Remember 64 is part of the Super Pod podcast network. Oh yeah, we are teamed up with a whole bunch of awesome people that some you may have heard on Remember 64 already, but there's a bunch of different great gaming shows anywhere from Fine Time to bar Silence to Retro Wildlands. You can of course find the Super Pod saga on there. Press B to cancel all of these awesome shows that's are just here to talk about great times with games, share their thoughts with you, our experiences with you.
Check us out Superpod Network on your podcast app of choice and Superpod Network.com where you can find all our shows, blog posts, videos and more. This is Ray Man, and this is a man called Ray. Ray Man is the star of the action adventure game Ray Man 2. Ray is not Ray Man can shoot, swim, swing, fly, and even water ski. Ray cannot. Ray Man has friends and enemies in dozens of epic worlds. Ray has a sister in Florida. So remember, it's Ray Man, not Ray Ray Man 2 for Nintendo 64.
Music welcome to remember 64, where this week where we're going we don't need limbs Hello everyone, welcome to the show and hello again if you're a returning listener and viewer and welcome if this is your first time joining us on remember 64, where we play and discuss the good, the bad, the ugly and everything in between in the Nintendo 64's library. My name is David Pitrangelo, and I'm the star of what is probably the very best 2D platformer of all time.
And as you heard off the top, we don't need limbs to kick ass and take names. That's right, we are talking about Rayman 2, the great escape for the N64. Jiggy, look back with me again. Hello Sir, how are you? Calabrew Stew, That's how I'm doing. I love this game. Rayman Two. Oh my gosh, what a gem. This this is one that you have been sort of screaming from the mountain tops from for ever since we started talking a couple years ago.
Like just from the beginning, this was like 1 of like, obviously there's Banjo Kazooie and there's the obvious pics and stuff, but this was like top, top of the list for you at all times. So I'm very excited that we're able to talk about this and that for me personally, I'll sort of spoiler alert for the first time that I played this game. So this is this is great. This is cool, but of course, but of course, we also have a guest this time we're on a streak of
having guests. Jiggy, this is this is awesome and and great voices that join us and faces, of course, Sir. Welcome back Josh from still loading. How are you, man? Thanks for coming back. I am doing fantastic. Thank you once again for having me on Dave and Jiggy. Always a pleasure coming back on to remember 64 and I'm excited to chat about this one because I, I feel like there's a nice mixture of experience with this where Jiggy had a lot of previous, previous experience.
I had a little bit, I, I, I knew about it, which is why when we were trying to figure out a game, I'm like, why I played this. I have some recollections of this. Not a lot, but I have some recollections. And then you're, you have, it's your first time playing it. So we have a nice little mixture of experiences here. So yeah, I'm, I'm happy to be back, happy to be talking about Raymond.
And you know, I decided to surgically remove my elbows and knees in preparation for this episode so I could look like him. You're you're just you just take this so much more spot on, spot on. I mean, you look great. You look great. Like like it's just it's really done a done a good. It's good for you. Like it really looks nice. Yeah. I don't have wrists anymore. But I was not watching He's he's my whole episode, yeah. The whole episode, for those who can't see, I'm just waving my
hands in front of the. Camera just jazz hands constantly. Or like Talladega nights, I don't know what to do with my hand. And. Then like so like someone's arm comes in from the side, it's like. I can't fit my arms into my sleeve, so I can't do what Jiggy's doing. It's kind of tough, I'm not gonna lie. Yeah, Before we get into the game, Josh, let's let's stick with you for two seconds here.
Let's talk a little bit about your about your show and what's been going on this as of this record, we're recording a couple weeks before this gets out. So we are, you're going to be hearing this in the middle of March of 2025 and I feel like there's something going on in March of 2025 on still. Low, yes, yes. The in the middle of March.
Well, March, every single year I do Mario Month and this year for Mario Month, which both of you I believe have been guests on, I think you're both on Mario Kart last year for different episodes. But like separate. Separate episodes you had to. Separate us. We were just gonna, it was just gonna get too violent, too heated. You had to separate us like kids, kids in in the 1st grade. You just have to be at opposite
sides of the room. And those, remember 64 boys are great, but they get violent real fast on real. Real fast when it comes to Kart games actually we're mostly on the same page with a lot of these karting games so I. Don't. Yeah, I think we are. Actually, so yeah, I I'm this year it's all Mario RPG games. I'm covering, I'm covering covering Super Mario RPG, Paper Mario, the N64, Paper Mario, Mario and Luigi Superstar Saga, Paper Mario thousand year door and Mario and Luigi partners in
time. I have with the exception of Super Mario RPG. It was my first play through for all of them, so it was a really fun experience to go through that. And since this is coming out in mid March and they'll be coming up quickly in April this year, I'm doing Punch a Nazi month for no topical reason.
Whatsoever. Just really feeling like punching some fucking Nazis. Just feels like, I don't know, there's something in the air that makes it, makes it makes you want to, you know, there's something about it. I don't know, just. Something's going on. Yeah, I will tell you my my fists are ready, Sir. My fists are ready. Right in the mush. They're covering Wolfenstein 3D, Medal of Honor Underground and Bionic Commando and Real Talk where where.
I don't know what the etymology of saying punching someone in the mush came from, but we need to bring it back because that's just, that's just fun to say. Just right in the mush. Right in the mush. Right, that mush right there, that right there. Right. There punching someone in the mush kind of kind of kind of makes me picture Batman punching a Clayface. That's what that sounds. That's what that is. That's what I picked the first thing I pictured from like the Animated series. I can.
Like anatomically, where is the mush? Where is the? Well, for me it's in my. I have one. It's, it's in my midsection. I know that for sure. I I know that we can tell based on based on what my midsection looked like before COVID and after SO. I just want to make sure for those who don't know, I'm pretty sure it means you punch someone in the face. But now I'm like, now I'm like double checking like is that, is that? Is that correct etymology? I, I think so.
I think so. It's just like a like an old school way of saying face, I think. That's what I thought too. Right in the mush, yeah. Anyway. Anyway, punch a Nazi everybody. You don't have to wait till April, but the episodes will be coming out in April. I'm excited. That's what that's what I got going on. And a certain guest on here may make an appearance on on one of those episodes. You'll have to find way. Too. Or will you have to be separated again? OK.
And that, that's what I got going on. I'm looking forward to it. I have yet to record any of those at the time we're recording this, but I actually just beat one of those games in preparation. I'm looking forward to the rest. Nice, nice. That's awesome. OK, so before we jump into the game one more time, Jiggy, I wrote this down as a note.
I told you before we hit record. And this is the section where instead of making it discreet and making it more natural, I am saying that I'm going to be plugging aspects of the show, including the Patreon page of Remember 64 at Remember 64 show on Patreon where you can get every episode, including this one early. You can get pre show chats, access to polls, you can get some posts that come up on like social media and things like that early.
Just continuing to sort of do extra things on there as much as they can. You can even be a free member and sometimes I'm posting stuff on there as well for free members. And every once in a while I'm putting on a little bit of like a picture. It kind of lets you do like a little bit of like a promotion thing where if you're a free member, you can jump into one of the tiers for half off for a month or two. Every once in a while I'm going to be doing that.
So even if you're not ready to shell out a buck or two, which is totally fine, all up to you, it'll keep you up to dates when that stuff is happening. So you could do that at patreon.com/remember 64 show and what else, Jiggy? What else do I always forget? Well, let's see if you're watching on YouTube, you got to drop a like in this video and subscribe if you haven't. And if you're listening to this on any podcast platform, please rate the podcast.
That would be fantastic. If there's a certain amount of stars, say one to five, just give it a 5. You know, just just five, just straight up, you don't have to think about it. Don't think twice. You don't have to listen to the rest of this. Just drop 5. It's a great number. Five's a nice. Number, It's got a nine. I'm gonna say the best number. Top semi circle at the bottom. It's got all the. Angles.
It's well-rounded. It's. Well-rounded that people who hit five stars are instantly more attractive, so just food for thought. Damn, I got to start reading. What you want to be more attractive? Damn, that's my problem. I got to start reading these podcasts more often. Damn, I wonder that's no wonder if my wife doesn't like me. That's why that's, that's why, that's why, you know, I, I rate
podcasts so clearly. Please everybody, please help us, help us by helping you become a better looking man or woman. Please. Yes, yes, yes, OK, Remember 64 find us out there on social media as well. Remember 64 show try to keep everything consistent, mostly blue sky at this point. But as of this recording, as of this episode, who knows what's going on in the world. Anyways, enough of that.
Let's talk about Rayman two. OK, so like I said, I have no experience playing this game like you said Josh, I do have, I do. I did know of this game. I actually know a friend that had it for, I want to say Dreamcast. At the time, my only buddy that had a Dreamcast. This was one of the games he had. I think I watched him or his brother played a couple times. Never really got my hands on it as far as I can remember. I do, I reference it in my
intro. I do think that's the best or one of the top 32D platformers of all time. Is Rayman Legends from a boat seven or eight years ago? Something like that. Yeah. Within the last decade, maybe. I don't know. I should look it up, but I haven't. Yeah. Something like that. Anyways, that game is. I thought it was. Like 2012. That game's. Incredible. I'll, I'll look.
Up there was origins. Origins and then what's great, what's great about Legends is that it has everything that Origins has in it. And then they added more to it. Like it's, you're right. It's not even just a sequel. It's like an expansion almost of it. It's amazing. It's such a good game. It's gotta be earlier than what I said because it was on Wii. U Legends. One or Origins 1 Legends Legends started as a Wii U exclusive. I didn't know that.
OK so I've played it on switch and I've played it on I think PS4 I think is where I played it elsewhere. But anyways, my experience with Rayman largely is the original off and on. I rented back in the day, which I replayed part of before I played this and then and then Origins and Legends. I don't have a ton of Rayman experience. I just know it's out there and it's kind of fun and goofy and whatever.
Replaying the original, I was kind of like, oh, it's OK, you know, it's it. Feels it's fine. It's just fine at the at this point in 2025, it's just fine. And that's OK. That's just the time of when that game is made. I'll just say off the top, then I'll throw to you guys, this game's great. This game's awesome. It's it's really, really fun.
And whether you haven't played it in a long time or you haven't played it at all, I definitely recommend people go check this out, find a way to play it regardless of what platform. Maybe we can talk about some of the differences as we go along if if we have those. But playing it on the N64, playing with a 64 controller felt good. And yeah, that's that's where I'll keep it for now. But Jiggy, let's let's go to you, man.
Well, you know what I think let's I I want, I wanna I want I wanna hear your guys thoughts because I feel like this is this is refreshing for me to hear because I am filled like nostalgic bias for this game. It's definitely there. I do think it's like in general, just a good game. Like, I don't think I'm wrong about that, but I know that I think I hold it a little bit higher just because I have that. Like, I played the crap out of this game growing up.
So I want to hear your guys's takes before I chime in. All right, there we go. Do it. On to the next. I'll, I'll give a, I'll start off with my personal experience with it, how I kind of first played it. So I actually rented this from Blockbuster back in the day. I remember getting it. I don't, I don't remember if I chose it or my parents. I, I think like I just asked if we could rent something and they
just picked this. I forget why they would have picked it. I, I don't know if I just don't remember if it was me that picked it or my parents. I'm leaning towards my parents just picking in at random. It looks friendly. It's cartoony. Why not? Yeah, like, yeah. So I've never played the original Rayman game ever. I well, I shouldn't say that I've I've I played like on an emulator once, but then I I got I played this and this is a game
that I didn't get far in at all. I don't even think I made it to like the first I I might have been in the 1st 2 levels tops out of like this the the 18 or 19 in the game. So I didn't get far at all. But what really captured my imagination about it as a kid was I Everything kind of felt very dreamlike when I first played. Like I remember like Raymond being captured at the beginning of the game and glowbox coming up or glow blocks or glowbox.
