This game broke me as a kid. My mum had to put in the 99 lives cheat for me all the time. 25 years later and she still remembers the button sequence. Good times
When I was a kid, I used to call in reinforcements from the other kids at school. They'd come visit, we'd get combat rations from my mom, and we'd spend multiple afternoons taking turns defeating this game. Some of us would show themselves as the most skilled, so eventually some fellow players became viewers, and they could get a turn again if we had to reset to an earlier level, with maximum backseat gaming enabled. Great times.
I really miss the way we used to play games as kids, now it's all online and even if I wanted I couldn't sit on a couch with my best friends to play a game because I'm the us and they're all spread around the world (south Africa, Congo, Romania, India, Japan, Scotland, etc...)
@@KyokujiFGCidk if most gamers were like me but 3D gaming was “in” by the mid 90s and i didn’t wanna play anything 2D. especially by the time N64 came out in 96. looking back, i missed out on many great 2D games like Symphony of the Night for example
I love the detail of the binocular silhouette on the overworld map. When you're selecting a level, you're watching from the POV of Mr Dark tracking Raymans's progress
There's nothing but detail and charms sprinkled in everywhere in this game. One of my all time favs from back then... Breaks my heart as to what the series became after this game. It was never as good or the same in anyway.
Thanks for making this video, believe it or not the speedrunning community actually learned something from you. At 33:55 you took a accidental hit which boosted you into the shrinking fairy, when optimized this can save a little bit over a second compared to grabbing the ring which is how we used to do it. :D
Reminds me of the Lion King on SNES, as a kid I would come back to that game every few weeks but I just could never nail the jumps where you’re swinging on the giraffes. Talk about a hard ass game! Not quite Rayman levels but close overall and even tops it in spots like the level I mentioned. Which I think is only the 2nd or 3rd level in the game.
Fun fact: the devs didn’t actually set out to make a hard game. Because deadlines were tight, the game wasn’t properly play-tested and since the devs were playing levels over and over themselves while designing, they all got extremely good at the game and knew what was coming. They only found out the game was punishingly hard when reviews came in
What's interesting that many devs aren't good at the games they've made. It feels like play testing during production should be a normal thing, like with any other craft
This is an observed phenomenon in game development, and the reason why external testing is so necessary; when you've been playtesting version after version of your game for literal months, or a year, or two - yes, you get ridiculously good at it. If you then adjust the balance and challenge of the game to your own skill at it, you're ensuring everyone else enters feeling like they've just been kneecapped before a big race against a deadly screen edge... 'cause that's what you just did to them.
That's always the 'trap' you fall into, when you are create and test things out over and over again. You'll easily develop 'blind spots'. When I make things, I always ask opinions of others, just to know how their train of thought goes and maybe I've overlooked something that is obvious to me, but not someone else. I actually liked Rayman being so difficult. Sure, there were some levels that really took the blood from under my nails, but how extatic I became when I finally made it!! I think these days, too many games are too easy on 'normal difficulty', where I start to wonder why the easy or very easy difficulties are for.
It always bugged the hell out of me how Rayman is smiling throughout the whole thing. I'm constantly struggling, dying over and over and occassionally squeeze through danger, one hit away from death, and he just smiles and walks like he's on a relaxed stroll.
I beat the scorpion boss but couldn't get to the final boss because all the little pink bastards weren't saved. Now I can't even beat the first area. I must have been amazing as a kid, or just patient/desperate.
It was kinda good. I don't suppose the first was mostly the rarest platformer. Going further got me trapped not knowing where to go when trapped in a pit.
I remember getting Rayman as a kid for my 6th birthday, my mum thinking it looked like a game aimed at kids my age. My dad, after watching me play and seeing how brutal it actually was spent countless weekends helping me as we struggled to eventually beat this nightmare of a game.
I never got very far in Rayman, but I remember we also had Rayman junior which was an educational game for math and language, so you can imagine the brutal platforming that requires quick reactions but now they also go “Quick what’s 3x9?!”. Was very much LEARN OR DIE. I didn’t get far in Rayman junior either
I remember that game cause my parents got us the game as a present thinking it was the original one. Funny thing is the language part was French or something and me and my brother didn’t know the single word of it. I’m amazed we got through as much as we did just by trial and error😂😂
Oof, it doesn't help that the edutainment Rayman games were even harder than regular Rayman, simply due to how... poorly designed it is. Most folks' consensus is that, at least.
Also you're probably already aware, but a very small team (mostly done by 1 person) recently made a Rayman 1 fangame called 'Rayman Redemption' and it's an absolute must play if you like some aspects of Rayman 1. It fixed every single issue i had with the original game (both gameplay and unsatisfying final boss wise) and added a bunch of brand new content that feels right at home within the game's design. I can't recommend it enough.
People who beat Rayman 1 back in the day are the same people now claiming that the new Doom's Ultra-Violence difficulty is easier than they anticipated. For a reason.
@@T0asty- Are they doing it the right way* though, I remember when Doom(2016) came out, the devs thought no-one would be able to finish it on Ultra-Nightmare(basically perma-death) and now people speedrun it, except the speedrunners are using exploits/glitches etc to miss out most of it. *I mean the way the devs intended the levels to be played/completed.
Doom UV is easy lol. i never finished rayman 1 as a kid. i have finished doom 1 and 2 on UV as a kid. and now i have finished doom 2016 and eternal on UV. so no i dont agree with your statement
There exists a PC fangame called Rayman Redemption which is heavily based on Rayman 1 that does something revolutionary. It adds infinite lives toggle.
I remember my grandma getting me this game for my birthday. She misunderstood and got me Rayman instead of Tomb Raider. Regardless, I loved the gift and I loved my grandma. But oh boy, was this game a pain for 9-year-old me to get through. I'd play this with my brother and sister, just to share the frustration of dying over and over again. Who knew Tomb Raider was going to be the easy between the two? 😅 Oh, nostalgia
When you see Mr Dark on the cliff looking through his binoculars, I used to think the black crease in his cape was a long gaping wolf-like mouth and it scared the shit out of me as a kid.
I was so happy when Origins came out and it looked so much like the original game. I was really disappointed when Rayman 2 & 3 were 3D. I was NOT a fan of early 3D games.
@@sergantawesom A few years ago, I bought a CRT specifically so I could use the light gun with my Atari 7800, and then I hooked up my Jaguar (which is the console I have Rayman for). After years of seeing these games look like pixilated garbage on an HD tv, it was amazing to see how good they looked on an anologue tv for which they were made.
Easily one of the most artistically beautiful and unique looking games i played as a kid and still to this day cherish dearly. The big chunky sprites, color palette, vibrant unique worlds... Without a doubt Ubisoft should have made Rayman their main mascot because for many people it certainly is and i am sure we would see so many more sequels than we got so far. You actually blew my mind by covering this game. Really awesome surprise to see it here and thank ya for that!
Hi, I was one of the game tester in Ubisoft Headquarters in Montreuil, France, between 1995 and 1996. I'm not credited in the game, because I was temp worker on this job, but Yes, Rayman was one of the most difficult but also fun game at this time... so Thank you for this video who bring me back 30 years back :D
my parents bought me this when i was like 4 years old. I remember making my mom defeat the first boss, the insanely scary mosquito. The mosquito terrified me so much I was unable to play, and had to have my big strong mom squash it for me. Thanks mom, love you!
@@t.kahraba763 As a kid yeah... Bzzzit The Mosquito was scary, but with practice I got through it and found you could beat him up even quicker if he appears off the side of the screen. Another bit near the start that was nerve racking was the rising flood... I hated that and the music made you panic. The furthest I could get before I was a teen was Band Lands with the lovely happy music, but then the difficulty spike really kicks in. It took me into my teenage years to beat the game... and same thing happened for Croc 1, lol. ; )
Ahah this reminded me of playing silent hill and resident evil with my mom as a kid. She solved all the puzzles, I was just in it for beating up the baddies!! Great memories. Moms are the best❤️❤️❤️
The game's visuals are sublime. Never really made the prog rock album comparison but that's definitely apt. My immediate thought was something like those old Supersempfft albums and music videos.
When I was a kid, my CD for this game had some issue and it would crash after about two stages. Now watching this video, I am really glad it did that lol
This is the game that both started and ended my mothers gaming addiction. I never realized untill now that she was the one who unlocked all the stages. When I saw the boss fights in this video I could not for the life of me remember having ever seen most of them. It was far too hard for little old me.
@@christophercarrasco154 Basically, yh. I'd keep playing and sometimes the save file would have more and less levels dependent on what my mom had been doing.
Oh the memories as a kid, raging through home haha. My dad always got pissed because he couldn't understand the fact we got angry about pixels as for 2 hours later he yelled at the TV because Michael Schumacher didn't won the Grandprix.
Yeah, many parents are extremely bigoted like that. "Why do your games have to be so violent?" … goes on to watch Topper Harley shoot dozens of people in a few minutes.
@@Kerbezena To be fair, it’s a different medium. There’s a distinct difference in that you as the player are causing the action to happen, vs passively watching a story. It happens to every generation, from books to cinemas, radio to TV, and of course video games. As I get older myself, and seeing the potential for VR… I have a feeling I’ll be one of those parents lol, worrying about kids enacting violent acts in VR games. The cycle continues
Fun fact: From the level with the art supplies forward the game was never play tested by the devs because of a lack of time. There is one bit that I remember a dev saying was edited last minute because the final play test session proved you couldn't advance and that's where it spawns in a platform or something in the art area by standing in a specific spot. After that the devs just prayed that what they had created worked because the game was being printed and they wouldn't be able to fix it.
I remember this being hard, and troubling. As a child, when I couldn't get all six thingies, I thought I'd messed up, and I'd assume when I couldn't reach something I wasn't good enough. Also, just hearing that "hic!" noise when Rayman gets hit is enough to make me shudder. ugh. Thanks for doing this so that I don't have to!
This was a great in-depth review. I love it when people really chow down on Rayman 1 and try to figure it out because it's my all time favourite game. I was one of those crazy kids who actually managed to beat the game as a kid without cheats. It did cost a bunch of blood, sweat and tears (literally) and almost a year of on-off playing.
> all time favourite game. > blood, sweat and tears (literally) and almost a year of on-off playing At this point it might be Stockholm syndrome, just saying 😂
There's a fan made reimagining of this game that makes it so much more stomachable and actually really good I really enjoyed it. Can play it like the old one or have failure just make you replay the level/checkpoint also the fact you didn't mention how much of a masterpiece the bandland song is and how jumping on the drums adds to that music and fits in with it perfectly. Such amazing design there
This game is brutal to an absurd degree. Ubisoft's CEO has gone on record saying Rayman 1 wasn't beta tested at all, only by the developers themselves, and it shows. Bullshit cage spawns, hitboxes, the placement of many obstacles, it ridiculous. Not to mention you HAVE to 100% the game in order to beat it. I beat it but had to use the 99 live code once.
