Support the show on Patreon: / implantgames IMPLANTgames.com implantgames implant In today’s video I dive in and take a look to see if Rayman 1 for the original PlayStation is still good. Enjoy!
I think my words are being over analyzed a bit. "PlayStation Original" as in I am playing the original PlayStation game. Not the PSN version, not the PC version, not a sequel etc.
Great game, always will be good in my opinion. The graphics / artstyle look amazing, even today, and the OST is incredible. The main issue i would say is the ridiculous difficulty that ramps up over time. Also, i think with the jump at 29:30, on other versions (PC i think?) they added another ring in the middle to make it less impossible Another great video.
They made key elements easier in the later ports. They added more base health, easier jump windows in certain levels, and ting count not resetting, just to name a few things.
That's what I meant. haha. I just couldn't think of the most correct way of phrasing it. For example the ring being moved on Twilight Gulch and the gap on Bongo Hills' second stage w/ the double green music notes were easier in the GBA version
There is one caveat that the dev team snuck in called "Coyote Time"; for a split second when Rayman goes off a ledge, you can still jump (its similar to the Rolling Jump Trick in Donkey Kong Country). Its still tricky to use right, but its a LIFESAVER in this brutally challenging game. Both the GBA and DSi port went out of their way to alleviate the more cheap aspects of the game, and those are still challenging in their own right (the GBA port in particular due to the awful screen crunch)! GBA: Rayman no longer gets thrown backwards when hit, you have an extra hit point, you get more extra lives, you no longer lose all your tings when you die, and you can now see the trigger spots (presented as sparkles). It also axes out the first part of Bongo Hills to make it shorter and easier. Several levels have minor changes in them to make them easier too. Theres no autoscrolling in levels anymore either. DSi: You no longer lose tings when you die and you only need 50 for an extra life, default hit points is now 6 and can be increased to 10, you get 30 continues off the bat, there are more checkpoints throughout the level, and you can skip sections of a completed level by pressing Select, making backtracking MUCH less obnoxious. The frying pan in Mr. Dark's Dare no longer has any momentum--it moves at an even pace now. The game also has a map feature now, which comes in handy in the level where you have to use the firefly. Oddly, knockback damage is 'increased' in this port! Yikes!
imo this game even before the nerfs is not that hard, i beat it when i was 12. you all just expect an easy game because of the way it looks, if this had gritty art and rayman was a vampire killer with a whip no one would be complaining lol thnaks for all that info though, didn't know about coyote time
I agree with your verdict, It gets a lot right but it's just far too frustrating at times. I really enjoy the first few levels but after band land my enjoyment of the game drops considerably and I never even bother to try anymore when I play through these days.
You should try the fan remake, Rayman Redemption! Remade levels, new worlds, new bosses, a better difficulty curve, more content, you even actually explore Candy Chateau and fight Mr. Dark!
@@dapperfan44 no problem. Despite the original's flaws, there's a lot of brilliance beneath them, and the remake takes good advantage of it. More people deserve to know about it, especially those who grew with the original game, and found it either fun or frustrating.
You are right, the art design and sound track are fantastic in this game but the difficulty is way beyond hard. This game looks like it's designed for kids but really it's not hahaha. I also hate Space Mama, she is very unfair so much so that in my review of this game I had a nice little rant about her hahaha Just so you know most ports of this game were made a little easier with more hit points, starting at 5 instead of 3. Some extra platforms and rings in certain levels and some crates have been moved around making it "easier" to get through but still very difficult!!
that thing about the electoons is actually what made me stop the game first time I played it. After spending DAYS beating every levels with getting as much electoons I could but blocking the player from finishing the game without doing a 100% when you have to redo most levels in full without a "return to map" option is pure design flaw here
It definetly has problems but not as many as ImplantGames says, i actually finished this game and well... It as flaws, but is not flawed. Still a very good review, you bothered to finish the game when others would just give up.