Glowbox. Rescuing him and then talk about having to go get the great fairy lie or Lee or however you pronounce her name. And I remember getting to her and her giving me the 1st power and that like for some reason it just, it felt mysterious. It felt creepy, but it not in a bad way. Like it, it wasn't creepy because it felt scary. It was like I think the best way I can describe it, it was like an enigma to me. I just didn't understand the world.
The world felt so much bigger to me when I was like 10 or 11 when I first played this because I, I, I think at the time I played this, I had not really played another 3D platformer like it. I don't think I'd quite understood Donkey Kong 64 yet, which, you know, Jiggy and I are big fans of.
We we talked, we've talked about it off my quite a bit, but like I just remember being really like it just captured my imagination and I it felt so much bigger and more expansive and just mysterious and dark and it like like a dream, like enigma. That's the best way I can describe it. And I didn't play it again after that one rental until. It was like one time, wasn't it? Was one time. Oh well, stuck one time, Damn. It really stuck with me and like, I didn't understand.
Like, you know, you free the Lums from like, you know what? There was some stuck in the cages, like the fact that there was just cages dangling and you could break them open and there was people inside. Like what's happening in this world? It it really just kind of like filled me with like not anxiety, just like I felt concerned for what the world was like concerned like I cared about the characters even though I didn't understand what was happening in
the slightest. I don't like the best way I can describe it is this game just is this nostalgic enigma to me where I remember the feeling I had now playing it, it didn't give me playing it now. It didn't give me that feeling obviously. Like that feeling came from a from a sense of not understanding what video games are at all. And so when you're getting into a world, you think anything's possible.
You know, you're running into walls being like, maybe I can get through on this pixel, like especially on the N64 where you would see like 2 polygons connect and you have like the the jagged edge that were the like the Rockwall would mean. I'm like, well, I wonder if I could walk up the wall if I walk in between these two polygons right here. I did that all the time as a kid. Or I would, I would fixate on a single pixel on a texture and be
like, that means something. I'm going to try to hit it with my attack. Or something because you haven't, you never saw a wall or a Cliff or water like that or in that way a lot of the time. So it's like, oh, I want to experiment to like what's possible and, and to not understand game design. And not that we're experts in any way of that, but like to not understand all when you're a
kid. Now we have decades of gaming under our belt at this point, so you we have all this knowledge to fall back on. But when you're first getting into games as a kid, you got none of that. So this whole thing was just mysterious and it was just like otherworldly to me. And I, it stuck with me. That feeling of it, it really that childlike sense of wonder is what I experienced from this game.
And I just remember having that feeling the from the one rental and that was it. And I then years later, like literally like over 2 decades later, I started collecting or like a decade and a half, I started collecting games and I remember eventually getting a physical copy of it and didn't really touch it again. I was just like, all right, I remember renting this from Blockbuster and it being really
cool. And so now playing it as an adult, I got a whole new like obviously I did not have that same feeling as I did as a kid. I wasn't expecting to either. Like I knew I wouldn't like you can't have that same sense of wonderment once you understand how games work. But I still enjoyed my time with it overall. I think we'll we'll go into the we'll go into detail, obviously as we continue the conversation, but overall I enjoyed it. I think this game might be better on other platforms.
I think the N64, I don't know if it's because I was playing on an upscaler on my HDTV or not, but I had so many like frame rate issues, like it was very choppy on my N64. And did you guys have frame rate issues at all? Or did you, you have, you have the, you have the physical cartridge, right? I do have the physical
cartridge. I played it on the everdrive so it might not be the same but I actually didn't run into any issues and I also hopped into the first stage, maybe first two on Steam Deck which is obviously also emulation and it ran fine so. Well, let me ask you this. Do you have an expansion pack? You probably do. Did you run it in the resolution mode? Where's my right? There's two different modes, yeah. I think I turned off resolution
mode, I don't remember though. I forgot to make note of that. This is like the first game that I've seen from this era that had that. And I was like, wait, and it's like a higher resolution mode 20,000, like like a 2015 thing. Like what? What or 20? 20 thing better on or off of resolution mode. I've heard that it runs better off, but I've honestly never really tested it. I'll have to see if it was on or
off. I might have kept it on because so once you get past the opening level, which is very short, not really any enemies, no really way you can die. It's just kind of like, you know, you're collecting the lungs. Or you're. It's a little tutorial area, right? And then you get to like kind of the hub area, which is like a Creek and like that, that lagged like fucking crazy. Yeah, I don't. So choppy. I don't know about that one. I I played it, I don't remember
it lagging unfortunately. The last time I played it, which was on stream, I played a different version. I played the Dreamcast version because I have that one too and I had never played that version and Boiler Alert, the creator of the game said that that is the best version. Yes, that's I was watching. I mean I put it in our discord chat. There's a video you can find from double fines to double fine.
I think is the studio Tim Schaefer, Tim Schaefer, the head of Double Fine does, you know, game like play with the devs series. And like nine years ago he had the the director of this game, Michael or Michelle, Michelle Enzel, he was on and he was talking about it. They were playing the Dreamcast version and it looked fucking beautiful. The N 6. 41 looks fine. It's it's like, I think you know, art direction.
It looks great, but because N64 has that natural kind of fuzz to all of its graphics, it looked so much nicer on the Dreamcast version like. So yeah, much. Nicer. Oh yeah, in the Dreamcast version runs at 60 frames, which is really nice. You feel that utterly smoothness. The the N64 version though was first. The N64 version was the first version put out of Rayman 2.
Talking about the differences between versions is really interesting because fundamentally the Dreamcast version it high resolution, higher frame rate, adds some like specific areas and things and challenges which is really cool, but like All in all pretty much the same game just with those added perks. The PlayStation version, however, is pretty different. It I feel like you would have to make a lot of compromises for the PlayStation version. Yeah, it it does. So what?
What the weird thing is the gibberish in this game, which is one of my favorite things just cuz I love Banjo Kazooie and the gibberish is amazing. Yeah, PlayStation is full voice acting. Really. You know that. Yes, the PlayStation version is full voice acting. See. OK, it's weird. OK, so that reminds me of Yeah, one. I agree. I'm not a fan of that. That reminds me of.
I don't know if you guys have played any or some of like the Lego games like Lego Star Wars or Indiana Jones, Harry Potter, whatever, right? The early versions of that didn't have any voices. It was all based off of physical comedy. So goofy things happening to, it's better goofy things happening to your favorite Star Wars or or Harry Potter characters or whatever and in Lego pieces. So they'd fall into a bunch of different pieces and bricks and things.
And like you had, they had to be more creative almost with that. And it reminds me of that where I enjoyed that comedy better than when they started adding voices to it, because now they made lots of money and they could, you know, it's basically probably the reason why, right? And that's fine. It's a it's a choice, but I preferred it when it was just, you know, a cartoony physical comedy. So that's that's what this reminds me of.
And it's it the game's almost funnier when there aren't any voices. I think for Rayman, like I think it's, it's fun to have like this. What do they call it? Simish or Simlish or whatever in The Sims? Like what do they call that? Language. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. That's what it reminds me of and it's great. It's it's great. I love that. That's interesting. It's. Fully, fully voice acted. Yeah, it's, it's just kind of
bizarre. It does that, but then it cuts back on like the amount of lumps in the game. I think it strikes at a few levels. It did. Read that. Yeah, there's a few. Yeah, it's it's a little strange. And I think the PC version is more like the PlayStation version, if I remember right. I know it has less, it has less lums as well. It may not have the voice acting, though. It's bizarre, but the this is one of those games too that's been ported to so many consoles like Route Time.
They changed the names of it too, but like there's a. The version on the DS is not called Rayman Two, it's called Rayman DS. Yep, it's it's weird how many times this game has been ported because Rayman 2 and 64. PS One, streamcast, PS2, PCDS 3 DSI mean it's just like being on a console as late as the 3DS when this was a game that released originally on the N64 is just so bizarre to me. I mean it's not like we got a remake. It's like we got a remake so many times because they changed
the game like every time. And I'm sorry to say, if you have ADS, that's not the way to play it. The three DS 1 is better, but don't don't waste your time with the DS version. Any version is better than that version. Why it just? It just doesn't. It just doesn't work. It's. Not great. Yeah, it just doesn't. It doesn't run well. It's just, yeah, don't do it and.
Then they they even I mean it's obviously not in 3D, but they even made like a Rayman 2. It says 2IN like like almost like it's squared like Rayman 2 forever for Game Boy Color. Like they like it was, it was everywhere at this time and I was just, I don't know why like it it if it was everywhere, especially in Game of Color. I carried that thing in GBA. I carried those those handhelds with me everywhere. How did I not play any of these versions of this game?
It actually is quite surprising when you when I think about it because I'm like, it was someone I know had it. I could have rented it just like you guys said like I could. Have. I mean like. The thing is though, like I only ever saw this at Blockbuster as a kid, Like I didn't see the Game Boy version. I never saw the playstate or the Game Boy Advance version, excuse me, or the PlayStation version. Definitely not the dreamcaster.
I might actually, I might have seen the Dreamcast in like a store or something like that, but I didn't have a Dreamcast. So it's, it was like, you know, in one ear out the other or in one eye out the other. It just, you know, I didn't really think about it because I couldn't play it at the time. So it it really just kind of feels like, I mean, I, I wouldn't kick yourself for not finding it when it's just. Surprised. Just surprised. Yeah, No, I mean. There's so many games out.
There whatever it's. Easy. Yeah, yeah, especially at that time, maybe I just wasn't looking for the single player stuff too, right? Like it was a 64. It was like the Mario Party. That's part. Of it, did you guys ever play Tonic Trouble? No, that's another one that's been on the list where I just like, I hear this is fun, like I. So I don't really know. Tonic Trouble was actually the prototype Rayman too. You have, You've told them. Before, yeah, yeah.
So that the same, same developers and everything. They were actually, they actually made Tonic trouble. They were making kind of a tech demo for a Rayman game in 3D and developed Tonic Trouble, and they were just like, well, let's just make this a whole game because it was fun. And so they did. And in Tonic Trouble you can actually see a lot of references to Rayman, which is pretty cool. And actually in Rayman 2 there's actually characters from Tonic Trouble as well. Oh, really?
Well, even stylistically, like just looking at screenshots of that game or, you know, just sort of seeing some videos of it and like, Oh yeah, this, this feels like that. And I don't know that much about it. But now that you say that, I could see how they could be linked and stuff. Yeah, it's almost, it's more interesting to do Raymond Two first and then retroactively go back and play Tonic Trouble because then you see. OK, yeah, this is this is like Rayman. Yeah. And it's it's cool.
It's almost like an experiment with things. But honestly, Raymond 2 throughout the game is kind of an experiment. I feel like there's so many. Any game mechanics? There's so much going on. In the house, like every level is like totally different. I mean, at heart it's a 3D platformer, but yeah. But there's, but there's more than that happening.
Yeah, I think I wanna before before we get into some of the gameplay details, I wanted to go jump off what you guys said about the different versions and stuff. One of the first things I noticed about this about this game was that I actually thought it looked really good. I think I think it. It looks good for an N64. Yeah, you're not saying that it looks like crap or anything, but yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Well, the dream Cat, it looks
smoother. Obviously if, if Jiggy was saying like it runs at 60, like that's there's, there's differences there. You're going to notice that difference especially. If you well, it's on more powerful hardware. Yeah, exactly as it as it as it should look better and run better. But I, I like when it starts and you get a lot of like, you know, close-ups of Rayman himself with like him specifically. They really, I think found a great way to make Rayman look
the like exceptional. I think like, I don't know if it's just he's a little bit smoother than the rest of the characters. I don't know if it's his expressions. I just found that the way that they designed him and his and his motion and mannerisms and all these things like when they get close up on a lot of characters for an N64 game, often you can see the flaws sometimes. And a lot of the time in this, it almost looks better when you're up close to Rayman.
And I think that's that doesn't happen often. Maybe it's because they don't have to render his limbs. I don't know but. They, they talk a little bit, they talk a little bit about it in the, in that gaming or play with the devs doc like video from double Fine where the N64 was better at flat shaders, like it didn't do well with like really complex textures. And so Rayman, if you look at his textures, they're very plain. And I don't mean that as an, as an insult.