I beat it as well, 100%, but only while using the infinite continues code. I remember thinking the entire time how positively insane it would be to try to beat it with*out* using that cheat, and only using three or five continues or whatever the default was. It was intensely difficult. I remember it clearly over 20 years later.
@@CompassIIDX I don't like throwing around the "artificial difficulty" buzzword because it's normally used by people who get filtered by games and refuse to get good, but this game is a prime example of that. Having limited continues while demanding perfection from the player is too much. Definitely in the top 3 hardest PS1 games along with Tomb Raider 3, another very hard game that made the baffling decision of bringing save crystals back after 2 had ditched them.
@@TechniqueSan It's not artificial difficulty tho. They made every late stage as hard as they could just so you waste all your life until you're good enough to pass it.
@@TechniqueSan I beat TR3 as well, and don't remember it being overly difficult. But I really loved early Tomb Raider and 100%'ed all the PS1 games. As I recall, the 'limited but save-anywhere' save crystals of TR3 were meant to be a compromise between TR1's unforgiving limited saving at specified checkpoints, and TR2's overly lenient unlimited save-anywhere design. So after the hell of 100%'ing TR1, TR3 probably felt much milder to me. (I am not a particularly proficient gamer by any means.) I agree Rayman went over the line for the default difficulty, certainly by today's standards. It's fine to have an optional punishing mode like that for those who want the torture, but today, Rayman's level design would almost mandate infinite lives and respawning-in-place, a la VVVVVV. Even then it would be known as difficult. (Again, like VVVVVV.) Some of the "hardcore" might scoff, but I'm cool with it; no way in hell would I have the patience to finish something like the original Rayman today, even while using the infinite continues cheat.
@@CompassIIDX I'd probably buy that if the PC version of TR3 did it as well, but it kept TR2's save anywhere system. I beat all Core TR games and I found 3 to have the most bullshit sections, not to mention the Nevada bamboozle. It's a great game though, nothing close to Rayman in terms of frustration.
I never beat it as a child but man I have some unforgettable memories with it. I was so was happy i became friends with that mosquito guy. I distinctly remember feeling happy about becoming friends and getting to fly around together. And sticking enemies with a plum on their head and then standing on their head and riding around was funny to me. What a phenomenal experience.
Something I love about "Was it Good?" reviews is how you review each world and give the game a good analysis, giving spotlight to different parts of the game, it feels like you're really diving into the game to give a proper view on it
I played this as a very young kid, I guess it really did toughen me up to play frustrating and hard games in the future - I now have this very sweet spot for games like pathologic and rain world torturing you lmao
I think I played few levels of demo on PC, but my first real contact with franchise was Rayman 2 (also on on PC). Still hard, but not as hard as what I remember from R1. Looking at the wiki it probably was Rayman Gold Demo, since I remember level in music land and that stuff was end of a game for kid like me.
Rayman hat mir auf jeden fall beigebracht, mich anzupassen und Hindernisse nicht nur auf eine Weise zu überwinden, sondern auch über den Tellerrand hinaus zu denken.
@@lokalnyork I LOVED R2 even more than 1, 3 was great too - The overworld OST from 2 is still engraved in my mind and fills me with heavy nostalgia every time I hear it haha
Now this is weird, You just covered Tomb Raider which I was playing a lot last week and also I randomly picked up Rayman cause I hadn't played it in like 20 years, and here you are again haha. Great work ! :)
Dude, you put up some of the most highest quality gaming content on youtube. It's like you naturally know what people want because you're putting out the content you want. Mad props.
Mate, you absolutely have to check out Rayman Redemption on Gamejolt. As the name suggests, it's a fan project dedicated to redeeming the original Rayman and make it an experience that's actually fun to play, which it achieves magnificiently. It doesn't just change a few levels either, it's a _complete overhaul_ of the entire game. New areas, enemies and mechanics were added on top of several quality of life improvements. The level of polish this project has genuinely makes it feel like it was an officially released Rayman game, not just a fan game. Seriously, you need to see this. It doesn't just need more attention, it _deserves_ it.
@@JeroenDStout Not surprising that growing up with Rayman 1 would turn someone into a masochist, then be disappointed by the lack of sadism in Redemption.
@@slenderminion2229 Yeah, there's probably some of that. Rayman and R:Redemption just are different games, in a way, each which is goo din their own way. For me Redemption just removed a lot of what made Rayman good.
@@JeroenDStout idk man the mega Antitoons in the final level (that one gauntlet excluded) and the way they sometimes punch you upwards but usually punch you sideways kinda fucked me up
I laughed a lot in the beginning, because Rayman 1 was actually my first ever game I played. My parents got it for me when I was around 4/5 years old due to me liking the cover of the game. Even until this day, whenever the talk about Rayman 1 comes up, my dad reminiscences how often my siblings and I begged him to clear something for us. As a child I just thought I was bad at the game due to being a kid and I didn't understand why my dad who was very into video games and good at them to the point he attended events in the early 2000s couldn't beat it. We never finished the actual game, because we got stuck at the scorpion. Fast forward to 2020 I picked it up again only to realize that this is probably the hardest freaking game I ever played. But it's a fun memory and it's nice how the first game of my life was most likely the hardest I've played. Really great review and I'm super happy to see people talk about Rayman all the way into 2022. Edit: Random fun fact as someone who digged up a lot up this game. Apparently it's so hard, because the developer's never play tested it. I don't know which documentary that was that I watched years ago and if this was true, but there's a ton of information for the first game out there, such as how Rayman only has no limps because the engine couldn't handle it etc.
Yeah, the play testing went as far as “does it function? Oh, it does? Ok, ship it” but not actually testing to see how fun it is. I remember playing the GBA version as a kid. A few years ago, I picked it up again, and was charmed until the fifth level murdered me about 20 times, I realized Rayman wasn’t as good as I wanted it to be.
I love hearing childhood stories with gaming. It brings me back to the past when everything was new to me. Anyways, thanks for sharing! I remember always wanting this way back then because of how beautiful it was, but I never got it.
I think you're the person that best explained Rayman's movement while jumping from slippery platforms. Most reviewers kinda don't bother with extreme specifics, but you explained it really well and in a way that makes total sense. Well done!
The most hilarious thing about this is that they later released an education edition of Rayman that very much *was* marketed towards kids. The only problem? It was just as brutally difficult. From what I can remember all these years later, they basically slapped some simple math problems onto existing levels, which resulted in a lot of stages being the same ridiculous platforming, just with arithmetic occasionally replacing an enemy or hazard.
Yes I still have ptsd from that game..When you chose the wrong answer,the game instead of instantly killing you,it first waited a few seconds just to give you a sigh of relief,then trapped you with multiple unkillable enemies and made you struggle in your final moments..I still vividly remember the art levels that had grammar questions
I have very fond memories of this game. It actually was my first real game - HA. My parents thought it was a kids game. I never beat it because I was not patient enough but my older sister did without using any cheat. I remember watching her play for hours - me just watching - and cheering her on (and also mocking her when she died). She was really good in platformers. So when I think back I only remember stunning scenery, tense moments and listening to the beautiful tune. So in a way I only remember the good parts of rayman. I think she finished the game 3-4 time over the years....
I'm late to this, but I wanted to add because you used the passcode to skip all cages, and you probably didn't see it. There are 2 cages in the mid to late game on the Ps1 that require PIXEL PERFECT timing jump and grabs to reach. This was edited in other versions to be easier, which is one of the other reasons why it's rated so high on the hard to beat scale. For some people, it was physically impossible to collect all cages.
OHHHH I really want to check this game out now. Must try some this week. Maybe load up that ps3 today on the liek 32 inch HDMI TV with a PS5 controller. Also itching for a knife only run on the regular difficulty of RE1. Did it already on the arranged mode dualshock version last year. Fun times!
This video randomly showed up in my recommendations, was immediately hooked. Love the in-depth discussions of mechanics and game design, delivered very well. Subbed!
This is one of the first video games I've ever played. Our ps1 had no memory card so when ran out of lives we had to restart the entire game over. My siblings and I were TERRIFIED of the mosquito battle. Took us a long time to beat that and the next stage where you rode it around. Farthest we ever got was the musical land with the slippery platforms that dumped you into spikes.
Did you not use the password system? The game was quite friendly to non-memory card users. It gave a code on your runs that you could type in to restart progress.
i had a cd for the Pc version, or DOS version, i know it was compatible with windows98. i think it had a password system or even save system? i only remember the final boss transforming into monstrosities and that evil version of you that followed your every move
other people have probably said this, but if not: The bitey fish at Eat at Joe's are piranhas. Like those from the first world, they can be punched Also, the energy balls from Mr. Skops don't home in on Rayman but rather on his fists. So you don't need to actually punch them, just make sure they follow the fist immediately back into Mr. Skops' face. That aside, i barely know who you are but this video has been *really* fantastic. There aren't many like it out there, perhaps spare for Hippocrit's/Gibbontake's three-part series on it and that was really flipping high quality as well. I'm very impressed with this and can't really imagine how much time and effort it takes to create a video like this. Thank you for having made this video, it's been a really great ride. Part of me hopes that one day you may do a video on Kya: Dark Lineage, but as a stranger on the internet i wish you fun and good luck on whatever future videos you might have planned.
this game was my childhood. not only I as a small child loved it but so did my older brother, my mom and everyone else. they were all so supportive in me beating the game haha I have really fond memories on this game and am happy for everyone else that does so
I'm actually shocked at how much of this game has been blocked out of my mind, I defo did all the levels except the final one (never found all the cages). Great vid.
Prior to 46:13 I was watching this and every time you said "I skipped this cage" or "I started avoiding cages all together, finishing the level was what mattered." I cringed because I knew that this requirement was part of beating Rayman. I didn't use the cheat for every cage but I sure did use the 99 lives cheat probably about 7 times
I used a guide to find all the bloody cages, but the only way I cheated was by remapping my keyboard (PC version) when Mr. Dark swapped my left and right.
Yeah, Josh kept bringing that up on purpose. He really wanted to nail in how the devs treat skipping cages as a mistake despite them being the biggest kick in the dick to find.
@@alexandredelevaux6865 to somebody like Josh he would be able to do both games and still love it with the near impossible puzzle or the in general hard difficulty of the games
YES!! I love the Oddysee series, definitely would like to hear Josh's take on the two original games, maybe even Stranger's Wrath too or eve Munch's Oddysee (despite it being pretty bad lol).
