I remember this game being fiendishly difficult, and loving the music. The band world was my favourite.

Coincidentally enough, I just finished this on PS Classic for the first time last week. Had it as a kid on PC, good times. and hard times, lol

This game greatly influenced my my gaming childhood . I would play this at Saturday morning, or at friday night's.

I remember finishing this game two years ago. My biggest challange was not getting to the end, but finding all those cages. I didn't realise that you had to collect all the cages until the end of the game. Realising I needed to play almost all locations over again made me quit the game for a few days, because I had no continues left making it almost impossible to finish the game. So I made up a strategy that 'worked'. First I farmed ten lives by replaying the first stages and saved the game. Then I did a 'discovery run' in each stage to find out where all the cages are, which is a nightmare because some cages are extremely well hidden. After I did the discovery run I reloaded the old save to get my lifes back. Then I did the stage again as efficiënt as possible, forcing myself to not lose too many lifes because farming takes way too much time. In conclusion, I had to do each stage three times. The first time just getting to the end, the second time discovering all the cages and the last time getting each cage as efficiënt as possible. It took me more than 20 hours to complete, but I was proud of myself finishing the game without cheats and I somehow enjoyed the game a lot :).

I would love to see you do a Klonoa review.

It's a great disservice that you don't have more subscribers and views. Your content is absolutely amazing and love hearing more about your personal game experiences. There is a strong, professional quality, while delivering a personality that is definitely your own.

Rayman on PS1 and GBA are 2's of my fav' games of all the time, really love it !

Ahhh my first ever game I know it's far from perfect but for me i have so much nostalgia and joy playing it. I remember getting excited because i had managed to make it to a new level after being stuck. Great and fair review :)

I just started playing this game but have only beaten the first couple levels. Good to know I’m in for a challenge! I love your content, keep it coming :) -bianca

I introduced my 5 year old to Rayman Legends on xbox one. He’s now hooked. It’s very child friendly and there’s a ton to do in that game. He has never cared about video games before.

I played the hell outta this when I was a kid. It gets sooo hard.

It's a good thing Pam is still putting out game reviews, esp since CGR is now dead. Rip CGR

Review at the top as always. And regarding rayman, as we say in France « ça claque encore grave !»

I played to this game on Dos, what some souvenirs ! thanks for the great vid about it

Very entertaining, Thank you and i agree with you how attractive the game looks but hard as hell sometimes lol Subscribed!

Great review! Am playing this for the first time now!

My favorite ps1 game I love the soundtrack still haven’t seen anything created like this

Michel Ancel, such a legend here in France. I'm really curious about Wild, while the news about this game take forever to release, the idea behind it is amazing, we will see. I never met him but that would be cool, along with other french legends of the video games industry. It's so good that Rayman came back with awesome games after the years of those Raving rabbids games.

Remember my first experience of this when ps1 launched in the UK. I was blown away, I thought I was watching a ink and pencil cartoon film akin to An American Tail or similar. Visually wonderful, and has aged well.

Man this brought back a lot of memories! I forgot how much I loved this game back in the day, and its cool to see how well it holds up today. Great review!

as someone who legit did it i feel this game is underrated. when this crops up i always feel the need to say crash bandcoot 1. that was on the same level

25 now. i remember playing this when i was 6 :( my most prominent memory is punching them purple EGG PLANTS and playing music bosses 😂😭😭

I guess that one of the reasons Rayman was not as remembered as other PS1 games is due to it being a 2D game. The Fifth Console Generation where the PS1 belongs was the one that stablished 3D graphics as the norm for videogames, people was crazy with polygons, as a 2D platformer many people saw Rayman was a remnant of the previous generations.

This is one of those games I just never dedicated the necessary time to. I grew up beating NES games. But by the time this came out, I just wasn't into putting that much effort into one game because I had a ton of games by then. I'd say it wasn't "are you kidding me" difficult like Contra Hard Corps, just "no thank you" difficult like Hagane. Still looks nice though.

I never gave this game a chance because it never appealed to me back in my PS1 days. But learning about the back story you provided kind of makes me appreciate it now. So if I do give this game a chance I'll now remember teo important things. Pause before the finish line in case of any 1 ups popping up nearby and watch said finish lines in case of any hunters.

Thumbs up for using a clip from Labyrinth, easily in my top 10 favorite movies of all time.

Rayman has a nice cartoony nature to it, along with a fine soundtrack. My favorite music pieces for this are: The Hard Rocks Crystal Palace And the main theme But I must say, I died countless times in this game. I also didn’t know you had to rescue all the Electoons in order to access the final level. I love some of the levels, but the countless times I died made it frustrating. Rayman is still loads of fun nonetheless! Great review on this game Pam!! 😉👍

As a kid, it was a major feat just to get to the musical instrument stage. I'll have to give this one another try. Great review!