I have fond memories of Rayman not because I played it, but for the time, it was the last truly great 2D platformer at the time. However, I can see why the game may not age well in this day and age. It was released at a time when developers made games with an arcade mentality. Games like this were insanely difficult for the purpose of nickling and diming the player for extra lives, or in the case of console games, to artificially extend the length of said games to justify the prices these games were sold at. Even though I grew up playing these types of games during the 90's, even I have lost patience with the hard and obtuse games. Thankfully, this game's critical and commercial success would pave the way for Ubisoft to make Rayman 2: The Great Escape. A game regarded as one of the greatest games of all time. By the way, you think you can make comparison videos between the two versions of a game to discuss differences between them?
It definitely has an 8-bit hard vibe to it. But I find that weird considering the game is so damn long haha. I don't own Jag Rayman anymore but I did throw in some old footage showing the shooting stage was different. I'm no Rayman expert though, I'm not sure I would notice all of the tweaks and changes. Someday I might revisit the GBA port, but it will be a while before I feeling this playing this again!
It's a shame this game has so many design issues. I used to have this game on GBA and loved it. There is so much creativity to it. It is baffling why you have to save all the Electoons just to beat the game. I have a similar problem with the Ghouls and Ghosts series in that I hate the fact that you have to beat all the levels twice just to get an ending, though like you said, at least those games are much shorter. It's always sad when your beloved childhood games aren't as good as you want them to be. The farthest I got was to the last level in the Cave world (the one with the scorpion boss), after which I lost my game. I know the GBA version is supposed to be easier, with more health available and some level design changes. Also, the Tings don't reset if you die. If you ever tackle that version, I'd love to know how you feel it compares to this one.
The GBA version gives you more health points to work with which helps some. The most prominent change to the difficulty however is that the activation triggers in levels are now visibly marked with sparkles of light. You won't activate traps without knowing, or get stuck and wander aimlessly looking for a trigger to progress. No more auto scrolling either. They made alterations to some of the platforming bits (adding extra platforms or enlarging existing ones as well as toning down some of the hazards in places). Though due to GBA's lower screen resolution, there is a smaller field of view around you and you can't see as far. The Mosquito bosses can be beaten in seconds due to alterations made for the lower screen resolution (your jump can now reach him as he recovers from a punch and about to fly offscreen, just repeatedly time hitting him over and over and he won't even be able to attack). I will note that the GBA version is somewhat ambitious as far as ports go. It's a launch title and not the most impressive game on the system, but it is a fairly faithful conversion given that it's porting an impressive 2D PS1 game to a less powerful system. Visuals are mostly very faithful, sound of course is fairly poor (typical of GBA ports, particularly early ones). But surprisingly ambitious.
Thanks for the detailed list of changes! I agree with you on the ambition of the GBA version. Obviously some sacrifices (mainly sound) had to be given up since GBA hardware isn't as powerful as PS1's hardware, but the fact that it could fit GBA hardware at all is impressive! I'm wondering if the auto scrolling sections were removed because they were too hard, or removed so the game could fit in a GBA cartridge.
Angel Molina The auto scrolling parts were probably removed to make the game easier or perhaps due to the smaller resolution. They did retain the vertical auto scrolling in the monsoon level if I recall correctly. It's impressive for a launch title for sure, though I actually think the port had room for improvement even given the GBA's hardware limits. GBA sound hardware may not match Ps1 or the original orchestral tuned, but they could have still gotten some better sounding arrangements closer to a SNES like quality. Golden Sun shows what you can do on GBA with better programming, very few developers were good at programming decent sound on GBA. Some of the larger sprite objects could probably have been improved in image quality with a larger capacity cartridge. And they probably could have implemented some of the extra missing foreground weather effects (rain and snow) used in some levels. There would still be a quality difference between Ps1 and GBA of course, but it could be closer at least.
Makes sense. And if by the monsoon level, you mean that one where Rayman has to use his hair to cut the two ropes that are holding up the giant boulder in the third world, yeah they kept that. I remember playing that level in the GBA version. Given the similarities between GBA and SNES hardware, Rayman Advance could've been an amazing sounding game. I still liked the sound for what it was, but I feel where you're coming from.