I don't think I ever got past the second world back when I was a kid . I remember asking for it for my birthday because it looked so colourful and fun.
This game. It is *stunningly* beautiful, the art, the music, the atmosphere, it's so aesthetically pleasing. With that said, I've tried to beat it since I was 6 years old, 20 years ago, 20 years of agony, and I have violently chewed and eaten at least 10 controllers.
I distinctly remember doing the blue mountains flight sequence at my grandmother's house while eating a bowl of pecan ice cream and biting something incredibly hard. I spat it out and it was one of my baby teeth. Now every time I think of Rayman I think of the feeling of teeth in my mouth.
Whenever I play this I think of eating banana-flavored cake at 7 AM after pulling an all-nighter while my family is sleeping. I get a certain taste in my mouth every once in a while that reminds me of those moments. Definitely planning on doing this again this summer.
@@Dante_Sparda_DMC I feel that. for a while in middle school I subsisted on toasted peanut butter and grape jelly sandwiches while playing EarthBound. The scent of toasted bread and grape jelly takes me right back to Mr. Saturn.
I know that Rayman 1 came out way earlier, but the "repeating the levels for all items" reminds me of Crash Bandicoot trilogy. You can feel the inspiration with how some levels were really difficult in Crash, although not as hopeless as here. Still, you had to collect every diamond (or at least color ones) to have the possibility to fight the final boss too.
I can literally replay the frustrations of that second level in my head as I watch this video. Those slippery surfaces and musical notes are some of the most PTSD inducing concepts ever concieved in a video game...
i was watching this video thinking i'd never played rayman but thought woah this is all so familiar,,, asked my mum about it in case she remembered and she said it used to be her favorite game on the ps1. she completed it multiple times to perfection without any tips/the internet, WHILE raising 3 kids on her own. i told her it's considered one of the hardest games released and she literally laughed and said that i have to be joking, she'd play the later levels to relax after a hard day at work. RELAX?? i don't know whether to be impressed or scared but what this video has taught me is that my mum is more badass than any of us will ever be
@@koyima i know that haha it was definitely way less hard for her than it was for all the kids playing it at the time !! but like even in this video josh the legendary professional gamer said it's a frustratingly difficult game that even he ended up using the cheat code for the final level bc he got frustrated haha
Hahahaha! That's hilarious :D. Man I remember when I finally beat this game (only beaten it once and it took me over 6 years) and when I finally did I was cheering for joy in my room as I did it. My Mummy heard me shouting and cheering and came up and asked what was going on and I told her I finally beat Rayman 1 she started celebrating with me as she knew how hard it was from watching me play it as a nipper :D.
This game is probably the biggest inspiration in platforming history in my opinion. You can see a bit of it on every modern platformer. I think Ubisoft kinda dropped the ball when they haven't made the new modern rayman games hard. My favorite childhood game. Didn't know I missed a level until very recently :).
I wanna bring attention to other 2 "version" of the game: -The first is Rayman advance which is a port of the first Rayman for GBA and it is insane! To be fair is, in theory, actually easier that the original version, cutting short some level, giving you more life, AND showing the invisible trigger with a glitter effect. But on the other hand the controls are far more sloppy, the field of view is smaller and the graphic is much more homogenous, making you confuse background and foreground. This cause level, like the one all dark with the spot of light and the one with the blue mattresses where you must go down (expecially this one), to require TAS level ability to complete not to mention finding the cages in. So this is the one recommended for masochists. -The second is Rayman Redemption who is a fan remake made by Ryemanni for Pc (downloadable for free from his site, by the way) that in addition to improving the game by adding new enemies and new levels, that seem to come directly from the creators of the first game, it fixes all the flaws you criticized by providing: three levels of difficulty, the possibility of exiting during a level section (keeping the progress and the cages open), saves accessible at any time outside the levels and the purchase of lives and indicator arrows for the cages, also finding a better purpose to the "coins" (the blue sparkling thingy) that you find in the levels. I honestly belive that this is the far superior version and i can't praise enough the love that clearly the creator feeds for the fanchise. This one is recommended for everyone who appreciates the original game but is unable to return to it due to the frustration it generates.
There is also the Rayman Brain Games spin-off, which has the same graphics of the original first game, similar stage designs but with language and math questions added to the mix, those resulting in either allowing the player to progress the stage for choosing the right answer or being punished with instant death for choosing an incorrect answer (which would often jump scare me as a kid). I'd say the two biggest flaws in that game are a) the Rayman 1 level of difficult platforming challenges in an educational video game that probably drove many kids away from it and b) its heavily compressed audio that only makes it harder for the player to understand the questions to be answered or instructions to be followed. If it's worth anything, it was through that game that I learned about the concept of odd and even numbers.
@@lupos2000 I had one of those games for English. Too bad the subject matter was a bit beneath me by then. Or maybe that was a good thing - too many instadeaths and I might have given up on English grammar.
My parents split when i was young, so id often go to my dads house to spend the weekend every few weeks. He had rayman 1 for the playstation and i loved it, i was probably about 7 or 8. Eventually my dad was out of the picture and, as a kid with fond memories of rayman 1, i was gifted rayman advance. I loved the hell out of that game, spent so much time on it. Hearing that the advance port is for masochists explains so much about my taste in games growing up lmao.
Something Nitro Rad brought up in his review that I absolutely love is that Rayman doesn't have a pulling up animation you have to wait for after hanging. You gain control and can jump off right after hanging. It's super smooth and helps keep momentum and flow.
I'm in the exact same boat. I played this when I was maybe 5 or 6 on PC. That game that crashed so many times but I couldn't get enough. I never finished it, because as a kid before decent guides were available I could never find all the cages, but I did clear every level. To this day, hearing the soundtrack makes me tear up because of the fond memories. Tbh I never realized this game was hard, I just played it until I got good at it, then I could clear the entire map without losing all my lives
thank your for this video, josh. i had this game as a kid and was stuck at the very first water rising level and even then i found the game to be incredibly hard. so i'm glad to now know that it was not my lack of plattforming skill that made this game impossible for me to beat :D good job beating it tho!
I JUST realised why I as a kid NEVER found the first mario all that tough despite so many others having a hard time with it....It was because I was used to this evil EVIL game... I don't believe I ever made it past the 5th level...but still played it a lot as a kid before I got mario a few months later and that took over. (I got games in a weird order.)
Man same I thought video games were just supposed to be like that at the time.Thought you were supposed to try times and times again.. then came the mainstream easy games. And I rediscovered the concept of struggling thanks to fromsoftware… and I started loving games again haha
This was my favorite game growing up! I used to play it with my dad on our old Windows 97/2000 or whatever it was. When it broke in a disc drive when I was 5, I was inconsolable. Flash forward to Christmas when I was 14, and lo and behold - a brand new copy sitting in the tree! My dad had found an old copy online. No gift has made me feel better before or since.
This game is a masterpiece in platforming, the music, visuals and gameplay were all amazing. There's a lot of creativity to the platforming too. I played the PS1 version, so this is possibly the hardest game I've ever played in my life (no cap). I've never beaten it 100%, not ONCE. Usually when I re-visited older games from my childhood, I was able to beat them easily. But not this one. The locations for some of the cages are so cryptic too.
when i played this game as a kid, it never occured to me that it was "sadistic" or "brutally difficult". i laughed when i punched an enemy, i laughed when i died, i was happy about every little bit of progress and the mosquito crying and rayman befriending it by patting it was the cutest thing. and every new level or change in tone/difficulty was just a new adventure. yeah, it got very hard, but it never felt like that was the focus that kept me playing. i think as a kid i just wasn't so dependent on NOT dying in a video game to NOT feel bad or getting to the end of a level as quickly as possible - in order to have fun or be fascinated by the whole thing. i felt the same way about dark souls 1 as a teenager. yeah, the difficulty (which really is just an illusion most of the time) was the selling point, but it was something else about its world that kept me playing. later with ds2 and ds3 i feel like that initial thing about ds1 wasn't really there anymore, it was just like an in-your-face "oh it's so tragic, you die over and over, it's a circle, the world is bleak and unforgiving and dark and diseased blabla". yeah, i know ಠ_ಠ
Dark souls 2 world was amazing. I thought he it was one of the better ones that handled the lore and the similarities in the story from the first one I thought was a nice touch. Also the dlc story was awesome.
I get this, very much so. Still found it took many lives to complete though, fun all the way through, apart from that world he showed in the beginning, hated that one.
That's because in 1995 rayman wasn't considered sadistic or brutally difficult, especially in comparison to the 8 and 16bit era games which were based on arcade ports intended to make money by killing the player. There's a reason a figure of speech for punishingly hard games used to be "nintendo hard".
I just have to say, thank you so much for taking the time to craft such a wonderful review. Sure I didn't remember how much I hated this game until now (childhood suppression and all) but my god was your narration perfection. I thought this game was hard but I didn't know how much harder it got after I quit for the sake of sanity. Thank you again for taking one for the team. Subbed!
My breaking point was defeating the penultimate level and realising I had to find every cage. I never did find every cage. I was playing on a gameboy advance away on holiday where I wouldn't have access to the internet. Thank you for showing me what the final level was.
I remember having such a struggle with this game. Eventually gave in and used the cheat code to open all the levels. Pretty game, but damn is it unforgiving. Great content Josh.
God I LOVED this game. Played through it when I was 10 with my best friend. We took turns playing whenever one died so the other go a try. It was INCREDIBLY hard. But beating the levels after what felt like hours was immensely rewarding. This truly is a non forgiving game. It wants to kill you. I actually played through it again years later and found it quite easy. Maybe I just remember most of the mechanics and timings but I breezed through it that second time. I think I tried to immediately find all cages, even replaying levels before advancing. That way I had more than enough lives at all times because when going through a level the second time to find the cages, I died less and left with a net positive in lives. So I never had to worry about running out of lives. Thanks for the awesome video! Now I wanna go back and play this again :)
Im actually happy to hear this game was seen as being so difficult. I remember playing this game and struggling. I think i played it on the Gameboy and playstation. I cant even remember how far i got, i just remember playing the game and liking it
Holy shit, I had the demo and these god damn musical notes just triggered some deep down memories. This helltrial is also the reason I completely avoided the Rayman franchise most of my life until I finally played Legends on the Ps4 - which is an awesome game. Thanks for the great vid.
I played this game as a young kid with my dad in the 90's and early 2000's and it actually taught me to memorize all those timings better than he ever could. I think it took us about two years or so to grind through it and get every single cage, but thinking back, it still gives me good memories and I probably could (and maybe should) replay it some day and see if I still can remember some of the hidden stuff.
