2001 Ubi Soft
Ubi Soft's Rayman Advance, developed by Digital Eclipse, is a port of the Ubi Soft Playstation title known by the simpler title Rayman. The game is set in a magical Fantasia-like world complete with walking musical instruments and landscapes dripping with color. Mr. Dark, Rayman's arch-villain has kidnapped the friendly inhabitants of his world, the lovable Protoons. Raymans objective is to rescues his little buddies, as he advances through obstacle ridden levels in typical side-scroller fashion. While traversing through these levels you hunt for cages full of Protoons. You have to find as many of these cages in each level as possible. By completing stages and finding Protoons you earn yourself new levels to play. Raymans journey wont end until he frees all of the Protoons and defeats the mischievous Mr. Dark.
Features
- 60 levels- 6 worlds
- Battery-Pack save
- Only For Game Boy Advance
Jason: The saying never judge a book by its cover can be applied to nice looking book covers with mediocre content. In the case of Rayman Advance, this definitely has a great look to it, but fundamentally the game has problems. One of the major flaws in the game is its bad use of camera work; the worst being the complete absence of a look-down function. When pressing down, Rayman ducks to the ground but the camera barely moves down at all. This leaves the player making leaps of faith so to speak. Dont know where the next platform is? Well just jump and hope that there will be one underneath you. This gets extremely frustrating very fast. Why the developers opted to leave out this feature is beyond me. It would have added so much more playability to the game. On the topic of in game view, I found the camera to just be zoomed in too much in general. It seems the developer was too occupied in creating a straight port, rather than realize that changes need to be made for a handheld screen. This just boils down to your viewing distance to be very limited which adds an unnecessary amount of difficulty. Take a look at Castlevania: Circle of the Moon as a better example for camera view on Game Boy Advance. The visual finesse of this game is truly remarkable, but I found myself questioning the level design. It just seemed too lackluster and uninspired. The levels themselves were just too monotonous to warrant such a high difficulty. Which bring me to my next point: difficulty. In particular the saving method in this game is just horrendous. Having to continue your game on an insanely difficult level with only four little hit points and no lives or continues is not my idea of a fair game. Sure contra can be deemed hard, but that game was built ground up to be an arcade style game. This game has no excuse for having such a filthy way of saving, shame on you Digital Eclipse. A great effort ruined by such a small aspect being overlooked.
If you had any intention of buying or even renting this game, I would say throw it out the window. Games like this is what Miyamoto tells us all to avoid, and for good reason. Being focused on graphics and not gameplay can do this to a game. As for me, I traded the game in for Advance Wars and have been sleeping in peace ever since. Take that as you will.
Stephen: Rayman Advance features some of the most dazzling graphics ever to hit a portable system. The characters and backgrounds are colorful and fluidly animated. The game features a Disney-esque stylistic visual flair that is unique and gorgeous. The main character's animation would almost be worth the price of admission alone...
That is, if the great visuals weren't tied to one of the clumsiest, most frustratingly illogical, platform game engines I've come across in a while. Rayman Advance violates the cardinal rule of gaming: first and foremost, a game must be fun. Sadly, fun is seldom found in this game. The main culprit is the misguided camera direction, as Jason mentioned above. Boss battles are an exercise in sheer frustration, as the camera is zoomed in to such an extent, that maneuverability is simply out of the question.
Entire levels are built upon the principle of trial and error, a severe gaming no-no as far as I am concerned. Witness Rayman float upward on a cloud, in a desperate attempt to avoid spiky ceilings. Watch as Rayman gets knocked off his little cloud car time and time again. Observe as GBA player tosses Rayman Advance cartridge across the room, as he/she realizes that the only way to avoid said spikes is to know that they are coming beforehand. Trial and error, folks. A concept that many of us had hoped was left behind in the Atari 2600 days attacks with a ferocious vengeance throughout Rayman Advance.
The game itself is fairly simple, but the developers have used every trick in the book to manufacture difficulty. Deviously unhelpful camera angles? Check. Patently unfair saving system? Right-o. Cheap hits? Ha...don't get me started.
Need I go on? Rayman Advance is a chore, a boring chore, a boring chore that will make you tear your hair out in frustration. Sound like fun?
Anthony: I was very delighted by Rayman Advance. While there are a few issues that hamper the overall experience, I was still very impressed by the excellent PSX-Jaguar port a first-generation GBA game landed. My main gripe with the game is mainly the characters being a bit too large with respects to the screen ratio. This makes it a bit tough to get a feeling of the whole platform element at first, eventually I was able to adjust and play the game comfortably after some playtime. The audio is pretty bare-bones and conveys a feeling of cheapness with the lacking soundtrack and Atari like sound effects. The lush graphics and excellent animation were one of the first documents of proof that the Game Boy Advance could really outperform the past- 16-bit consoles. Overall, the wonderful graphics, charming mascot, fluid animation, and solid game play won my full attention.