Like he's got his body. His torso is just purple. His limbs are pretty much just white with the, with the occasional line to indicate his fingers or his feet or toes or whatnot. And then his face, for the most part, is just one or two colors, and it's. And then like, only his eyes kind of move really like. Yeah. And because he has such a cartoonish design, he can be more emotive and expressive in
the way they animate him. And it's just very smart art direction, if you think about it, because if you look at, like, other games that are going for a realistic look, you know, like Goldeneye, Perfect Dark, you know, stuff like that, while I have nostalgia for those graphics, like the art direction isn't as strong. It doesn't hold up, I should say, as much as this does, where, Yeah, you can tell this is an N64 game. You can tell it's old, but it
doesn't necessarily look bad. I would say it looks that you can see it's age the most in the environment, graphics in the environments. But like Rayman himself, it just looks like a like the low. It almost looks like if someone made an indie game with a low polyesthetic and they they with just strong art direction. It works. It works really well. Rayman looks really good in this. I mean the game looks especially good for the time, but like, Rayman still doesn't look awful
now. Yeah, no, it still looks good. And I I like it's, it's a subtle details. I appreciate a lot of the time with like, you know, graphics and art direction and things like that. Like we were just watching, I pulled up someone's like long play of the video and and they're they're swimming in one of the parts. And it's not like, oh, you swim.
And I mean, this is no knock on Banjo Kazooie, but essentially like when, when you're swimming underwater with them, Kazooie pushes with the wings and Banjo's feet kind of just flutter a little bit. Rayman, maybe it's you don't have like as many options of how you swim, but like his motion, how he he look, he really looks like he's floating through the water like extra, you know, maybe maybe it's because he
doesn't have limbs. He doesn't have legs attached to his feet, but his feet are kind of like floating a little bit when he's not using them. Or when you go down his the motion on his on his ears or his hair or whatever you want to call it, you know, are they considered ears with their ears? It's hair. It's hair that looks a little. Bit like ears to me. I think they're shaped like ears, but I think it's actually hair. I can tell you why it's hair. Please.
Because in Rayman origins and the PS Vita version specifically I had that there is a cut scene that shows how Rayman got his hair and he was actually bald in the beginning. And little creatures that look like his hair came over and like hopped on his head and his girlfriend at the time like freaked out and then he ended up like falling up a Cliff or something Long story short. And the hair started twirling and like, like hovered him down. And that's how Raymond got his
hair. I liked it more than the ears. I wish that wasn't the narrative that is. That does make more sense if you think about it. Because if he can turn his like those things into. Helicopters. Yeah, having it beat ears would be really painful, you know, and he wouldn't hear anything. It would just, it's just whoosh right into the ear canal.
The yeah. So anyways, I just wanted to mention next I, I liked, I don't know, I the art direction is something that Rayman has kind of, it's interesting 'cause you go from 2D to 3D, sometimes it's hard to sort of translate some of those characters or those worlds. I think they did a pretty good job at this. When you look at this one, or you look at ones that were even after this, it's, you know, it's a choice, I think from the original game. And then they continued it with
this and, and I think it works. I, I think that was, they did a good job of, of translating it into a completely different dimension as they as, as you might say so. And to to shout something out real quick, they specifically, at least in the first area, but the game, the game in general, but specifically they, they mentioned this in the first area, I think in like the jungle, like either the first level or they there were the tutorial area before you get to
kind of like the hub area. That, that that area, the jungle specifically was heavily inspired by my neighbor Totoro, the Heyo Miyazaki movie, my neighbor Totoro. The games art direction in general was inspired by Heyo Miyazaki, but they specifically cited Ansel in the OR Michel Ansel in that video, specifically cited my neighbor Totoro as an inspiration for the art direction and a lot of
things. And specifically like the, excuse me, like in that jungle area, you know, they didn't have a lot of processing power in order to render like trees and stuff. Yeah. So that's why if you look at the the textures on the walls, there's a lot of roots and stuff where it gives the illusion that, hey, you're in a jungle. There's trees everywhere without them having to have detailed trees on the texture on the textures of the wall, or render a whole bunch of trees polygons
that are trees. Yeah, like separately, Yeah, I noticed, I noticed a couple times. Yeah, it's a it's a great way to sort of, you know, dodge around those limitations and stuff, which, you know, we've discussed in a bunch of other games as well. It's just how it was for the 64 and how it was for this generation and stuff. Right.
I noticed a couple times, like when you talk about like trees specifically every once in a while, because there's not a lot of those like stand alone trees that are there. There's one like sticking out of the wall. It could kind of look like a vine maybe or whatever. And I'm like, oh, do I have to do something with this? And I would like try and jump on it and try and figure out if it leads me to another area. And I'm like, no, it's just there just to show you that there's a tree.
That's that's it. That's what it is. And I'm like, I'm fine with that. But I was like, it would have been cool if that would that led me somewhere, you know, like I was trying to I was trying to do more with what they were, what they were showing me, but it was it's I like the art direction is great. It's cartoony. It's just the right kind of cartoony and stuff. So Jiggy, we've I mean, we didn't quite avoid it or whatever, but you played the shit out of this game growing up, man.
But it Oh yeah. So did you did you own it at like when you were younger or? Yeah, yeah, you did. OK. Oh yeah, no idea how I got it, but I had it. Sure I had it. And I just absolutely loved it. And Rayman became one of my BIG4, OK. And four, my Big 4 is the characters I wanted in Super Smash Bros and was always horribly disappointed that they were never in. But thankfully I've gotten three of those four, which is
incredible, by the way. And those characters were Rayman, Mega Man, Banjo Kazooie and Sonic the Hedgehog. I loved all four of those characters. And Rayman was like this weird, like I don't even know. I really honestly, I enjoyed Rayman Legends and I enjoyed Rayman Origins. I wasn't a huge fan of Rayman 3. I loved Rayman 2 to death and I was like a little disappointed with Raymond 3 and I got Raymond Raving Rabbits. It's like on my Wii, like I was so pumped for Rayman.
Yeah, every time Rayman came out, I was like, yeah, Rayman. Oh, this is shit based around this game, based around this game, based around this game. And every time I got a game, I was like, this isn't Rayman 2. Like it doesn't have the same feeling. It doesn't. It doesn't capture me like this one did. This is like the definitive, for sure, 3D Rayman. And that's not to say that Rayman 3 is bad. That's not to say that Raving Rabbits is bad. I had fun with both of those games.
Raving Rabbits is definitely more Mario Party. I guess Wario Wear kind of. It's just mini games over and over, yeah. Yeah. But. Approach, yeah. Yeah, Rayman 3 just changed the combat. And for me, the thing that I really loved about Rayman 2 is the momentum. The feeling of momentum of sliding, jumping in the air and flipping, and then like you do a little roll as you land on the ground. I love that choice. Like just a simple jump, so like a little tumble thing. I love it.
Yeah, it felt so smooth. It it, it just feels right in Raymond 3 momentum. No, it's like if you you do a front flip and you almost don't move forward at all. You just kind of jump straight and you do like this really subtle forward movement versus Rayman 2 where you just like you went flying, right? And yeah, he's got a very fluid motion in this, which I think a lot of the time you don't without like a deliberate run button.
You know, like in Mario or I would say Banji Kazooie, as you run around with Kazooie, those are kind of the quote, UN quote run buttons. This doesn't have that. And yet that momentum that you're talking about is still there, which is interesting. That's that's an interesting point. Everyone actually thought about
it that way, but you're right. Yeah, and the the racing levels with Lee, the ferry, which I I actually don't know for sure if it I think it is Lee. I'm trying to remember because I did play through the PlayStation version, but I don't remember how they pronounced it. It's been a long time. I. Wonder if there's a way I'll try and find it. Yeah, I. Didn't even. Get any of those levels because those were the bonus levels, right? Yeah, right. And I've always.
Not all the bonus levels, I think there's like two or three of those ones, I think. Well, there's. Yeah, there's. There's one for every stage, but they're not all like that. I haven't gotten a single. 10 really I got I think I got like 3 or 4 but. I think there, I think there's 2 Lee races actually two OK and. Then yeah, I think there's. Yeah, I think there's two and then and then there is like a bonus level like with the baby glow box that's like button mashing.
Yeah, which by the way, in Dreamcast heart as heck, don't even bother just and these were so much easier just because of the buttons are it's just the buttons. It just doesn't it doesn't match like the 64 buttons do. They're a little and they don't feel bad. It just doesn't. Like I was, I was trying all sorts of different techniques and I won a few times, but I was like so frustrated with it. Yeah.
So if anyone doesn't know or basically the way it works in this game is similar to other semi collect a thon type games is every stage you collect is it? It's not always 30 or 50. Lums. No, it's it varies. Because some. Some. You know 50 alums, but it does vary. Yeah, some are 30 or whatever, depends. I some because some levels are just shorter than others. I think that's kind of why. Yeah, it depends on the size of the level. Yeah, it. Depends on the size.
And then there's anywhere between 3:00 to 8:00 of the cages that you have to break open or whatever. And if you get all of both of those, you're awarded with a bonus level which comes in. Is it just the two forms jiggy? Because I didn't get all of them. Is it? It's just the glow box, the baby
glow box. OK, so the baby glow box, which is basically a Mario Party mini game where you just press A&B really quickly back and forth and that's how you pick up speed or lie or Lee. You quote UN quote race with her and you follow her and pick up a bunch of the, you know, yellow lums like basically, which are well, the.
The Lee levels are different. The Lee levels are like, so the glow box, the baby glow box levels are like the bonus levels you get for the level getting the lums and the cages. Yes, yes. But the Lee levels are actually separate levels that in certain levels they're like. In certain levels they're like an alternate path. Oh, that's what it was. That's what I'm thinking. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And then you can find her. And I love those levels. And those levels actually spun
off into their own game. Yeah, on PlayStation One, it was a Rayman like racing game and I'm trying to remember what it was called. I don't it might have been actually been Rayman Arena and it was just like APS one version of Rayman Arena and then the PS2 and that generation was different. Yeah, Rayman Arena. So it basically like Rayman Arena on PS1 is literally just those Lee races just with like multiple. Players yeah, yeah, those are cool because those also reminded
me which I liked them. I agree. I thought they were they were a lot of fun. The the level design around them is cool. You're basically just going through jumping over a bunch of obstacles following her and you have a little bit of a time limit on it. That reminds me of the levels that completely blew me away the first time I played. The music stages and Origins and, and, and Legends, Rayman Origins and Legends. Because to me, those stages in those particular 2 games are perfection.
They are so well done. Because one, it's usually music that I enjoy, which always, yeah, yeah, the Black Betty ones and stuff like that. And like the fact that that's like the first one, I was like, what am I playing? This is the greatest thing I've ever experienced. So fucking good. I love it anyways, reminding me of those. They're going for the same kind of idea. I wish there was a little bit of a music thing, but it's just the same music.
Although you're playing the N64. I'm sure there was a limitation to it. It is what it is either way, I thought that the level design around those were still a lot of fun and still really good, so I'm not going to complain too much. But yeah, so that that sort of takes us to how like the game is structured, I guess, too, right, Which we haven't quite got to yet. So there's those unlockables or those collectibles that that you need to get in each stage, and there are how many stages here
there are. I think there's 18 and then or 19 and there's like a bonus one. OK, Yeah. OK. So there. So. I I had it up for a little bit. I. Yeah, I have it too, but it doesn't have the numbers beside it. I don't feel like counting, so that's fair enough. That's where I am. I I'm so tired. And each stage is you go in there, try and collect as much as you can and, and you know, rescue as many, bust open as many cages as you can, and then you move on to the next one.
Maybe you'll get a bonus, maybe you won't. The more you collect, potentially you might get a little bit more life if you do bonus stages. You all these, all these types of things that will happen in in 3D platformers of this time. Kind of shares some some ideas from those. But the difference between a game like this and something like Mario 64 or especially Banjo Kazooie if you want to compare it to that, these are mostly much smaller and shorter stages.