This was one of my childhood games and i remember using the cheat codes for lives and finishing the game. That end level is BRUTAL. A few thing to note, though : the music is AMAZING. Rémi Gazel, the composer (RIP, cancer is always awful) made one of the best soundtrack of the time, i feel a little bad that it wasn't brought up during the review. And for Skops : the laser he shoots actually follows Rayman's fist, so if you launch it toward the boss it will go its merry way and hit him. Wonderful video by the way ! Always nive revisiting childhood memories and realizing it was BRUTAL (and then seeing speedrunners making it look like a breeze)
Great review. Did a very good of conveying the anxiety and frustrations of my first playthrough. These days I've played it many times and don't get destroyed as easily, but there still the few standout levels that make me go "Ah yes, this is one the sucky levels."
The thing about the cages, it was meant for you to redo maps, going back to easier ones to stock up on lives. Pretty much making it a grind fuelled by that "I will beat you!".
More people need to know about rayman redemption. A fan remake of the original on pc which looks and plays exactly like the original but it’s far more playable in terms of difficulty. The developer even added some great new levels as well.
It‘s actually amazing how many fond memories I have of this game even though it frustrated the hell out of me. I remember me and my brother playing this for hours and hours as kids figuring out each level. We made it all the way through but never managed to get all cages, so we couldn’t play the last level. Great game, that I don’t want to play again. The fan remake Rayman Redemption was nice to play.
This was one of my first games as a kid and I absolutely LOVED the whole look of it. I've always loved cartoons, and Rayman was the first game I ever saw that replicated the look of one. It was essentially the Cuphead of its day - I really can't understate how impressive it looked for its time (and it still holds up extremely well). But it was a bittersweet experience actually playing the thing. It was just way too hard for me. I'm pretty sure I never got any further than the first level or two of Band Land. The difficulty spikes so astronomically after the first world that it's legitimately shocking. I've still never beaten it. Despite its ludicrous difficulty, I'm genuinely impressed at the craft of it all. I've never played a platformer that squeezes every last bit of potential out of its systems and character abilities like Rayman does. Like you state in the video, they really left no stone unturned when it came to testing the player's understanding and mastery of the game's conventions. And the thoroughness with which each and every established convention is iterated on, remixed, subverted, and deconstructed is commendably superb. It's all just way too much for my personal capacity for frustration.
My family had a ps1 for many months before I owned any games, my siblings just played FIFA and F1 games. Eventually Christmas came around and I could get 3 games, so I get Worms, Croc, and this absolute nightmare. It really is a beautiful game though, the artstyle is so memorable and the character design is loveable. Great video Josh
Rayman Redemption thankfully includes a casual mode; which grants unlimited lives. Considering how deceptively brutal this game is, it's something many are going to be thankful for. Also, it in general includes a proper final battle with Mr. Dark.
Loved this game. Found it easy till about 1/4 of the way through, then it hit you hard. You feel a true sense of achievement completing this masterpiece.
Rayman made me feel so special as a child. The levels had something emotional to them in my experience. Probably made it easy to escape reality or something.
Same! I first played this age 5 and mum fondly remembered me saying to her during bandlands area that the music, " Gives me a happy feeling in my heart" 😅 This was my first game I owned and what a game to start on 💜
36:50 that was the very part which made Rayman the most difficult game ever for me. I was stuck forever at that point. Wasted hunderds of lives to pin point my jump, only to rush into those freaking pencils again and die. Not Battle Toads, not Turtles, not Bloodborne, it was this freaking game which was the hardest game for me period.
Played this the first time when I was 10. Finally beat it when I was 36. Boy was I proud. Took me only 2 weeks, an emulator to utilize quicksaves, and a few times looking up how to get to the cages.
Man this brings back memories. My gran sadly passed away a few years ago, but we had a PSone at my grans when i was a kid. Me and my bro used to play this all the time and my gran would have a go every now and then. For some reason she got hooked, and im not kidding, she was a beast at this game. She was completing some of the insane 'I Wanna Be the Boshy' difficulty levels like they were nothing. Cheers Josh for bringing back those memories.
Pretty sure that spoon is a frying pan, my dude. haha. Awesome video! This series is so much fun to watch, even if it isn't always fun for you to play through
Josh, are you going to do an episode on Rayman 2: The Great Escape? The atmosphere and platforming blew me away as a kid. Horrible camera was the only bad thing I remember.
I didn't have almost any problem with the second game, it was a lot easier... But the pyramid level was hell on earth, flying through those spike walls was hard as hell
what a blast from the past. good times, i only 100% it once as a child and the final level was my favorite. i also by accident figured out you can jump over rhe dark rayman trigger and just play the level without him ever spawning.
I must've been about 9 or 10 when I got this game. 20 years later it could have been the only game I'd played since then and I don't think I would have finished it. Thanks for making a video showing what it was like that showed up in my suggestions.
![The Girth to Save Hyrule | Link to the Past [SNES Decomp] pt. 3](http://i.ytimg.com/vi/dJv0-Jlc_fQ/mqdefault.jpg)
This game broke me as a kid. My mum had to put in the 99 lives cheat for me all the time. 25 years later and she still remembers the button sequence. Good times
You... let someone else enter cheat codes for you? Thats just vile 😢
@@Pahricida I was 9 🤣
@@shaunslaughter2589I was able to use cheat codes at 9, how weren’t you able?
@@mysticprophecy5395 got no hands
@@shaunslaughter2589 skill issue
When I was a kid, I used to call in reinforcements from the other kids at school. They'd come visit, we'd get combat rations from my mom, and we'd spend multiple afternoons taking turns defeating this game. Some of us would show themselves as the most skilled, so eventually some fellow players became viewers, and they could get a turn again if we had to reset to an earlier level, with maximum backseat gaming enabled. Great times.
This was one helluva way to explain it... 👍👍👍
I really miss the way we used to play games as kids, now it's all online and even if I wanted I couldn't sit on a couch with my best friends to play a game because I'm the us and they're all spread around the world (south Africa, Congo, Romania, India, Japan, Scotland, etc...)
That’s really wholesome
screen with 8pixels and still being enough
Damn you guys turned a kids videogame into a coliseum
I forgot how gorgeous this game looks, even now it still looks really clean.
Imagine seeing this in 1995
@@KyokujiFGCwould’ve sharted my pants
Check out "Rayman Redemption" by Ryemanni if you wanna play this game again^^ There's a trailer on youtube
@@KyokujiFGCidk if most gamers were like me but 3D gaming was “in” by the mid 90s and i didn’t wanna play anything 2D. especially by the time N64 came out in 96. looking back, i missed out on many great 2D games like Symphony of the Night for example
@@Hypno_BPM It's kind of ironic because alot of those mid 90s 3D games don't hold up nearly as well as the 2d ones at the time
I love the detail of the binocular silhouette on the overworld map. When you're selecting a level, you're watching from the POV of Mr Dark tracking Raymans's progress
Does that mean that Mr. Dark is actually the protagonist? That you control the hero antagonist from a second-person perspective? Hmm.
There's nothing but detail and charms sprinkled in everywhere in this game. One of my all time favs from back then... Breaks my heart as to what the series became after this game. It was never as good or the same in anyway.
Thanks for making this video, believe it or not the speedrunning community actually learned something from you. At 33:55 you took a accidental hit which boosted you into the shrinking fairy, when optimized this can save a little bit over a second compared to grabbing the ring which is how we used to do it. :D
this is super cool
Nice
That’s honestly incredible, thanks for sharing
Love this!
Oh cmon there are guys who can speed run this with no deaths?
If thats the case i should not say something i must do
Suddenly I dont feel so bad at never finishing this game as a kid, it was hard after all.
Yh i finished but it was a pain in the a$$.. not easy game at all
I ended up playing it again in my early 20s, and still couldnt beat it 😫
it sure was hard, i never finished it either :P
Reminds me of the Lion King on SNES, as a kid I would come back to that game every few weeks but I just could never nail the jumps where you’re swinging on the giraffes. Talk about a hard ass game! Not quite Rayman levels but close overall and even tops it in spots like the level I mentioned. Which I think is only the 2nd or 3rd level in the game.
lmao same! I struggled with this game. I enjoyed the 2nd one for n64 alot though.
Fun fact: the devs didn’t actually set out to make a hard game. Because deadlines were tight, the game wasn’t properly play-tested and since the devs were playing levels over and over themselves while designing, they all got extremely good at the game and knew what was coming. They only found out the game was punishingly hard when reviews came in
It's like making puzzles in (paper) RPGs, you think sth is obvious and the players take 5 hours to figure it out xD
that's actually sick as fuck LOL
What's interesting that many devs aren't good at the games they've made. It feels like play testing during production should be a normal thing, like with any other craft
This is an observed phenomenon in game development, and the reason why external testing is so necessary; when you've been playtesting version after version of your game for literal months, or a year, or two - yes, you get ridiculously good at it. If you then adjust the balance and challenge of the game to your own skill at it, you're ensuring everyone else enters feeling like they've just been kneecapped before a big race against a deadly screen edge... 'cause that's what you just did to them.
That's always the 'trap' you fall into, when you are create and test things out over and over again. You'll easily develop 'blind spots'.
When I make things, I always ask opinions of others, just to know how their train of thought goes and maybe I've overlooked something that is obvious to me, but not someone else.
I actually liked Rayman being so difficult. Sure, there were some levels that really took the blood from under my nails, but how extatic I became when I finally made it!! I think these days, too many games are too easy on 'normal difficulty', where I start to wonder why the easy or very easy difficulties are for.
It always bugged the hell out of me how Rayman is smiling throughout the whole thing. I'm constantly struggling, dying over and over and occassionally squeeze through danger, one hit away from death, and he just smiles and walks like he's on a relaxed stroll.
I dunno how Rayman keeps that smile going through the torment of this game!
By the way, this comment made me laugh hard 😂
he's a psychopath that's enjoying your suffering
@@MrVilla124 That, or Raymond is a masochist.
He's the moral support you need in this hellword, he doesn't get angry at your failure, he's encouraging you to keep going
he's on heavy medication
Now I don't feel bad anymore that I never beat this game as a kid :,D
Great video!
same here XD
I beat the scorpion boss but couldn't get to the final boss because all the little pink bastards weren't saved. Now I can't even beat the first area. I must have been amazing as a kid, or just patient/desperate.
It was kinda good. I don't suppose the first was mostly the rarest platformer.