Perfect video. People think I’m weird but my 2 favorite things are Rayman and grapefruits.

Ahhh Rayman. The game that showed me that I did, indeed, inherit my mother's short temper as a kid lol. This game made me want to burn the world it was so hard! But, I love it to death. It's still one of my favorite games and I still go back to revisit it occasionally. I'm 27 now and I was about 7 or 8 when my grandma first bought me the game and to this day, I've never finished it without cheat codes. This game looks at Cuphead's level of difficulty and laughs haha!

Very nice review. The qualities and the defaults you noticed are exactly what new players will see when trying it for the first time. That said, I must admit I didn’t find it that difficult at this time. In the 90’s, many platformers were short but very difficult to increase their durability. And after completing several games from the infamous french publisher Infogrames (Tintin, the Smurfs,Spirou…), I can tell you that Rayman is a piece of cake! I love your videos. So keep on playing!

Aaaahhh Rayman..... the game to play when u need that,(there's not a care in the world feeling back from when we were kids and everything was just way better) and when the nostalgia rush has gone and you notice that you are going game over in the second world like alot, its time to kick that playstation back in the dust closet and repeat this once every 3 year orso! great gaamee :)

I absolutely love this game, my favourite ever for ps1, I played it so much! I really wish they'd re-release for a later console.

I recently beat Rayman Advance and man it was one of the hardest games I've played in my 30 plus years

I remember drawing Rayman when I was a kid but never actually played the game for some reason.

Oh god! Not the dreaded "shot in the face by the hunter", that is killer ;(

I remember seeing screenshots for Rayman and being blown away by how much it actually looked like a cartoon since, at the time, we were still used to 16-bit graphics. And I completely agree with your assessment of how it looks great but would have benefited from more play testing. I never made it all the way through, but I do like the modern Rayman games a lot more.

I have very fond memories of Rayman for PS1. It was one of the first games my brother and I rented for the PS1. Good times back then...

Not only was it hard, I played it on a flight stick. Yes you read that right, I played Rayman with a joystick as a kid.

Great video. I am a fairly new subscriber and I am enjoying your videos thus far.

Great review. I’ve never played this game but really love rayman origins and legends. They’re a couple of my favorite games on the Wii and PS3

Excellent video! Rayman was my first PS1 game :) I never forgotten that feeling when I launched it the first time, it looked/sounded so amazing! I really tried (hard) to complete it only 5 or 6 years later lol! I still remember how one of my buddies reacted when I told him I'm replaying that game, he said something like: "you're playing Rayman? ...why?" looking at me worried like I had a real problem (he couldn't know how I was not done with that game after all this years lol). Finally I'm not even sure I made it to the end, I don't remember the final stage, Dark Rayman etc, but I still have my passwords, I'll check this some day.

4:40 the five most positive seconds the Jaguar has ever seen on youtube

Great review as always!

Before Cuphead, Ubisoft experiment a very fluid cartoonish style with Rayman. Thanks for share your memories with us. Greetings from Chile. :8)

I still remember the PS1 launch and how much I adored this game, but still never did quite finish it.

The Rayman series is criminally underrated. The limbless boy deserves better...

Was glad that this one was included on the Plasytation Mini. And Origins and Legends were every bit as great. Definitely a solid franchise.

Back when games had personality in spades. Remember the idle animations in Earthworm Jim? Or Boogerman? Or if you didn't move Duke Nukem for a while in DN3D, and he'd say "what are you waiting for? Christmas?"

I’ve loved this title I would question myself how beat this game when I was little.

This video pop up in my recommendations but I do love Ray man so I'm not surprised anyway nice review I've only played the newer Rayman games so it's interesting to see how it all began I was always familiar with the first Rayman game but aside from a few bosses I didn't know that much about it

My mom bought me the game thinking it was a game for children. I managed to reach final boss but I couldn't collect all pink creatures. Good memories!

I remember my N64 broke and I saved up to get a new one but I couldnt find one, so bought a PSone. I then started to play games like Crash, Spyro, Skull Knight, In The Hunt and this game. This game was so addicting and it made me want to keep looking to play games like this on a foreign console.

I'd like a review of Brave Fencer Musashi if you've ever played it. Good channel here.

Great review on a game i've honestly never played.I like how you went from gushing about how great the game looked and played to wanting to rip your hair out regarding the steep difficulty curve later on. Your suggestion of playing the newer games is exactly what I'll do, most likely, as this looks good, but i wouldn't want to waste that much time trying to beat it as a busy adult. I bet i would've loved this one when I was in high school. Shame I never got it. Also, dat Labyrinth clip.

