection of ways to play Rayman; it’s also an archive for everything related to its development. Digital Eclipse is known for assembling so-called “Interactive Documentaries,” and that expertise is utilized greatly here. You get such an unprecedented look at the history of Rayman, both leading up to the release and seeing its long-term impact in the decades since 1995. It’s all presented in a timeline with Rayman himself jumping from platform to platform with information boxes.
There are dozens of interviews with key individuals such as lead developer Michel Ansel, programmer Frederic Houde, and lead artist Alexandra Steible, among others, talking about all manner of topics. They describe the process of coming up with the Rayman idea, releasing the final product, and the decisions that made the game what it is today. People who are very much into learning how games are developed, or those who are fans of listening to directors’ commentaries for movies, will love the insight these creators provide.
They also provide tons of concept art, key art, advertisement scans, and magazine articles for visual accompaniment, along with the blurbs they have written for each stage in the timeline. Some platforms even let you jump down to give even further context to the main info box above. It’s all presented very well, and you can tell that the team at Digital Eclipse put a lot of heart into this collection.
The dedication to history in this collection is really cemented with the inclusion of the proof of concept for Rayman made for the SNES. It’s so fascinating to be able to finally play this rumored prototype and see how it was further developed. It’s fascinating to see just how dark and industrial they originally intended the game to be. They also included the original 90-page pitch bible that both Ancel and Houde created to present their ideas to Ubisoft higher-ups, a document that has never seen the light of day until now.
While having the playable prototype included is very nice, there are a few other prototypes shown that should’ve been included as well. For example, we see screenshots of a more developed version of the SNES prototype with multiplayer and a HUD. It would’ve felt a bit better to play that version as opposed to the one we got, which is very bare-bones.
At the very least, having the 2D prototype of Rayman 2 included should’ve been a no-brainer, since the latter half of the documentary talks about it in depth. It wouldn’t even have been the first time it was playable, since it was included as a secret in the original PlayStation version of Rayman 2. Overall, though, this is still a good re-release, regardless of your experience with the franchise.
A New Beginning?
The Rayman 30th Anniversary Edition is a great way to play the game that made Ubisoft what it is today. It puts all the game’s various ports into one cohesive package and runs with very few compromises on modern platforms. Additionally, it’s paired with the wonderfully in-depth retrospective, where you can learn just how Rayman was brought to life. All in all, it opens up the doors for new and old fans to come back and really appreciate the origins of such an iconic character. The additions here have brought this 1995 game to modern standards. They help new players get through what is usually a pretty difficult game to complete, and make the experience for returning players nicer than ever.
There are just a few small snags that stop this collection from being truly great. The exclusion of the original soundtrack, the lack of any new visual enhancements, plus the omission of further playable prototypes make the collection often feel like a massive case of missed potential. That definitely isn’t to say this collection isn’t bad, and things could’ve always been worse. We could’ve gotten nothing again. Ubisoft brought on the best team they could have for a collection like this, and for that, I do give props. Digital Eclipse clearly put in the work. It shows me that Ubisoft is willing to pay attention to their breakout star again.
Within the retrospective, there’s a letter that Ubisoft leaders sent out to executives. It goes over all the future titles on the horizon, but it spends a fair chunk celebrating the achievements that Rayman obtained. You can see just how excited the future is for the company, as talks start about plans for a sequel. Rayman is an important game. It helped build the house that would bring us Assassin’s Creed; he joined the likes of Mario and Sonic in becoming an iconic face of gaming, and it puts into perspective how much Ubisoft has changed. With his 30th anniversary done and dusted, I hope that new eyes and appreciation will bring the limelight back to our limbless boy. Who knows, maybe the next time we’ll see him will be in Rayman 4?
Disclaimer: Rayman 30th Anniversary Edition was reviewed on a PlayStation 5.