Going further got me trapped not knowing where to go when trapped in a pit.
same O_o
I remember getting Rayman as a kid for my 6th birthday, my mum thinking it looked like a game aimed at kids my age. My dad, after watching me play and seeing how brutal it actually was spent countless weekends helping me as we struggled to eventually beat this nightmare of a game.
Wholesome
That's awesome. I can't imagine having moments like that with today's Mobile Games. I'd totally get my kid a console.
@@Lexyvil its worth it. My kid spends more time on the switch than i do, as i'm Slowly teaching them to stand toe to toe in smash and MK
Josh: "A question mark sign"
Me: That's an exclamation point.
oooh look at mr diploma over here :P
It's all the MMO Quest Giver symbology. It's breaking hin
Don't be showing off your education in here
And the "black blobs" are clearly blue
The difficulty of the game clearly took a toll on him
I never got very far in Rayman, but I remember we also had Rayman junior which was an educational game for math and language, so you can imagine the brutal platforming that requires quick reactions but now they also go “Quick what’s 3x9?!”. Was very much LEARN OR DIE. I didn’t get far in Rayman junior either
I remember that game cause my parents got us the game as a present thinking it was the original one. Funny thing is the language part was French or something and me and my brother didn’t know the single word of it. I’m amazed we got through as much as we did just by trial and error😂😂
Oof, it doesn't help that the edutainment Rayman games were even harder than regular Rayman, simply due to how... poorly designed it is. Most folks' consensus is that, at least.
Also you're probably already aware, but a very small team (mostly done by 1 person) recently made a Rayman 1 fangame called 'Rayman Redemption' and it's an absolute must play if you like some aspects of Rayman 1. It fixed every single issue i had with the original game (both gameplay and unsatisfying final boss wise) and added a bunch of brand new content that feels right at home within the game's design. I can't recommend it enough.
Yeah it's really good :0
how to play it
People who beat Rayman 1 back in the day are the same people now claiming that the new Doom's Ultra-Violence difficulty is easier than they anticipated. For a reason.
There are people who don't beat doom on ultra violence? O.o
@@T0asty- Are they doing it the right way* though, I remember when Doom(2016) came out, the devs thought no-one would be able to finish it on Ultra-Nightmare(basically perma-death) and now people speedrun it, except the speedrunners are using exploits/glitches etc to miss out most of it. *I mean the way the devs intended the levels to be played/completed.
I'm thinking the people who beat this as kids grew up to be the people that do SL1 no-hit runs in Dark Souls these days.
@@lmcgregoruk ultra violence=/=ultra nightmare.
And using exploits to Speedrun def doesn't count.
Doom UV is easy lol. i never finished rayman 1 as a kid. i have finished doom 1 and 2 on UV as a kid. and now i have finished doom 2016 and eternal on UV. so no i dont agree with your statement
There exists a PC fangame called Rayman Redemption which is heavily based on Rayman 1 that does something revolutionary. It adds infinite lives toggle.
I liked the boss rush mode in that. Have yet to beat it because the added Mr. Dark bossfights are hard as hell. But it's fun
Redemption is Rayman 1 without the bullshit.
I love it so much, it's one of the best fan projects I've ever experienced.
That game is a gem made with passion...and I still used lives.
So it has built in cheats for people who can't be bothered to play for real? Nice
@@SebiBubble it's actually an option that you choose when you start the game so you don't have to feel that you're cheating
I remember my grandma getting me this game for my birthday. She misunderstood and got me Rayman instead of Tomb Raider. Regardless, I loved the gift and I loved my grandma. But oh boy, was this game a pain for 9-year-old me to get through. I'd play this with my brother and sister, just to share the frustration of dying over and over again. Who knew Tomb Raider was going to be the easy between the two? 😅 Oh, nostalgia
Either that or your grandma is a cool, cheeky bastard.
@@vivimj3416 I think we generally underestimate our elders' abiility to be cool cheeky bastards.
Bless her, maybe she was indeed trolling. Never actually thought that tomb raider would be easier than this
The map is literally the bad guy spying on rayman's progress it's such a nice detail!
When you see Mr Dark on the cliff looking through his binoculars, I used to think the black crease in his cape was a long gaping wolf-like mouth and it scared the shit out of me as a kid.
Omg good catch Thechugg, never noticed that. It makes perfect sense
@@DaGleese When you said it. I managed to see big head of Globox
Man even after all these years the game still looks fantastic
Most games do not age this well!
the art style is bloody gorgeous.
I was so happy when Origins came out and it looked so much like the original game. I was really disappointed when Rayman 2 & 3 were 3D. I was NOT a fan of early 3D games.
You should see it again on a crt, makes it look even better.
@@sergantawesom A few years ago, I bought a CRT specifically so I could use the light gun with my Atari 7800, and then I hooked up my Jaguar (which is the console I have Rayman for). After years of seeing these games look like pixilated garbage on an HD tv, it was amazing to see how good they looked on an anologue tv for which they were made.
Easily one of the most artistically beautiful and unique looking games i played as a kid and still to this day cherish dearly. The big chunky sprites, color palette, vibrant unique worlds... Without a doubt Ubisoft should have made Rayman their main mascot because for many people it certainly is and i am sure we would see so many more sequels than we got so far.
You actually blew my mind by covering this game. Really awesome surprise to see it here and thank ya for that!
It really is such a unique game, nothing quite like it. I can't imagine why they didn't make him their mascot, he's got an excellent design.
@@maxsync183 dude. It’s a bot
@@IamaPERSON Well coming from an account called " I am a person " now you make it seem like you are x D
@@IamaPERSON I don't think it is but even if it is, there's no need to be rude
@@IamaPERSON there are those verified bots, but this is a real person. Checking the channel can usually help you to tell
Hi, I was one of the game tester in Ubisoft Headquarters in Montreuil, France, between 1995 and 1996. I'm not credited in the game, because I was temp worker on this job, but Yes, Rayman was one of the most difficult but also fun game at this time... so Thank you for this video who bring me back 30 years back :D
to the top!
This game was brutal as a kid, I’d always have to ask my sisters to help me
oh hey chippy, love ur terraria content
I do asked my mother for help in the difficult levels, I still can´t believe I finished it. It's far more difficult than I remember.
i beat this game and then watched in agony as my brother fell to all the parts i found easiest
There was one specific spot of one level that I remember having nightmares about. I dreaded that location.
@@fredslipknot9 which one? The mosquito fight?
my parents bought me this when i was like 4 years old. I remember making my mom defeat the first boss, the insanely scary mosquito.
The mosquito terrified me so much I was unable to play, and had to have my big strong mom squash it for me.
Thanks mom, love you!
but they became best pals immediately after
"the insanely scary Mosquito"
📸🤨
@@t.kahraba763 As a kid yeah... Bzzzit The Mosquito was scary, but with practice I got through it and found you could beat him up even quicker if he appears off the side of the screen. Another bit near the start that was nerve racking was the rising flood... I hated that and the music made you panic. The furthest I could get before I was a teen was Band Lands with the lovely happy music, but then the difficulty spike really kicks in. It took me into my teenage years to beat the game... and same thing happened for Croc 1, lol. ; )
Ahah this reminded me of playing silent hill and resident evil with my mom as a kid. She solved all the puzzles, I was just in it for beating up the baddies!! Great memories. Moms are the best❤️❤️❤️
That is absolutely adorable!
Man this game is gorgeous to look at. Makes me think of European comic books and prog-rock album covers
The game's visuals are sublime. Never really made the prog rock album comparison but that's definitely apt. My immediate thought was something like those old Supersempfft albums and music videos.
Europeans always make the best games, this game is easily top 3 best 2-d platformer of all time. The witcher 3, tomb raider series.
I wish they had stuck with this art style for more games instead of jumping onto the trend train and going into 3D...
When I was a kid, my CD for this game had some issue and it would crash after about two stages. Now watching this video, I am really glad it did that lol
This is the game that both started and ended my mothers gaming addiction. I never realized untill now that she was the one who unlocked all the stages. When I saw the boss fights in this video I could not for the life of me remember having ever seen most of them. It was far too hard for little old me.
Your mother is a fucking trooper, she deserves atleast 3 awards.
PRO mum
Wait did she play the game while you were at school and you were like "that's weird... why are there extra levels?".
@@christophercarrasco154 Basically, yh. I'd keep playing and sometimes the save file would have more and less levels dependent on what my mom had been doing.
Oh the memories as a kid, raging through home haha. My dad always got pissed because he couldn't understand the fact we got angry about pixels as for 2 hours later he yelled at the TV because Michael Schumacher didn't won the Grandprix.
underrated ccomment
maybe it annoyed your Dad because you where doing the exact same thing he would do in two hours..
Yeah, many parents are extremely bigoted like that.
"Why do your games have to be so violent?" … goes on to watch Topper Harley shoot dozens of people in a few minutes.
@@Kerbezena To be fair, it’s a different medium. There’s a distinct difference in that you as the player are causing the action to happen, vs passively watching a story.
It happens to every generation, from books to cinemas, radio to TV, and of course video games. As I get older myself, and seeing the potential for VR… I have a feeling I’ll be one of those parents lol, worrying about kids enacting violent acts in VR games. The cycle continues
Couldn’t have yelled much then, Michael won the Grand Prix more often than not! 😂
Fun fact: From the level with the art supplies forward the game was never play tested by the devs because of a lack of time. There is one bit that I remember a dev saying was edited last minute because the final play test session proved you couldn't advance and that's where it spawns in a platform or something in the art area by standing in a specific spot. After that the devs just prayed that what they had created worked because the game was being printed and they wouldn't be able to fix it.
Can't believe Ubisoft was already like this in the 90s
That definitely explains a lot.
Didn't stop me from eventually making those stages my bitch.
I remember this being hard, and troubling. As a child, when I couldn't get all six thingies, I thought I'd messed up, and I'd assume when I couldn't reach something I wasn't good enough.
Also, just hearing that "hic!" noise when Rayman gets hit is enough to make me shudder. ugh.
Thanks for doing this so that I don't have to!
What doesn't come across in the video is how gorgeously funky and uplifting the music in this game is. The Betilla Magic is my favourite track
Best soundtrack on a game!
People are too afraid of getting sued by jeff bezos over muh intellectual pwoperty these days
This was a great in-depth review. I love it when people really chow down on Rayman 1 and try to figure it out because it's my all time favourite game. I was one of those crazy kids who actually managed to beat the game as a kid without cheats. It did cost a bunch of blood, sweat and tears (literally) and almost a year of on-off playing.
Nice to see you here, Thank you for making Rayman Redemption! One of my favorite games I played last year :)
Rayman celebrity in da 🏠
cool, even your yt name sounds like it :)
> all time favourite game.