Not all of them, but some of them especially. Really are. Some of them are really long. Yeah, some of them are are a little too long. There's a little little too many ideas going on. But early on some of them you can whip through fairly quickly even if you're playing it for the first time. I found anyway, I did I collect everything when I did those.
No, but but I early stages, sometimes you can get through in 1520 minutes even if you're taking your time later on things really sort of build and they're doing a lot more mechanics and a lot of sort of sometimes great, sometimes not so great platforming and stuff. So I still think it's a, it's a, it's AI know you got something to say about it. So. Any level with a fucking plum can go die in a Dick. That was what I was going to get to. So there's lots of ideas here.
So some of them are simple, some of them are simple. You just, you're, you're jumping and you're just trying to not to fall down a Cliff or you're just defeating the robots that have have captured you and your friends and the lums and all these things, all those types of things. Simple idea, just enough to kind of get you from stage to stage. And then as you go further along, what's the deal with the plums? Let's talk about that.
That's one of the mechanics. OK, so the plums are in, there's a handful of levels where in order to traverse to get to the next spot in it, there's water or lava or something that you just, you cannot jump into because the water has piranhas or the lava, lava's hot, right? Whatever the fuck. And in order to progress past it, there are these plums that
they're obvious. You can see them pretty clearly, Yeah, But you're supposed to knock them off with your energy blast and then stand on top of them and throw your energy ball. And it the the momentum from that will push you in the opposite direction. You're throwing the ball. And you're supposed to traverse these levels kind of in these like weird backward, like, you know, you're, you're throwing the balls behind you. So that way you can progress
forward. Yeah, the game does an absolute shit job of explaining this mechanic to you they don't explain it to. You at all they don't it. Just doesn't. Yeah, I didn't know I had to do that. I was like what am I doing with this thing? The only thing I can think of is that was that a mechanic in the first Rayman game? Like something where you stood on those plums and you you
hopped across a tough area. I could totally see that work in 2D as well because other games did that on the Super Nintendo in Genesis and whatnot. Not an outrageous idea in two DI, don't think. No. And it's not even that. I will give them credit that while it's not taught at all, like it's awful design from that standpoint. You get a little bit of like a text at the bottom from the from the weird guy that sounds like he's whispering to you all the time. Murphy. Yeah, what's his name?
Yes, Murphy. Murphy's. There's some there's some sounds. I want to talk about sound after we talk about this or eventually we'll talk about sound because there's there's music and there's sound effects that I have like what? Anyways, like you're supposed to then, you know, catapult yourself across by throwing in the opposite direction.
And what I'll give them credit for is that they design the levels pretty well where they don't make you do super precise platforming or movement while you are on top of that plum. So while it is a pain in the ass, and honestly they make the levels with those plums way too fucking long, it's they're too exploratory. Use it too much.
Yeah, it's a cumbersome, cumbersome movement mechanic that they make you use too much, but they never really kill you with it. They don't demand too much of you with it. It's more just like a war of attrition at that point, like. Do you have what it takes to keep? Pushing through it. So that is the most aggravating part of the game for me.
I also think there's a handful of moments that suffer from a similar problem that these plums do, where they introduce a pretty important mechanic to whether it's whether it's beating or to progress through a specific level or something you're going to use later on. And they don't give you a lot of explanation on how to use said mechanic. You know, obviously being the the plum is is the big one.
Also, like another thing with the plum, the there's like those like monkey robots that like you can't damage with your with your energy blast. Yep, you're supposed to defeat them with a plum. You throw a plum at their head and it like. It sticks to their face it. Sticks to their face. Or you can which? Is the whole which looks, which looks great by the way. It's I think it's great. I think it's really funny but but like there were. So many moments.
Where like to take out those monkey guys specifically? You can also lure them because they'll charge you. So if you lure them to an edge and they charge and dodge off and you they finish off. The Cliff or whatever. Yeah, yeah. And that's fine. But they don't teach you any of that. They don't give you any indication that that's how
you're supposed to beat them. Like every enemy you attack, every enemy you encounter you can defeat with your energy balls, with your energy blast, or whatever you can defeat with your balls. Raymond's got very strong balls in this game so. He does that very. I mean his his hands and feet are basically balls anyway but like. You. He he gives you the every enemy you can do that with except the fucking monkeys, yeah, and or the monkey robots.
And so and then they give you no indication of what you're supposed to do. So it's like, why would I think like to use a a plum? Why would I think to use a plum on that guy I. Went. Up until that point, you've never needed to use it in any other way. Right, exactly. That's that's I will. Say at least with the the charging off the Cliff, you can, I feel like you could intuit
that a little bit. Like if you see an enemy charging and you're by a Cliff, you could maybe come with come up with the idea like, oh, what if I like, you know, throw it off the edge or something. Like that when it when that happened to me, I did it by accident. I was like, oh, that works. Oh, OK. So I know what you know. And I think in that first instance, they actually set you up in a specific level where it's like a a small tunnel. It is. And it arts is at you. Yeah.
Yeah, so it, it almost could happen by accident. And you know what, like I, I definitely see what you're saying and and I don't disagree with you with with that. But also, I guess there's the, I guess there's a little bit of, I don't know if charm is the right way to say it, but there is something about just discovering that yourself, you know, not everything needs to be laid out for you. But I do think a little bit more of an indication would have been
beneficial, like just something. I think really only the plum thing is what I wish they would have spelled out a little bit more. I think the charging off the Cliff, yeah, it would be nice to get a little extra hint, but they they throw enough of them at you that I feel like you're almost guaranteed to figure it out by accident. And that set up that Jiggy mentioned too does does make a difference too. Like how that happens?
Yeah. So I, I, yeah, there's just, there's a handful of mechanics and those are the two that come to my mind. But like, there's a handful of mechanics they just don't do a good job of explaining, but which is frustrating because the rest of the game is really solid. I, I, I had a little tough time with the platform because I think my controls were a little
bit floaty and I don't know. So I, I recently got a retro tank 5X and I plugged my N64 in through S video to the retro tank and then obviously to the HDTV then right, right. And I don't know if like that was causing some input delay. I know Retro Tank is known for not really having any strong input delay, but I don't know if this game, because of the frame
rate issues I was having. Maybe I was playing on the high resolution mode when I shouldn't have and that might have been causing it, but there was a lot of times where it would. It felt responsive enough. But like when Jiggy, you were talking about how it's like the motion in this is so fluid and you can you've like the sense of speed and motion through it. I didn't get that at all. I felt Rayman's controls were really stilted. I don't think they were bad.
I think they worked for the game, but I thought they were like, I, I didn't think they were fluid in the slightest. And I don't think that's necessarily a bad thing because I think the game is designed around it.
Like I never felt like I was out of control of Rayman or like the, the challenges they set before me were like unfair, with the exception of like a handful of levels, which we'll get to when we get to. But like, I don't know, I when you said that you were like when you said the movement was so fluid, I was like, did we play the same game? Because I I well, you said Rayman 2, right?
Yeah, but then I but I also don't is it because of the resolution mode that I was playing in if I was playing in that and because of the upscaler, was there input delay even the retro tanks are known for not really having? Yeah, it could have been. Again, mine were both in ROM versions. I mean, I mostly played it on the actual console itself. So you know the Everdrive runs on ROMs. It's not like you're you're playing the actual
cartridge. Yeah, but you're playing, but you're not playing on an emulator. You'll get the like just 'cause you're running on a ROM, you're still going to get the same experience since you're playing on original. Hardware that's right and and and I didn't play later stages on my steam deck. I just played like the first two, like the first, like, you know, 20 minutes, half an hour or whatever, right? So it really wasn't long. So I, but I think things get
more complicated. I will say though, that that if you experience it in the sort of like hub area down that like sort of Galaxy River or whatever it's, it's called. I, I felt like, like the first time I opened that area, I got to that area, I was like, there's so much going on. Yeah, there's too many like particles almost happening. Like I get what they're going for, but I feel like there's too much happening. I don't, I don't really know why
this needs to be so complicated. And then eventually I was like, I see what they're doing here. OK, I just pressed forward to follow this path. It's a very small gripe. I don't think it's like a big issue per SE, but like it's very visually busy. Yeah, it's overly busy. I didn't have any issues with the frame rate, but I did feel like, wow, this is it feels like they're trying to do too much with this very small detail that really didn't need it. But that's. That's funny.
Yeah. In in the Dreamcast version, they changed the menu. Oh, OK. And it's totally different. It's almost like a overhead style. You you still like move around the map, but it's like a little bit more of a traditional hub world. I think like Crash Bandicoot, think like Crash Bandicoot. It's kind of like that. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, you like go like point to point to point. Yeah, it's just not that like viewing angle. I actually missed the N64 version. I actually prefer that hub
world. I just like, I know where I'm navigating to I guess, because I've just played it so much. So I just know that he does like the little animations where he he's running down the branch in the background and he's, you know it. Was a cool idea. I think that's that's nice to have that sort of added touch again, It's it's like a design choice, which I, which I, which I get. But that's, I mean, that's a very minor, minor gripe either way, because it's still like
it's a hub world, right? You're just selecting a level. It's not. Spending a ton of time there. Yeah, I think it it looks really cool though, which I think is that's got to count for something. But I do wonder about the the frame rate issues because it like are you watching a stream at all? Because like, I don't see any. No, there's none on this. This is the N64 version that you have playing in the. Yeah, it is. Yeah. And this is it's also my. Place, but this is basically
what mine looked like. Yeah, but I played. I did play when I recorded it for like my I did a mysteries video on it. Yeah, yeah. Oh, I should have. Whenever off the top. I'm terrible. Sorry. Well, that'll be that that's a fun one. If you guys want to watch your mysteries video and I watch whatever I don't need to plug it in it's. Fine, know what if if you guys will like tolerate this for a second. I can't think of the actual word
I'm trying to say. I can turn on my TV real quick and boot up my N64 and they mess with the settings real quick just to see. Yeah, go. We'll get talking. Go for it. Yeah, Yeah. Experiment. Yeah. Give me, give me, give me a second. Let me take care of that. The thing I wanted to, I wanted to ask Jiggy because we haven't quite gotten it to with, with you.
We, I, I feel bad. I feel like we kind of like skipped over a little bit, but you, because you had so much experience with this, like I know it's I know nostalgia is sort of like a a strong drug for everybody. On a hell of a drug. It's a hell of a drug. Like like what do you think like latched you to this game? Like is it the platforming? It was it Rayman, just the sort of art direction we've been talking about that we all kind
of enjoyed. Like, I don't know, did it just feel better to you compared to some other some others and stuff Like what? What do you think? Like, I don't know, stuck with you as long as it as long as it had. Well, the atmospheres, a big part of that. I felt like everything he was saying at the beginning, how he was talking about how it just captured like it it all feels like a dream. Yeah, absolutely. I was like nodding.
I'm like, yeah, that's that is like one of my main draws to this game was just the the whole vibes, the whole game is just so weird. I think I never got bored because every level felt different. Even though there was that familiarizing like 3D platforming stuff. There was somewhere you have to ride the shell and you have to go like upscale, scale a wall and all of a sudden you're upside down and you've got to figure out like different gravity mechanics.
And then there's like they do a. Lot with the camera and stuff too. They do a lot of like cinematic styles with the camera, just like sometimes, like you said, climbing a wall, Oh, it changes and it sort of pulls this like weird angle. Not weird angle. I actually think it's, it's, it's interesting. They do a lot of unique things with the way you you approach what feels like could be like a very simple moment. In the same way that I love the idea of stop and swap with Banjo
Kazooie, I love Rayman too. It's got this like mystique, kind of like there's a secret around the corner. Like everywhere there are alternate paths, you know, Finding the cages that are hidden like that was fun to me. Collecting things isn't always fun to me, but it is in Rayman too for me. Like even the sequence right here with there's treasure, right? You have an option to select take the treasure or don't take
the treasure. I love it and if you take the treasure it gives you like a fake ending to the game, which is fantastic. It's. So funny I I captured this when I was playing it here. I'm gonna see if like the the the video. It's right there. So basically you you go through this like semi boss fight, I guess you could call it, I would say. And then this like creature, which is like this weird. I don't know goblin head thing with long arms and I don't whatever.
