Rayman Was Originally Meant For The SNES
The original Rayman was one of the most solid platformers of the 90’s and put designer Michel Ancel on the video game map. The game would make its debut on Jaguar and later appear on Playstation and Saturn (Playstation was where everyone discovered it, natch). But it was originally intended for the Super NES — and the reason it didn’t come out was because the SNES CD add-on didn’t happen.
According to Ancel, he created the first Rayman level on SNES hardware back in 1991, but as his team was planning out the game, he realized it was simply too big to fit on what a cartridge could hold at the time. Other console makers were adapting the compact disc to run games, and Nintendo was looking into it as well, so he pushed Ubisoft to let him develop Rayman as their first SNES-CD title.
Of course, you know what happened to the SNES-CD. Once it was no longer an option, Ancel oddly looked to the Jaguar (maybe it hadn’t come out yet….)
I’m telling you all this because a prototype for this early version of Rayman has just been discovered in the basement of Rayman co-creator Frédéric Houde, and he was encouraged to make a video of what was on it. Not much, but it’s a fascinating ten seconds. There are no enemies or sounds, and Rayman is a very early model, but it’s the Limbless Wonder on the SNES all right.