> blood, sweat and tears (literally) and almost a year of on-off playing
At this point it might be Stockholm syndrome, just saying 😂
There's a fan made reimagining of this game that makes it so much more stomachable and actually really good I really enjoyed it. Can play it like the old one or have failure just make you replay the level/checkpoint
also the fact you didn't mention how much of a masterpiece the bandland song is and how jumping on the drums adds to that music and fits in with it perfectly. Such amazing design there
Where it is possible to find this fan made version ? thanks
@@flamby357 Check "Rayman Redemption"
Yeah he didn't talk about the music and that killed me inside.
This game is brutal to an absurd degree. Ubisoft's CEO has gone on record saying Rayman 1 wasn't beta tested at all, only by the developers themselves, and it shows. Bullshit cage spawns, hitboxes, the placement of many obstacles, it ridiculous. Not to mention you HAVE to 100% the game in order to beat it. I beat it but had to use the 99 live code once.
I beat it as well, 100%, but only while using the infinite continues code. I remember thinking the entire time how positively insane it would be to try to beat it with*out* using that cheat, and only using three or five continues or whatever the default was. It was intensely difficult. I remember it clearly over 20 years later.
@@CompassIIDX I don't like throwing around the "artificial difficulty" buzzword because it's normally used by people who get filtered by games and refuse to get good, but this game is a prime example of that. Having limited continues while demanding perfection from the player is too much. Definitely in the top 3 hardest PS1 games along with Tomb Raider 3, another very hard game that made the baffling decision of bringing save crystals back after 2 had ditched them.
@@TechniqueSan It's not artificial difficulty tho. They made every late stage as hard as they could just so you waste all your life until you're good enough to pass it.
@@TechniqueSan I beat TR3 as well, and don't remember it being overly difficult. But I really loved early Tomb Raider and 100%'ed all the PS1 games. As I recall, the 'limited but save-anywhere' save crystals of TR3 were meant to be a compromise between TR1's unforgiving limited saving at specified checkpoints, and TR2's overly lenient unlimited save-anywhere design. So after the hell of 100%'ing TR1, TR3 probably felt much milder to me. (I am not a particularly proficient gamer by any means.)
I agree Rayman went over the line for the default difficulty, certainly by today's standards. It's fine to have an optional punishing mode like that for those who want the torture, but today, Rayman's level design would almost mandate infinite lives and respawning-in-place, a la VVVVVV. Even then it would be known as difficult. (Again, like VVVVVV.) Some of the "hardcore" might scoff, but I'm cool with it; no way in hell would I have the patience to finish something like the original Rayman today, even while using the infinite continues cheat.
@@CompassIIDX I'd probably buy that if the PC version of TR3 did it as well, but it kept TR2's save anywhere system. I beat all Core TR games and I found 3 to have the most bullshit sections, not to mention the Nevada bamboozle. It's a great game though, nothing close to Rayman in terms of frustration.
I never beat it as a child but man I have some unforgettable memories with it. I was so was happy i became friends with that mosquito guy. I distinctly remember feeling happy about becoming friends and getting to fly around together. And sticking enemies with a plum on their head and then standing on their head and riding around was funny to me. What a phenomenal experience.
Something I love about "Was it Good?" reviews is how you review each world and give the game a good analysis, giving spotlight to different parts of the game, it feels like you're really diving into the game to give a proper view on it
13 mins into the video and I’m already like “I’ve never seen this stage before” lol
I played this as a very young kid, I guess it really did toughen me up to play frustrating and hard games in the future - I now have this very sweet spot for games like pathologic and rain world torturing you lmao
I think I played few levels of demo on PC, but my first real contact with franchise was Rayman 2 (also on on PC). Still hard, but not as hard as what I remember from R1.
Looking at the wiki it probably was Rayman Gold Demo, since I remember level in music land and that stuff was end of a game for kid like me.
Rayman hat mir auf jeden fall beigebracht, mich anzupassen und Hindernisse nicht nur auf eine Weise zu überwinden, sondern auch über den Tellerrand hinaus zu denken.
@@lokalnyork I LOVED R2 even more than 1, 3 was great too - The overworld OST from 2 is still engraved in my mind and fills me with heavy nostalgia every time I hear it haha
@@FZone96 Yeahh, Ich bin mir sehr sicher dass ich mir auch unendliche Leben gecheated habe, aber ich muss das enorm viel gespielt haben haha
wtf, du hier?
I found your channel a few days ago and have been watching it none stop since. Why did it take so long for yt to show me this amazing creator?!
Which one of the 3 channels was the first to be recommended for you?
@@buneco05 Josh strife plays
@@buneco05 wait there's three channels
@@sani9046 now there's four, Hayes, Says, Plays and Replays
Now this is weird, You just covered Tomb Raider which I was playing a lot last week and also I randomly picked up Rayman cause I hadn't played it in like 20 years, and here you are again haha. Great work ! :)
Andy!
whats next on your list? might be a good indicator on josh's next video, lol.
Illuminati confirmed.
Well, it is a small world
@@w83official Spider-Man 2 (2004) haha
Dude, you put up some of the most highest quality gaming content on youtube.
It's like you naturally know what people want because you're putting out the content you want.
Mad props.
Mate, you absolutely have to check out Rayman Redemption on Gamejolt. As the name suggests, it's a fan project dedicated to redeeming the original Rayman and make it an experience that's actually fun to play, which it achieves magnificiently. It doesn't just change a few levels either, it's a _complete overhaul_ of the entire game. New areas, enemies and mechanics were added on top of several quality of life improvements. The level of polish this project has genuinely makes it feel like it was an officially released Rayman game, not just a fan game. Seriously, you need to see this. It doesn't just need more attention, it _deserves_ it.
Was about to leave the same comment. It's so ridiculously good, I was blown away
Ironically, having grown up with Rayman 1, I didn't really enjoy Rayman Redemption because it was far too forgiving.
@@JeroenDStout Not surprising that growing up with Rayman 1 would turn someone into a masochist, then be disappointed by the lack of sadism in Redemption.
@@slenderminion2229 Yeah, there's probably some of that. Rayman and R:Redemption just are different games, in a way, each which is goo din their own way. For me Redemption just removed a lot of what made Rayman good.
@@JeroenDStout idk man the mega Antitoons in the final level (that one gauntlet excluded) and the way they sometimes punch you upwards but usually punch you sideways kinda fucked me up
This game was one of the first video games i ever played as a kid, i never really thought about the difficulty and just had fun :D
I laughed a lot in the beginning, because Rayman 1 was actually my first ever game I played. My parents got it for me when I was around 4/5 years old due to me liking the cover of the game. Even until this day, whenever the talk about Rayman 1 comes up, my dad reminiscences how often my siblings and I begged him to clear something for us. As a child I just thought I was bad at the game due to being a kid and I didn't understand why my dad who was very into video games and good at them to the point he attended events in the early 2000s couldn't beat it. We never finished the actual game, because we got stuck at the scorpion.
Fast forward to 2020 I picked it up again only to realize that this is probably the hardest freaking game I ever played. But it's a fun memory and it's nice how the first game of my life was most likely the hardest I've played.
Really great review and I'm super happy to see people talk about Rayman all the way into 2022.
Edit: Random fun fact as someone who digged up a lot up this game. Apparently it's so hard, because the developer's never play tested it. I don't know which documentary that was that I watched years ago and if this was true, but there's a ton of information for the first game out there, such as how Rayman only has no limps because the engine couldn't handle it etc.
Yeah, the play testing went as far as “does it function? Oh, it does? Ok, ship it” but not actually testing to see how fun it is.
I remember playing the GBA version as a kid. A few years ago, I picked it up again, and was charmed until the fifth level murdered me about 20 times, I realized Rayman wasn’t as good as I wanted it to be.
You should try playing Battle Toads on the NES, one of the hardest games made for it
@@williambohn276 *sad mother/earthbound beginnings noises*
that's exactly my story with this game too omg, word by word! only difference is that I ended up beating it in 2009 😅
I love hearing childhood stories with gaming. It brings me back to the past when everything was new to me. Anyways, thanks for sharing! I remember always wanting this way back then because of how beautiful it was, but I never got it.
I think you're the person that best explained Rayman's movement while jumping from slippery platforms. Most reviewers kinda don't bother with extreme specifics, but you explained it really well and in a way that makes total sense. Well done!
The most hilarious thing about this is that they later released an education edition of Rayman that very much *was* marketed towards kids. The only problem? It was just as brutally difficult. From what I can remember all these years later, they basically slapped some simple math problems onto existing levels, which resulted in a lot of stages being the same ridiculous platforming, just with arithmetic occasionally replacing an enemy or hazard.
One of my first PC game was the education rayman game, the cover lists its for 3 years old or older, I'm not even sure if I ever beat that game.
The developers must've thought toddlers were the absolute masters at gaming
I played this, too. And very quickly it wasn't about maths anymore, it was about memory.
Yes I still have ptsd from that game..When you chose the wrong answer,the game instead of instantly killing you,it first waited a few seconds just to give you a sigh of relief,then trapped you with multiple unkillable enemies and made you struggle in your final moments..I still vividly remember the art levels that had grammar questions
I just bought the game to play on my ps3 and I'm already making a lot of progress
I have very fond memories of this game. It actually was my first real game - HA. My parents thought it was a kids game.
I never beat it because I was not patient enough but my older sister did without using any cheat.
I remember watching her play for hours - me just watching - and cheering her on (and also mocking her when she died). She was really good in platformers.
So when I think back I only remember stunning scenery, tense moments and listening to the beautiful tune. So in a way I only remember the good parts of rayman.
I think she finished the game 3-4 time over the years....
I'm late to this, but I wanted to add because you used the passcode to skip all cages, and you probably didn't see it. There are 2 cages in the mid to late game on the Ps1 that require PIXEL PERFECT timing jump and grabs to reach. This was edited in other versions to be easier, which is one of the other reasons why it's rated so high on the hard to beat scale. For some people, it was physically impossible to collect all cages.
Dude for some people it’s physically impossible to reach level 2 in diablo iv. That means nothin dawg
@@xbon1 Not the brightest are you.
@@c-tothefourth4879 ma dood if u got no limbs, no voice and can't control a game then wtf u complaynin's bout?
OHHHH I really want to check this game out now. Must try some this week. Maybe load up that ps3 today on the liek 32 inch HDMI TV with a PS5 controller. Also itching for a knife only run on the regular difficulty of RE1. Did it already on the arranged mode dualshock version last year. Fun times!
Jesus, watching this video unlocked a lot of repressed memories 🤣. As a kid I got through the scorpion, but couldn't ever find all the cages.
