THE MAKING OF RAYMAN 2

ORIGINALLY PLANNED AS A 2D GAME, RAYMAN'S SEQUEL QUICKLY MOVED INTO THE THIRD DIMENSION. HOWEVER, CREATING A 3D PLATFORMER PROVED TO BE CHALLENGING, PARTICULARLY WITH MANY MEMBERS OF THE TEAM NOT USED TO THE NEW TECHNOLOGY THAT WAS REQUIRED...

- GUY MIQUEL-ALBERT

Rayman, as a character, was fully created by the French game designer Michel Ancel during his teenage years. When he decided to present his Rayman videogame project to Ubisoft, he brought a 150-page file describing the whole game and a demo. Totally convinced, the Guillemot brothers gave him two years to create his game for the expected Super Nintendo CD-Rom hardware. The ways of videogame history decided otherwise and Rayman became an Atari Jaguar project, and was also ported to the incoming PlayStation, thanks to Ubisoft's recently created Tokyo branch.

Often considered as reflecting his designer's somewhat eccentric personality, Rayman is a 2D cartoon-style character deprived of arms and legs, capable of launching his fist to defeat opponents or flying short distances thanks to his helicopter hairstyle. Very unique artistic and graphic designs helped the game reach quite a commercial success, meaning a sequel was inevitable.

Originally designed as another 2D platformer, the arrival of the first 3D games changed the development teams' direction.

Olivier Palmieri joined Ubisoft as a level designer on Rayman 2 in February 1998, soon after he graduated. "The Nintendo 64 had just been released in France and a new era of 3D platformers was born with the advent of Super Mario 64, among other games," he recalls. "It seemed interesting to us to take advantage of this additional dimension." To avoid damaging Rayman's reputation, Ubisoft first launched the development of another 3D platformer named Tonic Trouble.