I just called them Mike Wazowski. Yeah, creepy Mike Wazowski. That's yeah, I actually know. I actually know his name. It's oh, what's? The name I forgot I. Don't even know if Wow. And now I was thinking Polykus. Polykus is not That's the spirit of the world. That's the good guy this is. I can't remember. Oh no, why am I forgetting? It's like jaw. It's in like this creepy world, right? You're kind of like in like a nightmare world almost is what it is.
So anyways, the, the, what happens is you, you, you go into their treasure room full of gold and treasure and stuff. And like Jiggy said, it gives you an option to choose. I want the, I want all the treasure or I, I don't need it. And then if you say I want all the treasure, it takes you to this like, like you said, fake ending of Rayman being fat on a beach with a bunch of coins around them. I want to see if the sound comes through. I want to. And then it just says the end
and zooms out. He's on this tiny, tiny island with a bunch of coins and he's like a giant, basically the size of a bowling ball and stuff. And then it just resets you back to that point. And you have basically have to choose. I don't want. Yeah, but that, that's, that is the the when you're talking about like atmosphere or vibe or whatever, That's the type of humor and great stuff that that this franchise I would say in
general has. But this game specifically, like it doesn't need to do something like that. That that was completely unexpected. And I absolutely loved it. I figured something weird would happen and when that that wasn't the choice that they wanted me to make, so to speak. So I did it anyways. And I'm so happy that I did because it it was so funny and laughed out loud. It was awesome. And his name is Jano, by the way. Jano looked at that. But I'm like, yeah, OK, JANO.
Gotcha. Real quick, I am playing it right now. The framework rate is significantly better in low res mode. Like it's, it's like night and day. Interesting. OK, whatever the default is, is the way I played it. I've done it both. Yeah. I do remember a couple dips, but I don't remember it being like something that hindered my experience. So yeah. Same. Yeah, but I don't know. But I do think it, I mean it definitely plays better to hire frame rate because playing on the Dreamcast.
I will say though, my preference in controller is still the 64. I love the 60. Four out of. It feels good with this, yeah. Out of all the ways it played. I know it's cliche to say on a Nintendo 64 podcast, but this controller gets way too much shit it doesn't deserve. Absolutely, absolutely, man. Like I think at times growing up I was like, oh, this is weird. Or oh, I liked my Super Nintendo. Or oh, I just, I'm gonna have my keyboard and mouse or you know. But it is.
So listen, I I always have to argue for it because I understand when people say, oh, it's dated or, you know, they're confused by it. I'm like, sure. I'm like yes the the analog stick is not the greatest, but it's solid. Look at that. Look at that Gray beauty. Look at that. Look at that. But it's got a six button configuration for fighting games. It's got AD pad that they never used for some reason, which they should. Have used for feels good in your hand like it's a. Gun trigger.
It's a gun trigger. The best use of those D pads is the wrestling games because the wrestling games, you need the D pad. That's why that's the most use I ever got of that D pad is playing those wrestling games. Yeah It it's it it works for this. I think also another thing whether it's, I mean, I don't think the controller is just that play here with this, but the camera is pretty good in this which is which can be tough and very hit and miss with 3D platformers.
I think that it really worked with this one. I think it really helps that it has that lock on mechanic. Yeah, the lock lines. I love games that have that. Like, I very often try to play 3D games in general, like any kind of action or platform or whatever. I like just being behind my character as opposed to even slightly off a bit. I don't know, maybe it's an OCD
thing. I don't know what it is, but but I enjoy that and the fact that there was an option there, which isn't always the case for this generation of games. It doesn't always allow you to do that. And like we said, every once in a while there's sort of like a camera change that the game forces you to play within. Most of the time that worked, I would say I didn't have too many gripes with that. And every once in a while I.
Would say it's 5050I. I had a couple issues with the with some of the camera angles specifically. Like anytime that I mean the game was the the gameplay was designed around it. Thankfully, it's not like they threw unfair jumps at you when they switched over to those camera angles, but there's a lot of moments where like you're having to take jumps that you're not 100% comfortable with because you can't always see exactly where you're trying to go, which is fine. I but they they design it
around. They design around it pretty well for the most part, but I don't know I, I when it got to the locked angles, I was not always the biggest fan. Specifically when you have like those platforming levels where you're being chased by the pirate ship and you have to like run across the like the just the platforms, the the railway or the. The bridges that are bridges. That are collapsing and everything I was not a fan like though I was I was streaming it last night and friend friend of
the show Troy AKA Troidel power. They were, they were watching in stream and they were just laughing at me because I was trying to tell the blockbuster story and I was getting so fucking pissed off at those levels. Because the, the, when you, when you're running across one of those bridges and it gets hit by a bomb by the power chip and will launch off, but you can't always time it right.
So if you, if you, if you jump literally like a second before that bridge goes, you don't have enough distance to make it across it. If you jump a second late, you can still get off of it, but now you're you're suddenly launched to the right or to the left, and you have to compensate after the jump for the landing, which if you're not expecting, really throws you off. Yeah, you do have to do some of those, those specific sequences you kind of have to do a few
times. I'll say this is something I forgot to mention before, and I think we were talking about some of the platform is somewhat semi related to this is that those types of sequences which are, you know, fairly difficult at times and and are supposed to be like a little bit of extra
challenge. This game has a really great sort of checkpoint mechanic that I really liked where on those types of yeah, those types of sequences or any really even like more simpler ones where there just happens to be an enemy. There's a green thing that you collect Lum that you collect. That basically is where you will respawn. And basically if you die halfway through the sort of sequence that's ahead of you, you just respond right to that point and you start from the beginning.
All you do is lose a little bit of health and then you can just continue going and sort of learn from your mistakes. I think when they did that, I thought that was great. Some sequences are a little bit longer and are a little bit of a pain, but hey, that's what you get from platformers. You want a little bit of challenge. That's just how it goes. So I was fine with that.
But just in general, that idea, it's not like you die and oh, we're going to spawn you back to the beginning of the level you got. Like there are specific points, you know that if you collected a green one, if I mess up, this is where I'm going to start from. And I, I, I really enjoyed that. I thought that was a great design choice. Unless you lost all your health. If you lose all your health, they make you start back at a though they even. I never did. I never lost.
I did a. Whole time I did a handful of times, yeah, but thankfully it wasn't it wasn't too bad. There was a couple times. What is it? I when I was playing last night, one of the reasons I stopped is because I kept I lost all my life and then I would have to start over one of the hardest sections of the game or one from sorry, we're not one of the hardest sections. Start over a level from the beginning that I was already super far and I was like, man, I don't want to do this again.
I just did this, but then what is it before we recorded tonight, I just got to so I guess as a disclaimer, I did not beat this game in preparation. I got 3/4 of the way through. I got the third out of the four masks that you're supposed to collect and I got the third mask and I was worried because like the the level leading up to up to that boss is pretty long. Like there's a lot of like you're riding like these.
You get this power up which then disappears immediately after the fucking level, which is such, so fucking mean. Like don't do that to me. Don't give me. Like tease. Don't give me unlimited like hover like where you can literally fly indefinitely Now since you both beat this, do you ever get that back or is it only just for? It's just salable. It's just for. It's just. For what? A cock block. Yeah, kidding. That's it. That's what it is. Don't fucking give.
That's that's one thing about this is like there's so much talk at the beginning of this game about I need to get my powers back, my power, what what and there's. Like no powers? What powers? You get 1, you get, you get your energy balls, and you get your
hover. And then like A and then like a power, a powered up, you know, attack where you can hold on to be a little bit longer, which which is fine, But if I I know, I know Rayman's not supposed to be, you know, Jiggy, you mentioned Megaman. He's not supposed to be Megaman. He's have all these different moves. I get it. That's not. That's not what Rayman really ever is. It's really about the platform. It's fine something, but don't you? Know, but don't tell us.
You you're gonna have a lot of powers and then you don't have a lot of powers. Exactly. Exactly. Yeah. Well, see, they count. They count like being able to swing from the purple lums as a power. That's true. That's true. They count your hover as a power. And actually, if you watch as you acquire Lums throughout the game a your health increases, Yep. But as you keep every silver Lum you get, regardless of what it does, if it gives you a new power or not, your shot actually
gets a little bit stronger. Oh. I didn't even notice. That and if you look, if you look at the start of the game versus like say now on the stream, your little, the original like white energy ball that you throw, it gets a little bit bigger. And then when you get eventually in this level in particular, you get the charge shot which makes it golden and bigger, and then you can further Max it out with the Golden gloves. Yes, which you just randomly pick up in some stages you.
Just randomly pick up, yeah. And then you have what is it gives you like three hits before you lose it or something like that. So yeah, three hits, which is cool. What's? That or three or three like deaths. Yeah, losing all your fall. Off a Cliff or something. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. I didn't find, I didn't find the game overly difficult. I mean, as far as like enemies go, I feel like they're just kind of in the way.
It's more really about the platforming, which I think it should be. I don't know. That's the. Way I see it, the spike in difficulty the last like 2 levels. 3 levels. Yeah, it's it jumps. I'm not looking forward. To that then. Yeah, it gets pretty There's one level in particular where you learn that the shells can actually fly. Oh yeah. And when you get to that point, there is one pirate, robo pirate enemy in particular that has just a stupid amount of health.
Yes. And he drills into the ground. And so like you hit him once and he just immediately drills in the ground and then pops up somewhere else. And if he hits you, he does a ton of damage, but if he doesn't hit you, the fight just takes forever because every time you land a hit, he just disappears. Yeah, You know, And that's for me, the weakest point of Rayman 2, especially like replaying it now, is the combat. Yeah, it is. It is the weakest thing. It works and it's fine.
Fine is a good descriptor for it. Yes, it's. Just fine. It's fine. Yeah. It's I think, I almost think it would be better if you could just because you you can spam your attack BBBBBBBB to. Do so it's super fast. But The thing is the enemies have like invincibility frames. You hit them once and then they, yeah, it pauses for like 5 seconds before they can be hit again. And often times they'll have like the drill thing where they'll just like move away.
It just prolongs fights that I would have just preferred to have them be like 2 seconds. Like I would just just let me spam it and just kill them. Like, yeah. And. Six more enemies. I don't care, just let. Me just let you just like hammer the beep. Just let me come in, yeah?
I I think, I think again, like. It's one of those things where I think it works better when it's simpler, which is towards the first, like let's say quarter or third of the game when it's just a simple, there's one guy, he happens to be up on a Cliff. And sometimes I like how they did that because it's like the camera locks and it kind of puts you on like a an angle on the ground and behind Rayman and the guy's like up on a Cliff and you're just, and it's really just a fun way to show you
something different. I think it's not really about making it difficult or anything. But then when they do, like you mentioned that, that drill guy in particular now that you mentioned, it was like, Oh yeah, that's that one. That was like, really, I have to keep really, you know, it felt, it felt too much. So I, I, I'm, I'm with you on that. It's not terrible. It's just fine. I think so. The reason why it feels better at the beginning is because the enemies don't have as much health.
Yeah, as much health and they don't need, they don't need to do more complicated things like it really doesn't need to be that kind of I think it. Just does, yeah, the platforming is hard enough. Like, that offers a good enough challenge, and you add an enemy on top of that and like you're platforming, you're avoiding shots. You're trying to, you know, that's enough of a challenge. You don't have to make the enemies like take forever to
defeat. Yeah. And I know it's. I know it's like the. Spiders. The spiders are like that too. Totally different enemy type, but they take just tons of hits. Yeah, I hate. It's like, come on. Or what are those like the black things that are kind of like shifting around those? Oh, those are. Those are going to hit. Yeah, they're. Things. I think they're supposed to be like caterpillars. They look. Like they weren't hard to take out.