I just recently picked up Rayman from Uplay. I was rather shocked at just how hard it can be, and that was in the early levels. I kind of love it now for the same reason I never bothered with it back in the day. It's so colorful and cartoony. It's just the right kind of dumb to appeal to me now. But when it came out, I was at that age where anything attractive to children was "below me".

Rayman is one of the first games i played as a kid, imagine being around 4-5 years old and attempting Rayman.. When i was 6 i got a little bit better at it, but still remember asking my dad to do the jump in the pencil stage lol. I never got to beat Mr Dark though untill i was an adult xd.

Really well put together video, as always! I remember lots of people loving this game, and I wanted to as well, but it was stylishly tough. I thought the controls were inconsistently floaty and very punishing difficulty spikes made sure (to my shame) I never finished this little favourite!

I used to have the Amstrad CPC 6128 back in the 8 bit days :P My Brother-in-Law gave me a ton of bootlegged games :) Nebulus and Double Dragon II were some of my faves. The Double Dragon II port was great, it was more like the arcade version than the NES version was :D

Hi Pam, found your channel via your appearance on Zero Brightness, really enjoyed your insights!

Amazing review. Rayman doesnt get talked enough, which is why i wished he was in Smash U. Maybe do one of Rayman 2 and Revolution? Anways keep up the amazing videos. Cheers.

I remember back in the day Rayman had it’s own booth at the gaming section of Toys R Us in Times Square. Me and my sister made our parents buy it and we never even got close to beating it. The 2nd one was awesome though

Although I've not put a lot of time into the Rayman series, it feels kinda like the same deal as Sonic where the first game is challenging and a bit lengthy, and the 2nd game is much more polished by addressing these issues. Though the release time is also different, coming out in the era of unlockable abilities and backtracking, I do give them credit for making a new mascot in a world that doesn't feel totally "Been here, done all that, sent all the postcards." Thanks for another great video review, Pam! :) -Mad Wolf

You picked an awesome game to review! Great review!

I never noticed how good this game looked and I have overlooked it for twentysomething years. Your editing has become very good and your videos look better than stuff that aired on G4/Tech TV. I would like to see you tackle Shining Force CD.

Perfect review. I have loved and still love the original ray man game, but generally haven’t made it very far into the third world. And usually give up before finishing the second. But you were spot on that it’s charm just wins me over anyways.

Rayman 1 truly deserves a remaster ❤️ Fact: Rayman had limbs, way back when he was under development, but when they tried to test out Rayman's animations, his limbs started to glitch out, and basicly crashed the software aswell, so his limbs got removed, and i am actually glad that they did that 😁 Another thing is that Rayman got his name from the software that was used to develop him, but i do not remember the name of the software other than that it had "Ray" in it 👍

Oh wow, you included the difficult levels. Great review.

It really is like an acid trip and dreamland mixed together.... I like the GBA version as well and the sequel on Dreamcast is like eating cheesecake in a tornado. Perfect and challenging lol

Yup, this is definitely one of those games that I've played a good couple of times, tried to beat, realized how it is later on, and now never want to touch ever again :P ESPECIALLY after watching HippoCrit's hilarious, 3-part _epic_ on actually going through the dang thing (appropriately titled "Rayman is the hardest game EVER" Parts 1 thru 3). It's absolutely astounding looking at the breakdown of what the game does in places - you're definitely not the only one who ID's some examples of major cheapness in places :D He even broke down fundamental issues like how the jump momentum system doesn't really work in a way to facilitate the trickier jumps, or the enigmatic hitboxes and collision on Rayman himself thanks to his limbless body. Those vids absolutely made me never want to fire it up again, even though it's been on my PS3 as a PS Classic download for years XD I do really love the OTHER sidescrollers though, beyond Origins/Legends, I mean. The other games that tried to keep up _this style_ of Rayman, but aren't horrendously, unfairly, unrewardingly difficult - both the Game Boy Color version of Rayman, and then the GBA version of Rayman 3: Hoodlum Havoc (that oddly enough seems to also include content from Rayman 2 re-imagined in 2D) have art that tries its hardest to emulate this original game. They don't quite get there, but they make a Herculean effort and are pretty dang good.

Great review, Pam 🙂. Am I the only one getting Cuphead vibes when looking at the gameplay? Makes me wonder if Cuphead was inspires by this game!

Great video! I always wonder why Rayman is so well known but at the same time the first installment is never discussed, this was very informative.

I've never beaten a Rayman game in my life. I've only played some of the first game and some of the second. Such an iconic character, though. I actually own Rayman Legends on Wii U but haven't touched it. Might have to address that.