This is a very good analysis. I love that you went through the game level by level and actually beat the game before reaching your final verdict and went into detail just where the gameplay in Rayman is flawed. The game is a technological marvel and a very artistically stylish game, but I feel Rayman Origins and Rayman Legends are more successful in what Rayman 1 was trying to do, and I'm speaking as someone who did grow up with this game and beat it as a kid. (but that's because I bought a Blockbuster cheat code book and it included the 99 lives cheat; Picture City was impossible otherwise) I feel like the game would've been improved a lot if the Rayman sprite was just a little bit smaller and had a smaller hit box; I feel part of the gameplay becomes trial and error just because Rayman takes up so much of the screen.
You put far too much effort into these videos for them to only get 5k views. You deserve so much better. I hope you really make the big leagues one day my dude.
I really enjoy the insight you give with these in depth analyses. Your exploration of game design has stuck with me while I play and I find myself better appreciating just what makes a game "good."
I'm glad you enjoy them! I find myself quite inspired by Michael over at Retropolis Zone so if you should check him out if you haven't already. But yeah, I find it both challenging and rewarding to really dive into games and find what works, doesn't work, and most importantly, why! And like you said, once you start breaking it down, it makes me really appreciate some of the amazing games I've been able to play.
Thanks for another great video! I always got frustrated with this game and could never make it very far. How long did it take you to do the play through for this video?
I wasnt much of a rayman fan when this first came out but it does look fantastic in tems of graphics and gameplay despite the bad collison detection and difficulty and i hate it when devs make u complete a game 100% just to see the ending.
Yep. Rayman Origins and Rayman Legends are the first truly great 2D Rayman games. Like for instance in those games you don't have to 100% to beat the game
I would still say it's worth a try if it looks fun based on this footage. It just hasn't aged well. I think there are versions of this game that are easier than the PSX version, so it's worth looking into.
It like many SD platformers had sprites that were too large and so the view port feels cramped and things you might need to see are just off-screen. I think the original Mario games got the feel just about right. I also think it suffers from visual clutter, but then so did Yoshi's Island, especially when it often had a lot of foreground in the viewport and with Yoshi moved further up the frame, putting the important things - things you interact with - often out of view. Compare and contrast how the player characters, enemies, and obstacles fit in the frames both in size and position: Mario 1: i.imgur.com/QtB1psL.png Mario 2: i.imgur.com/QA1bdl4.png Mario 3: i.imgur.com/q1McQEr.jpg Mario World: i.imgur.com/YvgB4df.jpg Yoshi's Island: i.imgur.com/O3f1wXK.gif Castle of Illusion starring Mickey Mouse: i.imgur.com/gyBjmRz.gif Rayman for PSX: i.imgur.com/MvATmYI.jpg?1
The first world might suffer from some visuals clutter but I feel like the later areas do a great job keeping things clean and using contrast to separate elements. But overall Rayman could have used some fine tuning.
i didn't play it for a long time cause i thought it looked like a kids game even though its one of the first games i got for the sega saturn... i played it and pretty much every thing he hates about the game i was loving about the game... i felt so clever and skilled when i got through the levels. i played with WAY more intent because if the life system. the end result was a very memorable experience for me. I've played it several times since and it's still a joy to be challenged by such an unassuming gem.
it's just great to know that this cute thing is deadly allergic to water in the first part, and after its "rabbit death" in the "big comeback", it swims so well that it surpasses any duck.
i had the game boy advanced version of this game and it's still so hard to beat the pencil and eraser level. to this day ive never even bothered beating it.
Rayman 1 is absolutely fantastic and I managed to beat it as a child. The difficulty is absolutely high, but I see people complain that it's almost inhumane, which I disagree strongly with. The difficulty is what always made it fun for me.
