Rayman!

i love lost media. like, i adore it and could talk about all different kinds of media thats, well, lost. its just so incredibly fascinating to me! i found this rayman lost media iceberg online somewhere during the first few months i started getting into rayman, and obviously i freaked out. so i looked into each entry and wrote about them all! i wrote all of this quite a while ago, but i think it would be nice to include them all here.

sky

rayman's training:

this entry refers to an animated short film which was premiered at the film festival called 'IMAGINA 1998'. this short film consists of rayman (in the rayman 2 style) fighting a sentient punching bag. he pretends to fall off of the log theyre both fighting on, which makes the punching bag confused. rayman surprise attacks it, leading the two to start taunting each other, and eventually after a few more swings, rayman wins the fight.
the short film was lost for some time, until on march 12th, 2022, someone found the short film in the files of a ps2 prototype for BG&E. though the short doesnt contain audio, its available on youtube ^_^

rayman 4:

rayman 4 was an unreleased game for the rayman series. the game was cancelled and discontinued after four months of development. luckily though, there have been some test animations, concept art, and plot elements released! the plot seemed to be based around rayman partaking in a training camp of sorts with other ubisoft characters. also, the game would have been kind of a retelling from the first rayman game, including rayman revisiting locations from the first game.

surface

rayman garden:

rayman garden was an extremely obscure puzzle game only available on mobile phones. it came preinstalled on the mitsubishi trium eclipse, the mitsubishi m21i (i-mode), and the mitsubishi m320.
the game is basically a maze game that challenged your skill by memorisation. the aim of the game is to find all of the lums while avoiding obstacles, monsters, and dark rayman.

shallow waters

my fair lacmac:

my fair lacmac was the fifth almost-finished episode of the rayman animated series. the series was cancelled after four episodes (damn), leaving the fifth one being unfinished last minute, with barely any content available of it, apart from a couple of poor quality screenshots of the episode.

rayman snes port:

i wrote about this entry a seperate time, so ill shorten this as best as i can. this was a cancelled prototype of the first rayman game, which followed the og plot for rayman (which is a whole other thing in itself). it seemed to be a two player game as well, because in the pictures that micheal ancel had revealed, there are two bulkier looking raymans (which are adorable btw). in 2016, micheal shared two pictures of the SNES prototype, which had never been seen before. he said that this version was never completed and was lost forever, but about a month later, it was confirmed that it had been found by Frederic Houde!

rayman origins beta:

i presume that this entry is referring to all of the scrapped content that wouldve been used in rayman origins. some examples are the scrapped nympth, fire lum, photographer, mr dark, and other enemies.

rayman classic:

rayman classic was the mobile port of the original rayman game on the apple ios, and was removed from the app store in the summer of 2018 in most regions for unknown reasons. luckily though, theres a ton of footage available, clearly confirming its existence.

nearing the depths

rayman 2 prototype:

rayman 2 was originally going to be a 2d game like the first instalment, but it was scrapped when the developers saw the new (then) crash bandicoot game, which opened their minds to new ideas, and so they started on the 3d rayman 2 that we know today. the plot of the cancelled prototype was about robot invaders from space arriving, with rayman having to defeat them, as he rescues his friends from imprisonment, including betilla. fun fact- in rayman 2, once you get at least 720 lums, you can play a level from the original scrapped prototype after the credits. ^_^

globber:

this was a minigame available on the rayman 2 website. the name of this browser game was a pun referring to the game ‘frogger’. the aim of the game is to guide globox through traffic, avoiding cars, as well as jumping on logs on a river. also, this was most likely made around the time when globox was still called globber, before the name was given to one of his sons instead. oh yeah btw i should mention that when globox gets hit by a car, he fucking dies and blood splatters everywhere. i am not joking, this is official. the game was officially found on may 7th, 2024!