I'm talking with a little individual, like soot balls that chase you around. Yeah, that's what, yeah, that's what I was thinking of. Yeah, yeah, yeah. They look like what's the, what's the Super Mario ones, the little like black dudes that go up and down like in the Bowser's castle. They look like those guys. Oh, I know what you're talking about. Yeah, whatever those things are called, that's what they reminded me of. I almost wonder though.
Remember I said that they took inspiration from Miyazaki? They almost look like the little soot things from Spirited. Away. Oh yeah. Yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. For sure. Yeah. There's go ahead. Yeah, yeah. I was just one of the other side, so like I'm with you that the combat's just fine. I think the platforming is really good, just in general good, like really solid 3D
platforming for the N64. Some of the areas that I'm not a fan of. I I like, I like to, let me put it this way, I actually the any level where you are riding some sort of a vehicle, I think it's hit or miss. I think so like when they when you get them, sometimes they come way too fast, like they, they make you fly way too fast. And thankfully it is still designed around it, but it it makes you, it's very easy to kind of screw it up.
The one specifically that I hate are the ones where you have to ride those bullets because once again, it's a mechanic. They don't teach you well how. Like why would I consider trying to ride a fucking bullet with legs like. Because it sounds like a horse, that's why. If that's the only hint, then it's. The only and me too. I was like, oh, it's a horse and it gets tired. Oh yeah, there's. A sign. There is a sign I could have sworn in the first time that says you can ride it.
But I'm like, OK, so I tried to jump on top of it. Yeah, but that you just get killed. I'm like, well, what the fuck am I supposed to do? You have to run away from it until it tires itself out and then you can ride it. And then your little your little fairy buddy is like you should he says something about like you should try to to ride it or tame it, tame it. That's what they were tame. I'm like tame. OK, so do I do I, you know, attack it and then it like
eventually gives up? Like what do I do? Nope, just keeps exploding. And it took me a few minutes to figure it out. I'm like, OK, I guess I get it. But are you taming it when all it's doing is getting to, I don't know, whatever. Maybe it was just. AI just lost it. I I don't have time for that bullshit anymore. Like if you're like, I don't mind games that make you try to like if it's a puzzle, I will take the time to try to figure out the puzzle.
Sure, but that is a gameplay mechanic and not a puzzle like that is they're they're trying to tell you how to do, they're trying to teach you a new gameplay mechanic and they are not doing a good. Job and and. And an essential one too, because it's in multiple levels. It's the only way to get past certain points in that specific stage. Like, yeah. Well, and once you jump on top of that bullet, if you if it's not angled in the right way, you have time to turn it.
But if you don't turn it far enough in the right direction, you can't like you, you still have a chance to even it'll, it'll launch excuse me. And you still have a chance to direct it even after it launches. But if you're it's a lot slower of it's a lot tighter of a turn, yeah, you cannot do tight turns. So if you are not at the right spot for it to to launch then you're going to have to very hard time of surviving because you'll crash right into wall.
And it explodes, which takes life off you and like, yeah, those that's. A pain in the ass. I I I don't mind the sections where you ride the bullets like the actual game. Like moment to moment gameplay of those sections are not awful. I'm not a huge fan but they it breaks up the the the gameplay really well so I like it when they have those things. I just think the execution of it wasn't the strongest. That's fair. Yeah, I'm kind of with you on that.
It's takes a lot of trial and error a lot of the times and and that's all part of platforming. I get that. But those ones didn't feel as satisfying as like, like, this is what like what we're watching right now is one of the ones where the pirate ships firing at you. This is the one where I lost my shit that I was talking about.
This is what I played, I think yesterday I was at this point with like the first one I played these ones I much preferred over those, you know, ride the sort of vehicle type type, say I like these better. But again, I, I'm sort of like, oh, I get this. This is what Rayman does. Cause in Origins and in Legends, this is this is the type of stuff that that game is built around and I love it. So that's just my my style. I think of what I prefer.
But yeah, I, I want, you know, it's, it's a choice. I like the ideas and I like the mechanics in the section that we have up on the video. You know, you're getting chased for the for the people not watching. You're getting chased by a pirate ship and you're running across all these bridges and you're having to dodge the bullets, dodge the cannonballs, and they're also exploding to blowing up the bridges. So you have to make sure you dodge the gaps in the bridges and stuff like that.
Yeah, this is where I had an issue with the camera, especially when you have a early 3D platformer like this where you're having to run in a spiral. It is so easy to go off the edge. It is so easy because they like I do think that some game, modern games have had a better time with like, you know, I recently beat Astrobot. Astrobot won't let you run off the edge. It will purposely stop you.
So, and before you do that, then if you can still die, if you like jump off the edge, but if you're like running, it will stop you automatically and it will it'll freeze you there. You can't keep like if you hit forward, Astrobot will just stay hovering like whoa. Whoa, really? Interesting. OK. Yeah, I'm not saying I necessarily want all games to do that. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
I, I, I don't actually think it's 100% that necessary in Astrobot because it controls so well in something like this. I would have loved something like that because the the camera angle makes. It's so hard to like determine where you are in relative space and the way the camera moves. It's not awful, just to be clear. And it's not in every sequence. It's just some of them are like that, yeah. It has the same issue.
I just played Crash Bandicoot and it has the same issue when doing a almost like pseudo 2D segment. It's because you still have some depth. You don't have a lot of depth, but you have some depth. So when you're going, you, you want to, your brain automatically goes OK side to side, but you have this slightly
forward, slightly back. And so when you jump from a platform to platform, especially with a joystick, you'll do these subtle like slightly forward, slightly back movements that you may not even be aware of. And if you can't directly see your shadow, you don't you're not aware of, you don't have like good spatial awareness. And it it does, it does screw you over. I, I've always had that issue with the Crash games, or at least the first couple,
specifically those games. That's why I've never really gravitated towards those early ones, especially the first, because I was like, this doesn't feel right. And, and the way that you're describing is pretty much the reason why, whether I could articulate it or not at the time when I first started playing those games. Like that's, that's what it is. And yeah, it's, it's early mechanics. It's, they're trying to figure things out. You know, I'm not like that's
the way it is, but like. It works, but it does. It adds difficulty for no reason really. It's not, but that's not the type of unintentional. One unintentional, yeah. Unintentional. Exactly right. That's actually funny that you mentioned Crash, because. That section.
Yeah, one of the one of the one of the reasons why I I when I was looking up sort of some of the development stuff of this and, and when you sent us the the video of the Double fine thing and stuff too, I was like, oh, like the first one was 2. DA lot of the more recent ones are two. DI know, it's not like it's the same people that made the games, but Rayman 2 was supposed to be another 2D platformer.
And then they saw that Crash was coming out and what Crash did like the Crash Bandicoot games and they go, oh, we got to do something similar to that. And that's why they moved this game to 3D. It was because they saw what Crash did a year or two before, or probably even more three years before or something. So this game was supposed to be an early 2D platformer, maybe on the 64, maybe on PlayStation. Like they were sort of trying to figure it out, developing it that way. And then they.
Yeah. And then they saw that there was the capability of doing something like this. And Crash was one of the first things that they referenced, at least that I saw to say like, oh, we can do more. And that's kind of how they gravitated, at least started to gravitate early on towards what they had and I. Know the the first Crash Bandicoot game? OK, that makes sense. The 97.
Or something 90. 696. 96 I for for some reason I thought it was 95 I'm like that doesn't make any sense because Rayman one came out in 95 but if Rayman one came out in 95 crash came out in 96 it would make sense that they would use that as an inspiration towards developing your next game yeah because. It'd be about two 2 1/2 years later that this came out, so this was supposed. This came out in 99.
Yeah, it came out in 99. The initial development started in 96. So the 64 was just coming out. It was, you know, this is sort of a, you know, latter third, you know, of the of the 64's life cycle and stuff. And I think whether the way it controls, the way the camera is, the way it looks, the sort of choice of all the camera angles
that we were talking about. Like there's little things here that you're like, Oh yeah, they probably wouldn't have done this in 96 or 97. It it's good that this game came out when it did, because I think it just does more and does it well for the most part that I think it it it goes that does a much better job. So I wanted to try and find before I keep I keep forgetting the some of the sound. I wanted to get one of the ones I just. I had it up before. Any dialogue, ever.
Any dialogue? While you're looking that up real quick, I just want to shout out the one thing this game was they, they when they were designing this game, they actually purposely wanted to keep the development team small because at the time, Ubisoft actually had teams of over 100 people at one point in time. Which is a lot in. That time, that's an insane amount for late the late 90s. They only had about like six or eight people working on this
game. There's like 6 or 8 devs, that's it. It's a very small development team. And they built this. They. Michelle was talking. Michelle. I keep forgetting his name. I'm sorry, Ansel. Yeah, Michelle. He was talking about how they almost did this in spite of Ubisoft. They, they literally like, we want to prove to them that we can make a game on with a small team. And when Tim Shaffer's like, wait, so you were like, you were fighting to keep your team
small. And he goes, yeah, that's what we were doing. And he goes, man, I feel like I'm constantly fighting for more. What's going on? With a guy that experienced like that, with that guy, yeah, he was actually, yeah. They had to fight to make the second Psychonauts game for, you know, 12 years later or something. Bonnie, you mentioned Psychonauts.
Yeah, this, this game was a direct influence on Tim Schaefer for Psychonauts. I could see that from design like, from like aesthetic and things and like. The textures. Textures. And he had vibe. He said did the textures in that interview too. Like he was specifically the the cloud, like the skybox with the clouds moving. He really liked we reused something similar in in somewhere in Psychonauts. I forget exactly where, but yeah. Yeah, that makes sense.
This is one of the sound things I wanted to go as as Glowbox doing his little like chance. These are hilarious. Like, what is he doing? And I guess he's got a power to like summon lightning bolts and I don't know, I. Like how his hands are basically just flaccid the whole time like. Yeah, yeah, yeah. He's just also what's great about the the more recent Rayman 2D ones is you can play as him. It's it's amazing. Yeah, Low Box is silly and he's the only person.
Lee, Lee the Fairy. Actually, Rayman might say Lee the Fairy at the very beginning, but other than that I he's the like the only person that his name actually gets said out loud. Yeah, yeah. Every once in a while there's a little box or every time there's a yeah or a yeah. And then the other thing too I noticed is that one of the first things I noticed, because it's obviously at the beginning of the game, is the opening has
like great music. I thought like the opening sort of like cinematic thing was awesome. That is Yeah already. It's good. Oh yeah, yeah. It's really good. Like why is why is it like this? Like creepy vibe type thing. This is great. So I did this a long time ago when I made like when my channel first started, I did an analysis video on this game. Yeah. And back before I even had like a format or anything, right.
But one of the things I pointed out, which is so true, this is one of those songs in like games as a kid where I would like sing the the title of the game. So when it got to the music, I'd be like Ray Man to the greatest get Fitbit like. And I still to this day will do that every time I hear it. That makes sense, I could see it.
It just fits, yeah. It works I think I think when I cuz I played the first couple levels on a stream and then I just didn't have time to to sort of stream it and did it on my own time and stuff. I was like, oh, this is a banger tune. Yeah, As the kids say, this is great. That's so sick. Like, there's depth. Here we go. You know, here it comes. I think this music might have been one of the reasons this game was so mysterious to me.
Yeah, very good Goldeneye there with this I. Was just going to say that is that is definitely Goldeneye. Yeah, it's so good. It's awesome, yeah. Yeah, I, I think, I think we've kind of covered most or, or near nearly most of, of what the game has to offer. I, I, I do think that it's, I do think it's a very good game.
Like I, I really, I didn't expect to, like, I wasn't necessarily surprised 'cause you know, Jiggy, you've talked so, so highly about the game and, and I have heard and seen other things that like, oh, this is a really good platform or whatever. And I again, I have the, the love for those more recent ones and stuff. But I was like, how do you do that in 3D? Is it, does it work? Should it, you know, what should I actually really expect? How does it actually feel?
