My Rayman quest isn’t just the main titles. I want to play or at least try to play or at least research and talk about every fringe game in the series. So far I’ve done a little article on the educational games and some of the mobile games. This time I’ll be covering Flash games or other standalone minigames. This list probably isn’t complete, it’s mostly drawn from information from this thread on the Rayman Pirate Community forum, where you can also download most of these yourself. And even though I’m just at the end of Rayman 2 games on my main playthrough, I want to knock out all the Flash games from all eras. Ready?
Rayman 1 era
I needed a caveat because the first item isn’t for Flash. Rayman Collector, a French-exclusive PC release of Rayman 1 with extra level packs also had minigames included. You can find them to download as an executable in the thread linked above. Feu nourri is a sort of light-gun target shooting game using the mouse (a common genre in this post, you’ll find)—it’s not clear who you control. Le bouingue is a 2D platformy-type thing where you pop balloons by bouncing as Rayman and Bzzit. Multiplication des pains is kind of a shooting game, you control Rayman’s disembodied fist to punch things. They all use Rayman 1 assets exclusively.
This game (in the “webased” folder in Drolpiraat’s archive linked in the thread) appears to be a version of Rayman 1, similar to the GBA port going by the aspect ratio. The music’s not bad and it looks fine though small, but it’s not perfect; jumps have no air control, for example. It’s probably the worst way to play Rayman 1 but likely the easiest, since it’s possible within a browser.
This one (“raymangbc” in the “Other games” folder in the archive) is obviously a port of the GBC version of Rayman 1, which is a unique game as I covered. Unlike the previous Flash game I mentioned, it’s unclear whether this is an official Ubisoft product. It has the nice pixel art of the original game but the animations are much smoother and Flash-like. Unfortunately it too suffers in the control department and is difficult to play well.
Rayman 2 era
This one, simply labelled “jeu” in the archive (French for “game”), is the simplest of the lot. Basic black background, two pirate heads moving around like a DVD player boot screen, click on them for points. It’s presented in the shooting gallery style. It’s totally boring; the most interesting thing about it is its use of the Jungle Fever font, as used by DKVine and subsequently by Retro Studios in Tropical Freeze, although that may just be my computer’s font settings. At least it has music.
Globber is the name of one of Globox’s children, but in this case it’s a portmanteau of Globox and Frogger, as this is apparently a Frogger clone that Ubisoft had on the Rayman 2 website or some such. Unfortunately it was not archived and this splash screen and a description is all we have, and it’s the only one on this list not playable today.
Globox 2001 (“ubi” in the archive’s Other games folder) is another shooting gallery, put out by Ubisoft to celebrate the new year. It’s definitely the strangest one. You play as Globox shooting little (presumably) evil Glutes, ghosts, and flying skulls (the only ones that are a danger, since they shoot you if they get too close). You have to hit a certain number of targets to progress. There are three areas, each with three levels. Each is an Earth location with landmarks scrolling in the background. The first one is an English/European city (there’s both Big Ben and the Eiffel Tower visible, among others), your enemies wear bowler hats, and the music is a James Bond pastiche. The second is an American desert with your enemies in cowboy hats. Finally you’re in China with cone hats everywhere and dragons instead of ghosts. Then you win. So I guess Globox is on Earth for some reason, it’s happened in the Rayman series before. The game is OK, the third life counter head is just Murfy lazily recoloured to look like Globox grinning, and apart from its questionable premise the art is at least amusing.
I talked about Rayman vs. Cullcut in my educational games article. What I didn’t realise is that it’s all taken from Rayman M. As you can see in the screenshot, the two enemies on the side are Henchman 1000 and Razorwife, who are exclusive to M/Arena/Rush. Cullcut below is also from that game, although it was recoloured orange in Rush. The original release was a French typing test game, where you type words correctly to stop Rayman from being lowered into Cullcut’s jaws. Drolpiraat, the forum thread’s game curator, translated the game with its entire word list into English. Teach your kids with a game designed to promote an obscure Rayman spinoff!
Rayman 3 era
The only recorded Flash game based on Rayman 3 is Jeu de Tir (“shooting game”) which is a, um, shooting game. Well, instead of a gun you shoot out Rayman’s fist to punch Hoodlums (and Red Lums to restore your health). The character graphics are smooth and colourful (and it’s always nice to see 2D art of characters that were conceived and only seen in 3D), but the background’s a bit dodgy. At least it’s well in Rayman 3’s world instead of a black void. There’s no music but the sound effects are fine with your enemies laughing at you and such. The game implies there’s an ending but it’s kinda hard, so I don’t know if Begoniax is indeed in there. Try it yourself!
Rayman Origins era
Slap, Flap & Go was produced to promote Origins. Rayman punches Globox to send him flying past various Origins obstacles and backgrounds. You can boost Globox slightly and try to keep him bouncing off things for more distance and Lums.
Rayman Legends Beatbox is a Flash game, application, toolbox, something. You move characters from the game around, and each represents an instrument track in a piece of music from Legends. So you can hear just the percussion, or make your own mix of instruments without others. There’s also a free-create mode which lets you mash tracks from different songs together. It’s clever because the game itself has a lot of track variants in different levels. This was also released on smartphones, but it’s not really a full game.
Wasn’t that fun? To keep up with my Rayman Quest posts, check this post.