This video randomly showed up in my recommendations, was immediately hooked. Love the in-depth discussions of mechanics and game design, delivered very well. Subbed!
This is one of the first video games I've ever played. Our ps1 had no memory card so when ran out of lives we had to restart the entire game over. My siblings and I were TERRIFIED of the mosquito battle. Took us a long time to beat that and the next stage where you rode it around. Farthest we ever got was the musical land with the slippery platforms that dumped you into spikes.
Did you not use the password system? The game was quite friendly to non-memory card users. It gave a code on your runs that you could type in to restart progress.
@@skycloud4802 my European dumbass didn't understand what a password system was . I was 12
i had a cd for the Pc version, or DOS version, i know it was compatible with windows98.
i think it had a password system or even save system? i only remember the final boss transforming into monstrosities and that evil version of you that followed your every move
played it on the GBA, still got anxiety from that mosquito boss...
@@skycloud4802 We were 5 and didn't have internet and had no idea what the password thing was
other people have probably said this, but if not:
The bitey fish at Eat at Joe's are piranhas. Like those from the first world, they can be punched
Also, the energy balls from Mr. Skops don't home in on Rayman but rather on his fists. So you don't need to actually punch them, just make sure they follow the fist immediately back into Mr. Skops' face.
That aside, i barely know who you are but this video has been *really* fantastic. There aren't many like it out there, perhaps spare for Hippocrit's/Gibbontake's three-part series on it and that was really flipping high quality as well.
I'm very impressed with this and can't really imagine how much time and effort it takes to create a video like this. Thank you for having made this video, it's been a really great ride.
Part of me hopes that one day you may do a video on Kya: Dark Lineage, but as a stranger on the internet i wish you fun and good luck on whatever future videos you might have planned.
this game was my childhood. not only I as a small child loved it but so did my older brother, my mom and everyone else. they were all so supportive in me beating the game haha I have really fond memories on this game and am happy for everyone else that does so
I'm actually shocked at how much of this game has been blocked out of my mind, I defo did all the levels except the final one (never found all the cages). Great vid.
Prior to 46:13 I was watching this and every time you said "I skipped this cage" or "I started avoiding cages all together, finishing the level was what mattered." I cringed because I knew that this requirement was part of beating Rayman. I didn't use the cheat for every cage but I sure did use the 99 lives cheat probably about 7 times
I used a guide to find all the bloody cages, but the only way I cheated was by remapping my keyboard (PC version) when Mr. Dark swapped my left and right.
Yeah, Josh kept bringing that up on purpose. He really wanted to nail in how the devs treat skipping cages as a mistake despite them being the biggest kick in the dick to find.
@@liamdell6319 That's not cheating, that's just a big brain play.
Really enjoying this "Was is good" series, would love to see one on the original Abe's Oddysee and Exoddus games.
Abe is an amazing game its also hard as balls but definately a very underated game
Still one of my favourites.
I would like to see this aswell.
@@klizzard5166 Odysee is 100% doable, Exodus got so many dumb design with grenade throw it border on the impossible sometimes.
@@alexandredelevaux6865 to somebody like Josh he would be able to do both games and still love it with the near impossible puzzle or the in general hard difficulty of the games
YES!! I love the Oddysee series, definitely would like to hear Josh's take on the two original games, maybe even Stranger's Wrath too or eve Munch's Oddysee (despite it being pretty bad lol).
I don't think I ever got past the second world back when I was a kid .
I remember asking for it for my birthday because it looked so colourful and fun.
This game. It is *stunningly* beautiful, the art, the music, the atmosphere, it's so aesthetically pleasing. With that said, I've tried to beat it since I was 6 years old, 20 years ago, 20 years of agony, and I have violently chewed and eaten at least 10 controllers.
Now I'm curious, what does a controller taste like?
@@lieutenantpepper3421 what do you think dumbass, plastic.
@@lieutenantpepper3421 lmfaaaaaooooo right???
@Lieutenant Pepper plastic, electricity and a faint hint of metal
I really like that the new games attempt to bring the aesthetic and art style back.
Watching speedrunners doing this game is a trip.
I distinctly remember doing the blue mountains flight sequence at my grandmother's house while eating a bowl of pecan ice cream and biting something incredibly hard. I spat it out and it was one of my baby teeth. Now every time I think of Rayman I think of the feeling of teeth in my mouth.
Sorry to alarm you, but theres always teeth in your mouth
Whenever I play this I think of eating banana-flavored cake at 7 AM after pulling an all-nighter while my family is sleeping. I get a certain taste in my mouth every once in a while that reminds me of those moments. Definitely planning on doing this again this summer.
"YOU WILL DREAM OF TEETH AND NOTHING ELSE" ~ voidfang vestments, destiny 2
@@wcmattman7571 not anymore
@@Dante_Sparda_DMC I feel that. for a while in middle school I subsisted on toasted peanut butter and grape jelly sandwiches while playing EarthBound. The scent of toasted bread and grape jelly takes me right back to Mr. Saturn.
I know that Rayman 1 came out way earlier, but the "repeating the levels for all items" reminds me of Crash Bandicoot trilogy. You can feel the inspiration with how some levels were really difficult in Crash, although not as hopeless as here. Still, you had to collect every diamond (or at least color ones) to have the possibility to fight the final boss too.
This is the only “rage” platforming game that’s actually fun, also for some reason I can’t get mad at it because I love the rayman series
I can literally replay the frustrations of that second level in my head as I watch this video. Those slippery surfaces and musical notes are some of the most PTSD inducing concepts ever concieved in a video game...
i was watching this video thinking i'd never played rayman but thought woah this is all so familiar,,, asked my mum about it in case she remembered and she said it used to be her favorite game on the ps1. she completed it multiple times to perfection without any tips/the internet, WHILE raising 3 kids on her own. i told her it's considered one of the hardest games released and she literally laughed and said that i have to be joking, she'd play the later levels to relax after a hard day at work. RELAX?? i don't know whether to be impressed or scared but what this video has taught me is that my mum is more badass than any of us will ever be
she was an adult, this was marketed to kids
@@koyima i know that haha it was definitely way less hard for her than it was for all the kids playing it at the time !! but like even in this video josh the legendary professional gamer said it's a frustratingly difficult game that even he ended up using the cheat code for the final level bc he got frustrated haha
Your mom rules, game is hard as shit, don't care how old you are.
Here's the thing: this is the original. There are many, many, MANY different versions of Rayman. Some are without a doubt easier than others.
Hahahaha! That's hilarious :D. Man I remember when I finally beat this game (only beaten it once and it took me over 6 years) and when I finally did I was cheering for joy in my room as I did it. My Mummy heard me shouting and cheering and came up and asked what was going on and I told her I finally beat Rayman 1 she started celebrating with me as she knew how hard it was from watching me play it as a nipper :D.
This game is probably the biggest inspiration in platforming history in my opinion. You can see a bit of it on every modern platformer. I think Ubisoft kinda dropped the ball when they haven't made the new modern rayman games hard. My favorite childhood game. Didn't know I missed a level until very recently :).
I wanna bring attention to other 2 "version" of the game:
-The first is Rayman advance which is a port of the first Rayman for GBA and it is insane!
To be fair is, in theory, actually easier that the original version, cutting short some level, giving you more life, AND showing the invisible trigger with a glitter effect.
But on the other hand the controls are far more sloppy, the field of view is smaller and the graphic is much more homogenous, making you confuse background and foreground.
This cause level, like the one all dark with the spot of light and the one with the blue mattresses where you must go down (expecially this one), to require TAS level ability to complete not to mention finding the cages in.
So this is the one recommended for masochists.
-The second is Rayman Redemption who is a fan remake made by Ryemanni for Pc (downloadable for free from his site, by the way) that in addition to improving the game by adding new enemies and new levels, that seem to come directly from the creators of the first game, it fixes all the flaws you criticized by providing: three levels of difficulty, the possibility of exiting during a level section (keeping the progress and the cages open), saves accessible at any time outside the levels and the purchase of lives and indicator arrows for the cages, also finding a better purpose to the "coins" (the blue sparkling thingy) that you find in the levels.
I honestly belive that this is the far superior version and i can't praise enough the love that clearly the creator feeds for the fanchise.
This one is recommended for everyone who appreciates the original game but is unable to return to it due to the frustration it generates.
There is also the Rayman Brain Games spin-off, which has the same graphics of the original first game, similar stage designs but with language and math questions added to the mix, those resulting in either allowing the player to progress the stage for choosing the right answer or being punished with instant death for choosing an incorrect answer (which would often jump scare me as a kid). I'd say the two biggest flaws in that game are a) the Rayman 1 level of difficult platforming challenges in an educational video game that probably drove many kids away from it and b) its heavily compressed audio that only makes it harder for the player to understand the questions to be answered or instructions to be followed.
If it's worth anything, it was through that game that I learned about the concept of odd and even numbers.
@@lupos2000 I had one of those games for English. Too bad the subject matter was a bit beneath me by then. Or maybe that was a good thing - too many instadeaths and I might have given up on English grammar.
My parents split when i was young, so id often go to my dads house to spend the weekend every few weeks. He had rayman 1 for the playstation and i loved it, i was probably about 7 or 8. Eventually my dad was out of the picture and, as a kid with fond memories of rayman 1, i was gifted rayman advance. I loved the hell out of that game, spent so much time on it. Hearing that the advance port is for masochists explains so much about my taste in games growing up lmao.
@@HeyyItsDaleVODS i feel sorry upon reading the first sentence. I hope everything becomes better in your life now
I just got a 100% save file a month ago. The final challenge level is a bitch, but it's exhilarating to actually do it.
Something Nitro Rad brought up in his review that I absolutely love is that Rayman doesn't have a pulling up animation you have to wait for after hanging.
You gain control and can jump off right after hanging. It's super smooth and helps keep momentum and flow.
This was the first sidescrolling game I ever played. Fucking loved it
Edit: How I made it past the music zone is beyond me
@The real Life batman I was too young to know about even what cheat codes were. I didn't have a lot of games
I'm in the exact same boat. I played this when I was maybe 5 or 6 on PC. That game that crashed so many times but I couldn't get enough. I never finished it, because as a kid before decent guides were available I could never find all the cages, but I did clear every level. To this day, hearing the soundtrack makes me tear up because of the fond memories.
Tbh I never realized this game was hard, I just played it until I got good at it, then I could clear the entire map without losing all my lives
thank your for this video, josh. i had this game as a kid and was stuck at the very first water rising level and even then i found the game to be incredibly hard. so i'm glad to now know that it was not my lack of plattforming skill that made this game impossible for me to beat :D
good job beating it tho!