Cause not all 2D platformers work for or 3D platformers work for me. I usually prefer the 2D approach, especially with Mario games. I'm the one, one person in the world who's like, yeah, you know, Odyssey's fine. It's. Fine, I love Odyssey. You know, I know a lot of people do, and I'm just like, no, I'd rather have. Super Mario World or what not? World or or, you know, Wonder was just incredible. Wonder's incredible. Needs to play wonder. It's one of one of the best
Mario games they've ever made. I think it's it's amazing anyways that that's usually where I gravitate part of that's nostalgia, whatever. But I, I do think that that that this game's awesome and I do think it looks great. It sounds good. Despite some of the mechanics
that we've talked about. I, I do think it's still worth playing and, and regardless of how you find what, regardless whether you actually play it on the 64 or not, you know, maybe it's, maybe it's a Dreamcast 1. Like, you know, Jiggy, you've mentioned that that's sort of they, they've said that that's like the the preferred way to play it or the best version. The definitive version. Definitive version I I still
think this play's great. It feels good like we said, the controller's good with it. You know, when you have good camera control on the 64, I think it really does make a huge difference too. And this is one of those games that has that. So yeah, I, I thought it was great. I thought it was a great game. So I'm I'm happy we were able to play it. Jiggy, you more recently played it on Dreamcast, obviously. Just, you know, reinforces how much you love it I assume.
Oh yeah, I sat there and I played through in one stream. Oh yeah, that's. Right, it was almost, it was almost 8 hours long and I, I do I regret it? No, at the time I did, I honestly like was trying to remember because before that it'd been a few years since I played the game. I got about four hours in and I had a significant amount of lums and I was like, well, I feel like I'm almost done. And to be fair, I think I could have beaten it faster if I didn't decide, oh, I'm going to
collect every lump. Oh. Yeah, don't do that. I'm. Going to 100. Well, I did, and that's what's a. Decisions were made. I feel like I could have, I could have cranked it out at it probably like 5 hours to. Be a couple hours less probably, yeah. I was, yeah, I was really, I was really flying through. I struggled with a few like the shell level to get all the lums, honestly, finding certain things just just because I couldn't remember.
But I I would say for the most part, I probably was an extreme case of like I knew exactly what to do at almost every turn. Yeah. So that probably speed me up quite a bit. Yeah. But it is a fun experience. And I personally prefer the controls on the N64, but otherwise everything else I prefer on the Dreamcast. Gotcha. For me it's mostly about. It's not. Voice, right, because you said that the PlayStation one.
Is no. The Dreamcast version is just like the N64 version, just higher resolution and higher frame rate. Great. And then it well, then it adds like it adds glow box it well, it adds like these additional mini games that you get from I'm trying to remember exactly how you do it. So it has a little glow box village where you can actually unlock. Oh, you have to find these
little like gems in the levels. So it adds like an additional collectible and it every time you find 2 gems, two gems or three gems, you can go to the glowbox village which is in the the first level, the glade, the glades. Level where the where the where the kids are like where they where you? Yeah, yeah. But. That first level, there's like a a little section that you can navigate to that doesn't exist
in other versions. And he can go in and it's Glowbox Village and his wife is there and all their little kids. And every time you beat one of the mini games, you unlock like a special or two special Glowbox children. So like they could be like a glowing white glow box baby or like a pink glow box baby with a big bow in her on her head. And it's like. And it's just a collectible. Does it do anything? No, it's. Just no, it's just a fun little thing.
I, I wanna say that there's something you can do with like your Dreamcast VMU, but I didn't, I didn't really dive into that too much. Gotcha. It wasn't really that important to me. I was just trying to play the game and and get through it. And get as much as you could on the way. Yeah, and if you love the shells, Josh, you're gonna love the the end when you're flying. Yeah, that. What are the shells? I don't know if the. Oh, the shells are the what you call the bullets.
That's what they're called. They're called shells. Because they're supposed to be like this, like a shell of a bullet. Like it's supposed to be like a shotgun shell or something. I think is is the idea I forgot. That one they're called. Well, growing up I always thought they were pencils because. They look like pencils. Yeah, that makes sense. But yeah. Clear what they are should. Be. Yeah, they're not. No, just because it explodes doesn't mean it's a bullet like.
Yeah, but the flying ones you're going to love because it controls fine. Which ones but? The flying ones. Like the barrels? I mean the shells. Oh, the flying shells. I'm sorry. Yeah, yeah. Because so you, you don't have to tame them. They're often just sitting there and you can just hop on. But they fly, they fly forward. And then when you move the joystick, you can tilt up and down to go up and down like, like a typical, like flying a plane like Star Fox, you know.
But when you go left or right they like pivot like and they rotate. Yeah, rotates. More and then you have to, you have to use. I'm trying to remember the controls at the top of my hand there. Was one. There's that one level where you have like the chair where it's like on a track and it pivots, rotates.
Yes, yes, it's like that. Yes, it's that, but you're, you're moving forward, you're doing so you're going up and down and you're spinning and then you have to use the R button and then you can kind of like rotate or tilt and whatever the little convoluted. It's a little too. Convoluted. It feels weird, but it it weirdly enough, after you do it enough, it starts to make sense. It's like, it's like that meme with the, it's like that meme
with the math equations. It's like all of a sudden you just figure it out. You're like da, da, da, da, you know? And then you're on the other side and then you just, you just blank out. You just. It's just there's only like 2 levels that use it. But it is definitely a steep deep learning curve. It's not. It's not as you. Go Zen for a moment or something. Yeah, Yeah, yeah. You have to get in that groove or whatever, so.
Yeah. And it's I will say it's easier if you don't, because the final boss does use it, that uses it. That's one of the levels that uses it. But if you're not collecting all the lumps, it's not as big of a deal. But if you are collecting all the lumps it it it definitely makes it. I feel, I think I got like, I don't know, I want to say like 70% of them or something. I don't know exactly what number
it was. I should have marked it down, but I, you know, just going and every once in a while I'd backtrack and go to the other stages where it's like, oh, you can access this part now. I I did that a couple times. Yeah. I think I I think I got most things, but I didn't like go crazy with it and it still took some time to get through the game. It's not despite like what I said, you know, a while ago where like some of the stages to me felt early on at least felt
like short. I still think that the oh, here's here's one of the. Yeah, this is one of the. Shell stages, yeah. This one was always. Stupid. Yeah, this one is a little weird. It's a little 223D if that makes sense. Well, it's like the gravity. Your center of gravity is like weird. It moves. Too fast for what they want. You to do that? Yeah. You oh, you, you figure it out that it gets wonky like when you start going like you go off a ledge and you're just like,
whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa. It's like you're almost like your gravity is lessened and you're like moving in like a circular. It's weird. It's like you want to, you want to go forward and like it's, it's really hard. I can't even explain it to you guys, No. It's, it's like, it's like a Super Mario Galaxy when you're trying to go around a level or something. Or go around a. Planet A planet. And you, you jump and you, you, you get to, you get a little bit like right on the edge of that
planet's Galaxy or gravity. Excuse me. And so then it starts propelling you around in a weird physics way. It, it literally looks like that. And that's what a weird idea to do this late in the game. It is super weird and honestly though, it's kind of fun. At least you're not in like a tight quarter. I think like if there was a lot of obstacles and stuff, it would be like, Oh my God, this sucks.
It I, I would this this particular sequence sent me for a bit of a trip at first and then, like you said, you, I think you just sort of feel it like I think I died once doing. Some, yeah, you get the hang of it. You get the hang of it. I I don't think it's great, but I but it's not, it's not as bad as it looks from a distance, I think. You'll have a lot more fun if you don't collect all the lumps. Yeah. I mean, I, I'm just I'm being, I'm being honest with you
people. I I collected it 100%. I have 100% Raymond to several different consoles, several different ways. I don't even, I don't even remember if you get anything for 100% in it other than the satisfaction of knowing that you 100% agreement. To and you have a really big health bar at the. End and you have a really big health bar. You do get a really big health bar, yeah, which can be helpful for the final boss. It is, yeah. But I would just challenge people to get good at the final
boss. Yeah, like just practice in the final boss rather than spending your time getting all the lumps. It's not you'll get a significant. Amount of lumps anyways. Yeah, it just just by going through it, even if you you get let let hypothetically if every stage had 50, if you got around in the 30s somewhere, you'll be fine. I think when you get to the end, like you're in that range, which I think kind of just happens
most of the time. There's a couple stages where I was kind of frustrated because I was like, I missed one. Where did I miss that one? And I never went back because I'm like, it's not what's what's that going to? Get that's it's, it's almost more of a pain when you're missing only one because usually, like if you're missing like four or five, they're usually grouped together in some way, shape or form. But when there's only one, then you're just checking every nook and cranny forward.
So this is like, we'll talk about this when we actually get to Banjo Kazooie. But when I replayed it last summer, I wanted to 100% everything because I was like, I know 90% of this game pretty much without even trying. I can, I can collect almost everything later in the game 'cause you know when you replay it as a kid, most of the time you replay it and you replay the first couple stages, not the later ones, right? So like the later ones, I have to think about it a little bit more.
And in that last World where the different seasons, I can't remember the name of it, I was missing 3 or 4 notes and I could not fucking find them. And I'm like, I just don't have the time to search through essentially 4 worlds to try and find what these are. And I just stopped and like, I think I 96% of the whole game or something, I'm like, it kind of bugs me, but hey, I got to play it again. So I'm not that upset, you know, and, and, and this would be
similar. Like you have that, that love for this game, Jiggy, that like, it might bug me, but also at least you've reached the point where you're like, yeah, well, it was fun, but you don't have to, you know, like. Yeah, you really don't. It's. A stage of acceptance, you know. I will say one thing I do like about it is it doesn't really force you to backtrack at all however, except one time. One time to rescue the other
dude and and. That's there's a yeah, there's like a cage and it's in unfortunately one of the beginning levels. Yeah, like you, you have to go back to the beginning level from a different side of the wall. Yeah, I tried to get that one. Yeah, I tried to get that one on the 1st initial try. And I'm like what the? Fuck is going on? Why can't this is you? It's like it looks like you can make it, you can't get it. Yeah, it looks like you can make it.
I'm like, this is that's the one thing I looked up in this game was that I'm like, I don't understand. It's right there, but I know I can't make that jump. What am I missing? And you don't have to go back into level and like recollect everything like banjos. So that's that's one thing that's not going for. It that's right. Yeah, that's right. And at least the one level where you go and you rescue your your buddy there where you have to give him like the elixir or
whatever. At least when that happens, it's not like you're doing the exact same level. He opens things up and you do something different after that. Yep. And it makes the level bigger, which which is fun and he's kind of like a goofy character and kind of fun anyway. So I was like, oh, OK, this. Is this is worth it? Yeah. Yeah. Josh, any final thoughts on
Rayman 2? Are you and I guess the sort of like part of the same question is are you thinking about your going back and wrapping it up like? I'm going to beat it. I'm like 4 levels away. I'm not going to 100% it, but I'll go back and beat it. I got this far. I might as well add it like I'm also doing. You know I'm on blue sky. I'm doing a games beating list. I'm trying to see how many games I can beat this year, see if I can do better than last year.
So far the time of this recording, I'm up to 10 already, which I'm pretty wow. That's. Nice, nice. Considering I you know, I mean Dave, you know, you're you're a new dad. Good luck having time for gaming when you're trying to just. Survive. Sleep and survive. Yeah you know what, I had this really great idea that I was gonna play Avowed cuz I'm excited to play that and I have Game Pass and I played it for an hour.
So far so cool. Yeah, I will not be adding that to my completed games anytime soon, that's for sure. I will still play in Boulders day three. Yeah, I mean, that game is never ending though, yeah. And you're playing with a group too, which is, which is something too, right? Which is fun, which is part of the fun, right? So. I will say ever since becoming a dad though, my time management skills have gotten a lot better where I feel more productive. Than I ever. Have in my entire life.
It took a little while, but yeah, no. So for final thoughts on Rayman too, I was pleasantly surprised with this. You know, like I I knew it would not live up to the nostalgia in my head over of it, because all that it was in my head was an enigma. I didn't know. I don't I didn't remember anything about the game. I just remembered the feeling that it gave me as a kid. So I already knew that going in.