Hey Pam, I just thought I'd mention the new fangame Rayman Redemption in case you've not heard of it. It's basically a fan remake of the original but makes the game a bit more fare. I'm playing it now and have been able to get through to the end of Bandland with very little trouble, while on the original version I was never able to get past it. There are different difficulties though of you want that challenge back.

Love Rayman. Still plays beautifully, and it's still a great game to play on the Vita or PSP today. I knew Rayman started life on the Snes before shifting to the Jaguar, but I never realised Rayman 2 was intended to be a 2D game as before. According to a new Fact Hunt video by Guru Larry, the surviving original 2D levels are hidden in the retail version of the game.

loved playing this game as a kid as i recall i never finished it but got pretty close

I've only ever played it on PC. Been playing since I was about 3 or 4. I'm 25 now and still haven't been able to complete it!

Rayman drove me insane in the best of ways when I was kid, classic example of a game where you're just thrown in and you have to figure things out on your own on top of some of the most ridiculously difficult platforming. I personally never could get past bandland either and it's one of the few games I never went back to finish. Probably should at some point haha. But I wish you all the best of luck with your channel and will def stay tuned for more! - it's really refreshing to see a ladynerd talk about dope ass video games from our past. It's also great that nerd culture is finally becoming mainstream and a lot more welcoming to all sorts. I really hope that one day the stigma and negative connotations around nerd culture and more specifically gaming culture, whether that be SNES games, Magic: the Gathering, DnD (or w/e else suits your fancy), will finally disappear and the mainstream will recognize them as the awesome community building fun as hell games they are.

I had this on the Atari Jaguar but I never finished it because of the insane difficulty and cheap one hit deaths. The Blue Mountain area was as far as I got. I loved Rayman Origins on Wii though!

When I saw this the very first time when PS1 was just released and my buddy picked it up, I saw this and kingsfield...They both BLEW me away at the time...just a beautiful experience

I love this review, it's great! 😂 I've been playing Rayman literally since I was born so I can more or less beat the game with 3 lives or less. I always love hearing other peoples reviews and reactions to the original. I recommend the Dsiware version of the game (also on 3ds) for a less difficult version but its still tough 😈

Keep 'em comin' Pammajamma!

This really is a classic. This was so nicely designed, the only problem was how difficult this is. Rayman 2 and 3 where 3D platforms. I've only played this a few times, only making it to the 2nd level, recently I played this again and found how difficult it is. Are you going to review the windows PC Rayman games?

Ah, remember this. Could not finish it EVER, when i was a kid. Fucking rage-quited all the time, seemed impossible to me.

Very fair review! If anyone's interested in playing this game nowadays, may I also recommend giving the 3DS version a try, since it offers a lot more health points and lives (and infinite continues AFAIR) making the game a lot easier to stomach. That way, you still get to enjoy the beautiful visuals and animation, but with less headaches from all the BS deaths and enemies!

Never beaten this one but remember enjoying it, so your video makes sense on why.

There is Rayman Redemption which come out just month ago and its awesome. Remade level design and adding something new. Its far easier than original. You can download it for free its fanmade game.

I'm glad these days we have save states.

3:45 Squidwards first gig.

This is one of my favs on ps1. The saturn version came out first. And it had a little more sprites and better animations. Both PS1 and Saturn are the best. Great game.

Btw the Gba version of Rayman is easier, so if anyone wants an easy introduction.. I suggest you play the Gba version.

My first Rayman game was Origins and Rayman Legends is one of my favourite games. I've played the original Rayman but the difficulty is just waaaay too high to be enjoyable.

You need a blood pressure prescription to play this game!!

I remember starting off with only a couple of titles for my Playstation, I didn't own Rayman but my uncle did and I thought the game just looked phenomenal, giving the feel of interacting with a Saturday morning cartoon, much like how Crash would. But I agree that the levels got unfairly difficult later on. I got as far as that scorpion boss and stopped playing it until years later when it rereleased on PSN.

Rayman 1 is one of the first games i ever got from my mom and it was so freaking hard, i never finished it, even now I am not able to, and cheatcodes somehow wouldn't work

I remember getting this a few years after it first came out. Amazing use of colours but insanely difficult. I gave up on the second world! Thanks for covering.

I bought Ray Man P.S.1 at a store one or Two years ago for about $2 or $3 and I got stuck early on never pull at out since. But seeing this Video makes me wanna try again

Rayman was my game back then. Me and my bro use to play it on the PC all the time.Then a few more years later I got really far, I also enjoyed the music. The only thing I hated was the Space Mama. Also at 11:37 the old Castlevania style death

I've never actually played Rayman but I have part 2 waiting on my Dreamcast.

Cool episode