I JUST realised why I as a kid NEVER found the first mario all that tough despite so many others having a hard time with it....It was because I was used to this evil EVIL game...
I don't believe I ever made it past the 5th level...but still played it a lot as a kid before I got mario a few months later and that took over. (I got games in a weird order.)
Man same I thought video games were just supposed to be like that at the time.Thought you were supposed to try times and times again.. then came the mainstream easy games. And I rediscovered the concept of struggling thanks to fromsoftware… and I started loving games again haha
This was my favorite game growing up! I used to play it with my dad on our old Windows 97/2000 or whatever it was. When it broke in a disc drive when I was 5, I was inconsolable. Flash forward to Christmas when I was 14, and lo and behold - a brand new copy sitting in the tree! My dad had found an old copy online. No gift has made me feel better before or since.
I played it with my mom. She would lose and hand me the controller. My dad couldn't play a game for more than 5 minutes before getting aggravated.
I throughly enjoy listening to your game analysis. Always hilarious and informative
This game is a masterpiece in platforming, the music, visuals and gameplay were all amazing. There's a lot of creativity to the platforming too.
I played the PS1 version, so this is possibly the hardest game I've ever played in my life (no cap). I've never beaten it 100%, not ONCE. Usually when I re-visited older games from my childhood, I was able to beat them easily. But not this one. The locations for some of the cages are so cryptic too.
didn't expect to see you here
imagine saying "no cap" unironically
when i played this game as a kid, it never occured to me that it was "sadistic" or "brutally difficult". i laughed when i punched an enemy, i laughed when i died, i was happy about every little bit of progress and the mosquito crying and rayman befriending it by patting it was the cutest thing. and every new level or change in tone/difficulty was just a new adventure. yeah, it got very hard, but it never felt like that was the focus that kept me playing.
i think as a kid i just wasn't so dependent on NOT dying in a video game to NOT feel bad or getting to the end of a level as quickly as possible - in order to have fun or be fascinated by the whole thing.
i felt the same way about dark souls 1 as a teenager. yeah, the difficulty (which really is just an illusion most of the time) was the selling point, but it was something else about its world that kept me playing.
later with ds2 and ds3 i feel like that initial thing about ds1 wasn't really there anymore, it was just like an in-your-face "oh it's so tragic, you die over and over, it's a circle, the world is bleak and unforgiving and dark and diseased blabla". yeah, i know ಠ_ಠ
strangely I was like that with crash... but no rayman
Dark souls 2 world was amazing. I thought he it was one of the better ones that handled the lore and the similarities in the story from the first one I thought was a nice touch. Also the dlc story was awesome.
qft. That's how I beat IWTBTG and 1cc'd TH6+7. I'm not *good* at games, but Rayman and Silver Surfer taught me that stubbornness can win out.
I get this, very much so. Still found it took many lives to complete though, fun all the way through, apart from that world he showed in the beginning, hated that one.
That's because in 1995 rayman wasn't considered sadistic or brutally difficult, especially in comparison to the 8 and 16bit era games which were based on arcade ports intended to make money by killing the player. There's a reason a figure of speech for punishingly hard games used to be "nintendo hard".
I just have to say, thank you so much for taking the time to craft such a wonderful review. Sure I didn't remember how much I hated this game until now (childhood suppression and all) but my god was your narration perfection. I thought this game was hard but I didn't know how much harder it got after I quit for the sake of sanity. Thank you again for taking one for the team. Subbed!
My breaking point was defeating the penultimate level and realising I had to find every cage. I never did find every cage. I was playing on a gameboy advance away on holiday where I wouldn't have access to the internet. Thank you for showing me what the final level was.
I remember having such a struggle with this game. Eventually gave in and used the cheat code to open all the levels. Pretty game, but damn is it unforgiving. Great content Josh.
God I LOVED this game. Played through it when I was 10 with my best friend. We took turns playing whenever one died so the other go a try. It was INCREDIBLY hard. But beating the levels after what felt like hours was immensely rewarding. This truly is a non forgiving game. It wants to kill you. I actually played through it again years later and found it quite easy. Maybe I just remember most of the mechanics and timings but I breezed through it that second time. I think I tried to immediately find all cages, even replaying levels before advancing. That way I had more than enough lives at all times because when going through a level the second time to find the cages, I died less and left with a net positive in lives. So I never had to worry about running out of lives. Thanks for the awesome video! Now I wanna go back and play this again :)
Im actually happy to hear this game was seen as being so difficult. I remember playing this game and struggling. I think i played it on the Gameboy and playstation. I cant even remember how far i got, i just remember playing the game and liking it
Holy shit, I had the demo and these god damn musical notes just triggered some deep down memories. This helltrial is also the reason I completely avoided the Rayman franchise most of my life until I finally played Legends on the Ps4 - which is an awesome game. Thanks for the great vid.
I played this game as a young kid with my dad in the 90's and early 2000's and it actually taught me to memorize all those timings better than he ever could. I think it took us about two years or so to grind through it and get every single cage, but thinking back, it still gives me good memories and I probably could (and maybe should) replay it some day and see if I still can remember some of the hidden stuff.
This was one of my childhood games and i remember using the cheat codes for lives and finishing the game. That end level is BRUTAL.
A few thing to note, though : the music is AMAZING. Rémi Gazel, the composer (RIP, cancer is always awful) made one of the best soundtrack of the time, i feel a little bad that it wasn't brought up during the review. And for Skops : the laser he shoots actually follows Rayman's fist, so if you launch it toward the boss it will go its merry way and hit him.
Wonderful video by the way ! Always nive revisiting childhood memories and realizing it was BRUTAL (and then seeing speedrunners making it look like a breeze)
He actually said you need to punch Skops' attacks back at him, but apparently he didn't mean it literally.
Great review. Did a very good of conveying the anxiety and frustrations of my first playthrough. These days I've played it many times and don't get destroyed as easily, but there still the few standout levels that make me go "Ah yes, this is one the sucky levels."
The thing about the cages, it was meant for you to redo maps, going back to easier ones to stock up on lives.
Pretty much making it a grind fuelled by that "I will beat you!".
More people need to know about rayman redemption. A fan remake of the original on pc which looks and plays exactly like the original but it’s far more playable in terms of difficulty. The developer even added some great new levels as well.
I wanted to try the original Rayman since it's difficult but I now wanna play this too.
It‘s actually amazing how many fond memories I have of this game even though it frustrated the hell out of me. I remember me and my brother playing this for hours and hours as kids figuring out each level. We made it all the way through but never managed to get all cages, so we couldn’t play the last level. Great game, that I don’t want to play again. The fan remake Rayman Redemption was nice to play.
This was one of my first games as a kid and I absolutely LOVED the whole look of it. I've always loved cartoons, and Rayman was the first game I ever saw that replicated the look of one. It was essentially the Cuphead of its day - I really can't understate how impressive it looked for its time (and it still holds up extremely well).
But it was a bittersweet experience actually playing the thing. It was just way too hard for me. I'm pretty sure I never got any further than the first level or two of Band Land. The difficulty spikes so astronomically after the first world that it's legitimately shocking. I've still never beaten it.
Despite its ludicrous difficulty, I'm genuinely impressed at the craft of it all. I've never played a platformer that squeezes every last bit of potential out of its systems and character abilities like Rayman does. Like you state in the video, they really left no stone unturned when it came to testing the player's understanding and mastery of the game's conventions. And the thoroughness with which each and every established convention is iterated on, remixed, subverted, and deconstructed is commendably superb. It's all just way too much for my personal capacity for frustration.
My family had a ps1 for many months before I owned any games, my siblings just played FIFA and F1 games. Eventually Christmas came around and I could get 3 games, so I get Worms, Croc, and this absolute nightmare. It really is a beautiful game though, the artstyle is so memorable and the character design is loveable. Great video Josh
I didn't realise how far I made it through this game as a kid, this video has reduced my anxiety greatly
How far _did_ you make it?
Rayman Redemption thankfully includes a casual mode; which grants unlimited lives. Considering how deceptively brutal this game is, it's something many are going to be thankful for.
Also, it in general includes a proper final battle with Mr. Dark.
I remember having very fond memories of the game as a kid, don't think i ever beat it, but i do remember loving it
Loved this game. Found it easy till about 1/4 of the way through, then it hit you hard. You feel a true sense of achievement completing this masterpiece.
Rayman made me feel so special as a child. The levels had something emotional to them in my experience. Probably made it easy to escape reality or something.
Same! I first played this age 5 and mum fondly remembered me saying to her during bandlands area that the music, " Gives me a happy feeling in my heart" 😅 This was my first game I owned and what a game to start on 💜
36:50 that was the very part which made Rayman the most difficult game ever for me. I was stuck forever at that point. Wasted hunderds of lives to pin point my jump, only to rush into those freaking pencils again and die. Not Battle Toads, not Turtles, not Bloodborne, it was this freaking game which was the hardest game for me period.
I had a huge grin on my face when I saw you did a video on this. I know all too well what sadistic fun awaited. Great game and video!
Skops has internet access?
Played this the first time when I was 10.
Finally beat it when I was 36.
Boy was I proud.
Took me only 2 weeks, an emulator to utilize quicksaves, and a few times looking up how to get to the cages.
Man this brings back memories. My gran sadly passed away a few years ago, but we had a PSone at my grans when i was a kid. Me and my bro used to play this all the time and my gran would have a go every now and then. For some reason she got hooked, and im not kidding, she was a beast at this game. She was completing some of the insane 'I Wanna Be the Boshy' difficulty levels like they were nothing. Cheers Josh for bringing back those memories.
Pretty sure that spoon is a frying pan, my dude. haha. Awesome video! This series is so much fun to watch, even if it isn't always fun for you to play through
Josh, are you going to do an episode on Rayman 2: The Great Escape? The atmosphere and platforming blew me away as a kid. Horrible camera was the only bad thing I remember.
Also more brutal segments that assassinate you from behind while you're blinded by said camera.
god i want this game remastered (not remade) on switch
it is so damn good, as a kid i imagined living in that beautiful world
I didn't have almost any problem with the second game, it was a lot easier... But the pyramid level was hell on earth, flying through those spike walls was hard as hell
@@autobotstarscream765 where
what a blast from the past.
good times, i only 100% it once as a child and the final level was my favorite.
i also by accident figured out you can jump over rhe dark rayman trigger and just play the level without him ever spawning.
The one thing that i think is overlooked in games now is just how good the sound is in this game
I must've been about 9 or 10 when I got this game. 20 years later it could have been the only game I'd played since then and I don't think I would have finished it. Thanks for making a video showing what it was like that showed up in my suggestions.