Rayman Advanced
Everybody’s favourite hero... Rayman! Rayman is a person who only has a head, a chest and torso, hands and feet. Thats basically Rayman. Rayman is a platform game that was first released in 1995 by Ubisoft, and over the years, it grew steadily popular. It is playable on literally every single console there is, like Xbox, DS, Wii, PS3, PS2 etc. Anyone who has ever played Rayman knows that it sets the bars for platformers today. And my favorite Rayman game, by far, is Rayman Advance.
Overworld
There are six worlds in the entire game (Dream Forest, Band Land, Blue Mountains, Picture City, The Caves of Skops and Candy Chateau) and on each level there are six Electoons trapped in cages. The actual objective of the level is to get to a sign with an exclamation mark at the end of each level. Obviously enemies and puzzles will be trying to stop you, but unless you suck, that won’t be a problem. But actually, even though the game was targeted for children, the actual game is quite difficult, seriously testing your platforming abilities. The controls, while good, aren’t completely precise, making it difficult to jump and land perfectly, but pretty much everything else of the game makes up for it.
Music
The music. I could go on and on about how incredible the music is. I do not hesitate for a moment to say that this is just one of the best soundtracks from games alone. With incredibly catchy music that instantly makes you want to sing along, the music in the game is hands-down incredible. The quality was slightly worse on the Gameboy Advanced speakers compared to the ones on the PS and PC versions, but still, I cannot express enough how astoundingly beautiful that music really is. My love for the Rayman music cannot be put into words. That’s how good it is.
Worlds and Game
As said, there are six different worlds, all completely different and so unique from different platformers. I’m going to compare it to Mario, as it is definitely the most well known platformer out there. The worlds in a sense (for Mario), are different, featuring an Ice World, Island World etcetera. Whilst the designs are still different and they do feature some different things, they are all relatively the same, in the sense of platforms and levels. No dramatic changes occur throughout the different worlds and the castle levels are always have the same layout, along with the music. But in Rayman, that’s a whole different story. The worlds are obviously themed by their names, but that’s not all. The entire level design changes completely, introducing new things, structures, beautiful music and pretty much all of it.
Mr. Dark resides in the Candy Chateau, which for me, is pretty amusing, since you know, candy is generally viewed as a good thing. The levels steadily get harder and harder, and make no mistake, any gamer in my opinion, will view this game as a challenge. Maybe not in the beginning, in the Dream Forest, but even by the Blue Mountains, the third world, the levels have become a lot more challenging, and you’re scarce on lives. You gain a life like you usually do in platformers, collecting a certain number of items. In Mario and Sonic it’s coins, and in Rayman, you need to collect blue orbs, called Tings. After a 100, you’ll gain a life.
However, Tings are not nearly as common as coins are in Mario. And just like Mario with its 1Up mushroom, in Rayman, there’s the Rayman Statue, which is essentially just Rayman striking a pose on a statue. Grabbing this will give you 1 life. The other thing would be the magical O in a top hat. For a certain number of Tings, he’ll let you play a mini-game, and if completed perfectly, you’ll earn a life. Though the magic O is very rare, so don’t expect him too often.
The statue is the equivalent of the 1Up mushroom, and they’re hidden throughout the levels, along with another item that just gives you extra hp. I cannot stress this enough. This. Is. A. Hard. Game. And, because the developers are incredible and because they love us and games, they decided that this would be one of those games where, if you press the buttons in an order, you’ll unlock some insane cheat. If anybody out there has Rayman Advance and is stuck, you’ll enjoy the next part.
An example of one of these cheats would be the cheat to get 99 lives. You press pause during your game and press Left, Right, Down, Right, Left, R. There are a bunch of other awesome ones that makes the game so ridiculously easy, so if you’re looking for the easy way out, it’s nice to know that there are cheats that you can use to win, isn’t it?
Items
There are only a few items in the game. As mentioned before, the Statue and the Life Orb are in the game, but there are some others. There’s the Super Fist, which makes it so your punch flies at full speed no matter how long you hold it for. The Gold Fist, which does it so you OHKO (one-hit knockout) your enemies no matter how long you hold your fist for. The other “power-ups” are things that Betilla the Fairy, shown above, teaches you.
She basically teaches you new skills that you acquire throughout the game that are needed to advance. The most important one, for me at least, is the Helicopter Hair. Your hair transforms into a propeller, allowing you to glide for a short period of time in midair. There’s also the Ledge Grab, which is self-explanatory, the Punch (you don’t start out with it) and Sprinting.
This game, and the entire Rayman Series (except for the DS version. That one was terrible) is truly incredible. Music, gameplay, characters all comes together into one fantastic game that is insanely fun and, while difficult, is definitely worth the money. Rayman Advance hits a highpoint for Rayman games, giving off nostalgia and definitely following in the success of its predecessors. Sadly though, you can’t really find it so the ROM and Emulator will be provided also. I cannot stress enough that Rayman Advance is an incredible game, one that I would strongly suggest you try out.
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