I remember the 4th world being extremely challenging. That's where most of my extra lives went. Lots of pixel-perfect sections and a ton of memorizing needed to succeed. Though, the game looks very good, even today (24 years later), and it's soundtrack is so memorable
Rayman 1 is a truly stunning game for its time, I still find myself listening to the sound track, but it was brutally hard :p took me months of on and off playing as a kid to finally complete it (I didn't know about the 99 lives cheat so I had to start from scratch when my life/continue count got too low). It was probably the first game to introduce me to the fact that games can be hard :p
Wow! You have a lot of patience to be able to beat this one. I never have. Finding all the electunes just seemed too much of a pain. Also knowing I had limited continues, I found myself having to restart my save after having lost too many lives even after completing a level, trying to not use them. At my age, I had little patience for that. The game is undeniably beautiful, visually and in the audio department. I think this the first game that I listed to the soundtrack to. With the PC or PS version, I was able to get the tracks either just by exploring the files on my PC or using a special program. I still have my save on a memory card somewhere. Maybe I'll give this unfairly challenging game another chance some day. Great review!
I played this with my dad when I was 5. We got to Pencil Penthalon, but could never get past that one jump (you know the one). I tried to play it again recently, but got frustrated and ragequit somewhere in Blue Mountains. I'm kinda impressed we managed to get that far back then.
Yeah, the game's difficulty in the later half is a huge sticking point for people. Apparently, the game didn't have a QA team, which meant that the devs were the ones who had to test the levels. As the people responsible for designing the levels, they probably didn't realize how difficult the levels actually were.
I do wonder how I would have felt about this game if I actually played it back in the 90s. Growing up in the nineties my family had the SNES, Genesis, PS1, and N64 yet somehow we never played the original Rayman. My introduction to rain man was actually Rayman Legends on the Wii U which is awesome game! I later on got Rayman Origins for my Wii at a Blockbuster store that was closing down at the time, but haven't played it yet. through the Nintendo eShop on my 2DS I have played the Game Boy Color Rayman which I had some fun playing.
Rayman 1 is a 90's game in all aspects including difficulty-wise, if you aren't spoiled by todays baby level games and still have patience you still love it
Fantastic video Kris, I was hoping you would review Rayman! An absolute classic in both art style and music.. gameplay is sooo hard though. I never got that far into the game before getting all frustrated haha! By he way, is that an encoding glitch @8:00 min. or did you PlayStation get weird?
It's so weird that nobody seems to know when some games came out; Did Rayman come out on Jaguar and PlayStation at the same time or weeks apart or ...? There is also no firm release date for Super Mario Bros on the NES in USA, one of the biggest games ever. Rayman started life as a SNES title, with co-op, different art style etc. Did you try the very early SNES prototype that was released about a month ago? Thanks for a wonderful video on Rayman. I'm amazed by all the effort you must put into making these for your viewers. Very high quality stuff man, keep it up :D
Cool video 😄👍 this game is good indeed but iTS very hard to beat (i found out THE hard way) p's iTS cool That a few weeks a prototype of rayman on THE SNES was found and released 😄👍
I played this game briefly as a kid and remember getting stuck at band land, revisiting it later and finally beating it (with 99 lives lol) I realized how insanely difficult the game got later but I also had a newfound likeness for it, I just love the art style and soundtrack. Overall I really like this game despite the difficulty tbh, some parts were still enjoyable but space mama nearly killed me... not to mention some of those insane jumps for cages haha. Great review!
Rayman was developed for the Jaguar first than ported to the PlayStation so technically the PlayStation version is not the original version! Great Video!
I think my words are being over analyzed a bit. "PlayStation Original" as in I am playing the original PlayStation game. Not the PSN version, not the PC version, not a sequel etc.
Coming off sonic genesis I never cared for rayman's art style and slowness, I ended up giving it to a friend as a gift for showing me how to get past the sonic 3 carnival level. The days before internet. He loved it though and couldn't stop talking about it, he didn't realize there were platformers on his new ps1. and my name is Ray so that was a nice touch. I'm glad this video exists to give me a good idea of what I missed.