That didn't detract it for at all for did excuse me didn't detract at all from my experience. I was very impressed. This is a really good N64 3D platformer, like a really, really, really good one for the era for the era, Excuse me, like we've talked about, it does have its flaws as as all games do. But if you're looking for like an N64 3D platformer in the same vein of your Banjo Kazooie's of your Mario 64 is your Donkey Kong 64 you This is different than all of those in the best way.
It it almost feels like this is this is a good example of like being able to make your own version of Mario 64. But because when people think of, you know, N64 platformers, they generally think of Mario and Banjo, right? Those are the two. Big, which I think I mentioned like 4 times earlier because I have so many original ideas.
And if you're a fan of it, like Jiggy and I Are Donkey Kong 60. 4 Sure. But like, for the most part, like you think of rare games and you think of Nintendo games, right? This game, I genuinely feel fits into the mold of those, but does not get the love that it deserves. I think this game is a lot better than people probably I, I shouldn't say like it doesn't get any shit. So I shouldn't say it's, it's a lot better than people say it is. It's it's good and people should play it.
People should at least try it out. It has its janky moments, but you can honestly write them off as like that's what was normal at the time. Like none of the janky moments in this game feel out of place for 1999 when this game first came out or 9 whatever fucking year it came out. 90 yeah 99 yeah 99. It does not feel janky at all for 1999. It feels like it fits in perfectly with the games that were out at the time. It looks good.
The the sound is like the music in moments are good, but overall actually the sound side is pretty good in this. Like there's a lot of good atmospheric sound soundscapes that the game kind of throws at you from what I remember. Yeah, just it was a really enjoyable experience. I'm I'm happy I got to play it. I'm bummed I did not have time to finish it in time for this recording session. But like I said, I'm literally only, I am 4 levels away.
I just got the third mask. I looked how many levels are left and it's literally 4. So I just have to beat four more levels. Admittedly now I now that I know they are the last two are very hard, but I'm looking forward to
tackling that challenge. Yeah, and it and it's worth it and it's like, like I I said earlier, I think it's worth playing regardless and whether you collect everything or not, whether it's that type of game for you or that type of gamer that you are, play Rayman 2, The Great Escape. I think it's it's an excellent game. I think we're all on the same page. Yeah, happy we got a chance to play it. So everybody check it out. Also, if you're out there
looking for a physical copy. Sorry, does Jiggy have any final thoughts? I love it. Nice. We just we just know he loves it. That's. Solid, solid, solid as a rock. Rayman too. Also, like I was gonna say solid as a as a lag. I got a rock. I wanna I reference that commercial or that song at work. The other no box. Why? I have no idea why.
Also, if you're looking for a physical copy for a collector or you want to have more games in your library or whatever, it has a green cartridge and that's always fun. It does. It's. Not that expensive, I don't think. I don't think it's a it's a particularly expensive game to add to your collection. Yeah, I I don't know if that's, I don't know if there were a ton of them.
I don't know, You know, obviously like supply does change that, but like, you know, some of the games that there's a million of like Mario 64, it's not like you can find it for 5 bucks. Like it's a lot of money to have games like that. Like this thing is worth having for sure. 2020 to $30 purchase. I'm just guesstimating. Yeah, no, you're right. It's loose. According to Price Charging it's 22 bucks a. That's even less than I thought. Wow.
Yeah, yeah. So if you get a chance to find it just and you have a 64, I would I would do that. Just get it and it honestly it's just don't play the DS1, but it's available in so many different. I mean if you can't play it on N64, play it on Dreamcast. If you can't play it on Dreamcast, play it on PS2 can't play it on PS2 play it on PS1. If you can't play it on PS1 play it on 3DS. You can't play it on 3DS. Play it on PC. There's probably a phone version. I don't know I'm.
Sure, there's some sort of mobile version, Yeah. Rayman 2 is out there. There obviously are compromises between versions. Sure. You know, like we said, Dreamcast is definitive and 64 is the original build. So it's kind of it only gets better from there I guess or different from there I guess. I mean, I didn't play the other versions, but it doesn't feel like it's less than. Like it really doesn't at all.
No, no, no, no, you. I mean, you wouldn't even, you wouldn't even know Dreamcast. Like I said, it only added a few things. It really didn't change that much. Yeah, PlayStation just had to scale back things a little bit, but then it added full voice acting because it has ACD, so why not? I guess the sound is usually a big difference. But then they didn't do it on Dreamcast so I I don't really understand what that means. People like the PSP version a lot too apparently. I could see that.
But it's different so. Hey, difference good. Maybe have a couple different copies. Why not? Yeah, difference good. And then if you're if you want, if you're if you're loving some Rayman, check out the Origins and Legends game. Both of them are amazing in my opinion. So lots of Rayman out there to enjoy. It's one of those franchises that feels like it's it's quite is quietly popular. Does that make sense?
I don't know. It feels like it's one of those, one of those franchises that lives on despite not being like this. Massive, massive, recognizable name or Facebook. Worth playing 100% worth. Playing Let me tell you something though, please do OK. Just like all games I love, they teased a sequel and never did it. Rayman is one of those weird games where they did make more Rayman games but none of them were an official sequel. Direct sequel they made.
They made so the original Rayman is 2D like we talked about on PlayStation. And then they did Rayman 2, which is amazing. And then they did Rayman 3, which is just like Rayman 2, just, you know, different mechanics, different generations, not as great, but it's not bad. Like it's fine. But it continues the story, right? It continues it and then Murphy's in it. He doesn't whisper he actually talks and he says see you in Rayman 4 and that's the last we see him.
Oh shit and we Rayman 4 became Rayman Raving Rabbids which is not for and became a game about mini games and then Rabbids took over and we did get the. 2D minions of Ubisoft. Yeah, they're they are. Right now. They're even in the Mario. What's it called? Games. Which they were. They were before minions. They were. They were, they were. Before. Yeah, Yeah, they are. Yeah, but. Yeah, great game. Just play it people, it's worth it. Just play it.
Rayman 2 The great escape is is one of the ones that going through this library is one of the ones that I'm gonna I'm gonna stick stick the same like Yep, this is one of those ones that I was not necessarily surprised by one that I probably is gonna be up like in the top top tier ones. I think it's that good. So despite its flaws, like you guys said, there are flaws, as there are with a lot of these 3D platformers, but it's one of the better ones for sure.
And I don't anticipate too too many of them beating it unless it's Mario or Banjo Kazooie, honestly. So that's about it. Josh. Thanks for joining us, buddy, one more time. Where can everybody find Still Loading? Sure. I do want to say one final thing though, not I I feel pretty honored that like the games I've chosen for my episodes on here are all relatively like unknown games. Rayman 2 probably being the most known out of the three that I've been on, but they all have all
been hits. So I'm I'm I'm really I'm I'm bad in 1000 so far. I don't know if I have many more at bats though left I. Was going to say good luck. Good luck next time I don't. Yeah, I'll see what I can do, but yeah, thank you again for having me on, man. Always a pleasure. I am. I always enjoy coming on the show. If you liked whatever the hell I did on this episode, you could find this Still Loading podcast. We're all podcasts are giving
away for free. You know, Apple Podcasts, YouTube Music, Spotify, all that good stuff. You can follow me on social media at Still Loading Pod, mainly on Blue Sky as well, but I am somewhat active on Instagram every now and again and the stuff gets put over to threads. But you know, threads has is, you know, fuck sucks. So I don't know if I'm really going to go too much on that. But we'll I'm mostly active on those locations and I do stream on twitch once in a while.
That's the loading pod over on twitch. Usually stream twice a week, Saturdays and Tuesdays, but it really just depends on my schedule. So yeah, you can check me out over there. That's where I am to be found on the Internet. Amazing, Sir. Jiggy, look back. What's happening, buddy? Everything's happening all the time, all the time. So tired, but I keep making content anyways. I stream once a week on YouTube. I'm I'm pretty much exclusively on YouTube.
I mean, you can catch me on all all the good old social medias. I am still on XI, don't really care, but I'm still there, so it's fine. I'm on Blue Sky too. I don't know anywhere you can find find Dave. You can probably find me. Yeah, pretty much, yeah. If you want to, if you want to come and check out some of my Rayman videos, I got a couple. I've got a couple theory videos on Rayman. I've got some Rayman 2 videos, some deep dives into the lore I've got.
If you want to see how the story progresses into Rayman Three, I've got a really cool analysis video on Rayman three. That would be a good, good point to kind of jump into the Rayman series. It's it's just a series I love. Yeah, it's just one of those I I just latched onto it as a kid and I've just kind of hung onto it. It hasn't really been like my favorite. It hasn't produced my favorite games, but I certainly my love for Rayman 2 has just glazed over every other Rayman thing
that exists. And but I will say the tune Rayman games that are Rayman Legends, Rayman Origins, we need more of that because those are phenomenal. Please, I can't. Believe I love them, haven't had I do love them. The Raymond translated so well into modern 2 DI mean his original game was 2D and I didn't really care for it. I did play through that one. It's fine. It's it's, I mean the product. More power to you if it's one of your. Favorite. It's the product of its time.
That's that's all it is, yeah. Yeah, it's just a little, it's a little bit of a slow moving 2D platformer for me. Whereas the more recent ones are super fast. Most. Of the Super fast, super fast and just fun. And especially if you can do Co-op with a buddy. Oh, see, if I ever played them Co-op, that could, that could. Oh. I did it and it was so funny. And I'll tell you one story just because it's so funny. Just real quick, we were playing this level with my pal. Shout out to JP.
JP we're riding the little like mosquito things. Yep. And you have to just like basically like a rail shooter and just like navigate through. Which are in this game, by the way, which? Are. Yes, they are. And we kept dying and he was just getting progressively more and more pissed off and but he was like holding it in and he was just getting mad. And then finally he's like holding the controller and he's like, and you know me, I don't swear, so it's important to the story.
But he's just like he's holding controller. He starts shaking. He's like, fuck, he just screams it. And then he stops himself and he's like, he looks at me. He's like, I'm sorry, it's just a video game. I'm fine. Wonderful control. Wonderful. I love that. It was. It was fun though. Josh, have you played? Have you played those games, Josh? Yeah. No. Yeah, go play Origins. No, I just played like. No, no, I'm sorry. I have no, I'm sorry. It's got everything. I did play Origins.
I forgot. I do own Origins for the Vita and I played. It a little bit but. I never, I never got very far. It was good. It was good when I was playing, but it didn't like, I don't know. I don't know when I was, if I was when I was playing, it just didn't cat like grab me. I. Don't know.
Yeah legend. The reason why I always say just go to Legends is because it literally has all of Origins in it. Like has everything that Origins has literally bite like stages, but it has more characters to play as, it has more unlockables. And then it just has like, I don't know, like it basically it's it's two games in one. That's basically what it is. It's two games in one. It's and it only came out like a couple years later or something. So yeah, damn it.
Bust out your We used, Bust out your we used and play the best version of Legends. Shit, I don't know how to have that, actually. I don't own that game in any playable form at the moment actually. Cool cuz it uses the the touchpad for Murphy. Oh really? Like you cut. Yeah, so you like, you cut ropes and stuff and you're like slicing the ropes like. Which is, which is what the Vita did right, didn't it? Like you'd use the the. Back Yeah, I think the Vita did something similar to.
Use the the back touchpad to like cut the ropes and things. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Anyways, great games, Rayman. Check it out. Remember 64 out there on your podcast platforms on YouTube. I'm trying to stream every once in a while having to actual having to actually schedule it as difficult. So just keep an eye on social media. Remember 64 show And that's when I'll say, hey, what are you doing tomorrow at a random time? That's pretty much what I'm going to do.
But you can find the Vods on YouTube as well. And yeah, Patreon, subscribe, tell your friends, rate US podcast. Yeah, subscribe. OK, everybody, I'm exhausted. Let's get out of here. Rayman 2 play it. Thanks guys for joining me. Thanks everyone for listening and watching. See you next time. Goodbye. Goodbye.