Rayman’s Previously-Lost SNES Prototype Is Now Online For Anybody To Play

A new Rayman game has just been released! Well, okay, the game's actually quite old, but I guarantee you haven't played it before.

Late last year Rayman creator Michel Ancel revealed he had rediscovered a Super Nintendo Rayman prototype he worked on in the mid-90s. Ancel thought to prototype had been lost, but he managed to relocate the old SNES development cartridge and found the game was still in working order. Most fans figure that would be the end of the story – Ancel had the only working copy of the game, so we were unlikely to ever see it.

It's working !!!! 4 people in the world have seen this . We thought it was lost , but somewhere in the cold electronic circuit , something was still alive . and running at full 60fps !!! should do a Switch version of this 😂

A post shared by Michel Ancel (@michelancel) on Oct 23, 2016 at 1:17am PDT

Well, surprise! The SNES Rayman prototype has been released online courtesy of game maker and historian Omar Cornut. You can find the download link in the tweet, below.

I've dumped a prototype demo of unreleased Rayman for SNES, here it is! (NB: very early dev build, not a full game) https://t.co/F3XB9XRhTA pic.twitter.com/oLhOdNDyHF

— Omar (@ocornut) July 3, 2017

So, how did Cornut get his hands on the Rayman SNES ROM? Simple – Michel Ancel gave it to him:

"There's not a lot to it really, I borrowed the cartridge from Michel Ancel who kindly let me look at it and dump it. I've been gathering odd games and prototypes for a long time through my website, so when I saw he found that cartridge I immediately suggested dumping it.

That [Rayman] prototype it is a very early build. So, the stuff like two-player mode that have been shown in screenshots are not really in this build. Perhaps the ROM contains secrets in which case homebrew hackers will hopefully unearth them soon."

In addition to preserving old games through his website SMS Power, Cornut is founder of Lizardcube, which produced the beautiful HD remake Wonder Boy: The Dragon's Trap, which you should check out if you're at all into retro Sega stuff.

Michel Ancel, meanwhile, re-announced Beyond Good and Evil 2 at this year's E3.

[via Kotaku]