Dude, he meant that he was playing on the PlayStation not a pc or emulator the “original” is used to say that it is the playstation 1 not that it was the original platform it released on…..
When i was a kid i was never able to get past bandland... but i always came back to play through those first few levels, the music in dream forest is one of my favourite game tunes of all time. I'm also glad it got the sequel which i WAS able to beat from start to finish, though the biggest surprise was it actually being a good early 3D game!
Ah, the first Rayman game. I have a love-hate relationship with it, for the exact reasons you gave. Love the artwork. A wonderful soundtrack. A very charming platformer with many creative and cool ideas. However, the difficulty was incredibly unfair. I got some nasty flashbacks watching all those spikes again. While I had a blast playing it on PC when I grew up, there is no way that I will ever go back and replay it, even less complete it. Bought Rayman Legends for my Nintendo Switch a couple of weeks ago and it is a far better game. It fixed all the issues when it came to gameplay and has a far more reasonable difficulty curve. I am glad that the franchise survived all these years so we got this game, because I can now consider Rayman among the best in its genre.
I love this game exactly BECAUSE it's so difficult to beat. Sure, most of it is just trial and error, but the music and the worlds themselves make up for it. This was one of the first games I've ever bought, all the way back in 2000. It took me around six years to complete it fully, mainly because I gave up and had to look up some of the cages on the Internet. However, I still play it now every now and then. It's much more fun when you've memorized everything, but this game remains very hard. Sometimes I lose a life at the most unexpected places. It's extremely difficult to beat this game without losing at least a few lives. Though the last time I beat it I had 69 lives without any cheat codes and without using any of the continues. But then again, I've been playing this game for 18 years, so you'd think I would have gotten very good at it by now. Would I recommend this game to anyone who hasn't played it? No, probably not. It's so hard that it will probably just frustrate them.
I can definitely see where you're coming from. This game would objectively frustrate new people who start to play it, but of course, you can still like it personally, especially if it's nostalgic for you.
It's not difficult nor broken i beat it when i was 12 lol Yea things pop out of nowhere but other than like maybe 3-4 specific spots you have enough reaction time to dodge, it's fair
I played rayman origins and finished it.....never in my life have I swear so many times That game will test you and requires a lot of skill and memorization
i will probably never want to attempt to finish it but i think it's so lovely overall! mainly the theme and artstyle, music etc. i agree on band land and picture city, with how the enviroments aren't as.. full as say the first level, that's why the PC version is cool cause it gives bongo hills that grassy area with bridges at the start, though i think that should of went on for MUCH longer and they should have used more clouds and less drums in the beginning levels since band land is like a passage through the sky to get to the blue mountains.
Had this on PC, the Saturn, and playeed it on GBA as well. So far, I've fully beaten the original, Rayman 2, Rayman 3, Rayman Origins and Rayman Legends and I'll play and beat all future main Rayman games. This game, for when it came out was a diamond in the rough
I understand where you're coming from when you're saying you generally dislike this game. There are so many problems from the trial and error gameplay to unfair elements like things literally appearing out of nowhere, and of course the 100 percent being mandatory. Yet, somehow, I still enjoy this game, and the art style is amazing , it probably has to do with the fact I played it a lot as a kid. Regardless, great review on this game!
"trial and error gameplay to unfair elements like things literally appearing out of nowhere, and of course the 100 percent being mandatory." imo thise are the things that make rayman 1 stand out among other games and make it better lol
Dont know if anyone else experiences this on rayman for PC, but i do not get an intro about the story, also some of the core sounds from PS is not on the PC as in the music theme when you fly on the mosquito. Is it a bug or is it just badly ported?
Stumbled into your channel and been binge watching dozens of videos (awesome stuff, btw!), and I keep wondering to myself... Your accent is kinda peculiar... where are you from? If I was to guess, I'd say you're either from Sweden or from Nova Scotia.
I find it adorable how you burned though so many lives. the game isn't hard if you just have a solid amount of patience, it really shows everything itself naturally, (the pens for example aren't a blind jump as on the last one the purple ring is shown, etc etc). i complete rayman 1 one time every year as an homage to my childhood. (with 4 deaths on my last run)
I remember I got this game for Christmas one year, for pc, I had to run through DOS which wasn't uncommon back then. I have never beat this game. But it's one of those games I've always liked, even if I could never beat it. Kinda like Ninja Gaiden, or the Super Star Wars games, fantastic games, that let's face it 90% + of the people who played them never got from start to finish. Still, it was a very beautiful game and sounded great, was decently fun enough and honestly, it still looks good today.
Growing up I rarely beat games haha :) It has been interesting to back and finally beat and/or complete games and see how the experience changes. Rayman is a game I like well enough, good controls and great graphics, but man is it tedious to beat!
@@implantgames Ya the 100% completion requirement... and the limited lives, though you can farm for them a little, if you don't mind gathering the blur orbs.
I feel like the game's gimmick of making things appear from trigger-points is really neat, but executed poorly. I'd like to see something like that again, however, where the trigger was actually shown (there are a few instances in this game where a small sparkle is actually shown with a trigger-point, in Mr. Sax's Hullaballoo I believe) and where the effects of triggering where immediately much more apparent. That would still leave a vibe of mystery, which the beginning stages of this game was good at, but not be unfair and feel like trial-and-error.
I never became aware of the flaws you're talking to until now that I saw your video. Still now I find it difficult to mind them. When I was a kid I found some levels really hard, but now that I understand the mechanics of the game I must say Rayman is a piece of cake from start to finish. For example, when you touch an enemy on a small platform and it knocks you back, just press the forward button and you will grab the ledge of the platform, nothing difficult here.
Also, 100% in this game is really not that hard. In most games when you 100% them that means you grinded for days. Rayman is a game that can be 100% in three hours. This is really not a valid argument when it comes to Rayman.
@@mononokehime3182 yea everybody complaining here simply suck at the game lol they are probably mad at it because it also looks kiddy like yet it still kicks their butt, if this had a gritty art and rayman was a vampire hunter with a whip no one would care it was this "hard"
I own the PS1 version and you show levels before band land that I haven't even seen, like a second misquito boss and that you get your power to hang after that, but I haven't seen those levels and I have the power to hang..
When I played Rayman last time (two years ago) I gave up after mountains stages. Difficulty of trial and error killed the fun for me, but I was impressed how sophisticated those fair elements are and those moment were really satisfying. However, if the game was remade today, then it wouldn't need a lot of level redesign if common modern 2D platformer''s solutions were implemented. These are increased field of view (no more blind jumps or not enough time to react) and unlimited lifes (no frustrastion due to restart). This should do the trick.
According to dash below, "It's the code name and acronym for the PlayStation because it was originally going to be called the PlayStation X, but then it was changed to simply PlayStation. The X came from and payed homage to the MSX which was a product that a few companies, including Sony, produced back in the 80s. Although the name of the console changed to just PlayStation, it's abbreviation remained as PSX simply because PS was too common of an acronym."
99 lives Kris...? Is that an option for this game? I've yet to play this due to many people I know branding it as unfair, but if they let you scale the lives I think I may give it a shot since that's about as forgiving as it gets... The people I've spoken to have all played the Jaguar version however, so perhaps that's the particularly difficult version.
Lots of people post their first comment before the video ends. I assume it's something to do while a commercial is playing? Doesn't bother me at all. I always used the 99 lives cheat while playing the Jag version as well. And I like how it puts the number pad to good use haha :)
If you listen to the games sound in the video it's clearly not the jaguar. The PC version was slightly easier, with more extra life trophies but harder cage locations.
Looks like Rayman started like a Angry bird game with a story but later changed the angry bird part which i glad they did tbh...the first Rayman was beautiful but it was a torture to play because of the difficulty🙁
@@implantgames I know this is a two year old comment, but the best version is Rayman 2 Revolution which is only on PS2. You can get it on PS2 or in the PSN store for PS3.