Rayman Raving Rabbids

[RayCarrot]

Droolie and I exported most animations from the GBA version now and there are some interesting unused ones here. Sadly the palette is missing for the vast majority of them, so they got exported with palettes from other animations.

Early costumes
So it seems as if the costumes in the game were originally going to have completely different designs, inspired by Rayman 4:


This bigfoot one turned into the "Gangster" costume:



This bubblegum one turned into the "Punk" costume:


This one with just glasses turned into the "Grandmother" costume:



This one turned into the "Rocker" costume:


This one turned into the "Funky" costume:


So it seems the costume designs changed later in development to match what they were using for the final console versions, while their functionality remained the same as originally intended. This is probably why it's a bit odd how the grandmother costume is used for distraction/stealth now, since it was originally going to be the invisible costume etc.

Enemies

A Rabbid enemy:







Funny enough this one is actually placed outside of the level Infernal Escape:

Some enemy from the Sweets world:


Some skull with wings:


Small lividstone:






Unused levels
There are 3 unused levels in the game, which can be accessed through a glitch in the game. Basically in the game the Mode7 levels (the 3D ones) are separate from the normal levels, but the normal levels are still indexed as if the Mode7 ones were there. Because of that there are 3 normal levels which never get used, but apparently still exist. They all appear exactly the same, but using different tilesets depending on the world (which all look completely wrong...). Now these could very well be leftovers from other games by the same developers (there are a ton of those in here...), but it could also be some test stage they use to test object.

[Misterfan2000]

Wow, I always thought the RRR GBA Costumes were a lot like the Phoenix Rayman 4 concepts, and I was not at all wrong!

[hoodlumsworld]

Amazing, I never thought those costumes made it past the concept art stage! By the way, Ryemanni did some colouring on some of those animations to show what they could have looked like:

EkiRf_xXIAAbq4B.png (3.46 KiB) Viewed 4774 times

[Steo]

Those are some interesting discoveries. I knew RRR was originally supposed to be a different game, but I wasn't sure how much would have been left behind on GBA. I'd have expected that to be developed later and not have the same original concept.

[StelzenBomber]

Amazing finds!!

Are there perhaps any differences in the EU version compared to US, since it seems to fix major bugs

[Aaron]

Great finds, guys!

[Hunchman801]

Great finds, as usual! I looked forward to finding out what you'd be able to extract from the game.

I mean, it's nothing new that a lot of stuff from Phoenix's Rayman 4 made it into RRR GBA, most notably some of the worlds, and even a scrapped enemy, but like hoodlumsworld said, it's amazing that those transformations made it past the concept art stage. And even more interesting that they eventually decided to replace them with the costumes from the console version of RRR, probably just to fit the Rabbid theme a bit more.

You mentioned that this fat rabbid enemy is actually present in one of the maps, is his behavior coded into the game, or is there nothing more than a bunch of sprites? I'm curious about the others, too. The small, hunchback livingstone is kinda creepy, and this flying enemy from the Sweets world somehow reminds me of the Glasps from Resident Evil: Revelations 2:

Yeah, it's probably just me.

Now regarding this unused level you posted, it clearly looks like a test stage, given how basic the level design seems to be.

[RayCarrot]

Are there perhaps any differences in the EU version compared to US, since it seems to fix major bugs

Minor ones probably, but I think all graphics data is the same. At least the compressed data sizes match exactly. This is all from the EU version btw.

You mentioned that this fat rabbid enemy is actually present in one of the maps, is his behavior coded into the game, or is there nothing more than a bunch of sprites?

I tried moving him up in the level and it seems to mostly work:
https://twitter.com/RayCarrot/status/13 ... 8384095232

[Hunchman801]

I tried moving him up in the level and it seems to mostly work:
https://twitter.com/RayCarrot/status/13 ... 8384095232

Awesome! What about those other enemies, too?

[RayCarrot]

That'd be a lot harder to check. Unlike most other games there's no simple type/graphics data index to set for each object. Instead each object basically has a function which handles it, using the object data in different ways.

[StelzenBomber]

There was this one glitch i saw in a review where a throwable object was constantly moving zp and down from the screen so im thinking the eu version fixed it as they seemed to play the us release

And apearently one of the enemy rabbits death animations displays incorrectly, is that acurate?

Edit: also that one infamous glitch in one of the final levels that just kinda makes all graphics corrupt

[Hunchman801]

That'd be a lot harder to check. Unlike most other games there's no simple type/graphics data index to set for each object. Instead each object basically has a function which handles it, using the object data in different ways.

Nevermind then, it's pretty cool that you got that scrapped rabbid to (almost) work already. Now I'm thinking it may very will deserve its own wiki article.

[Eeeebray]

https://archive.org/details/redump-id-70797

Has someone checked this press kit out yet?

[Hunchman801]

Doesn't ring a bell, do you reckon it might contain previously unseen artwork?

[paulnewman2001]

I wonder how different Rayman's future would have been if the prototype was actually released, as long as the game would have turned out to be good, I can guarantee that there would have been less (or maybe even no) hatred for the rabbids, what are your opinions?

[Hunchman801]

The Rabbids were completely different in the prototype, more zombie-like than the cute and funny ones that became so popular, so it's probably safe to assume that they would never have been more than an enemy in a video game, just like the Robo-Pirates and Hoodlums. They wouldn't have killed the series either so I can't see why anyone would have hated them.

[paulnewman2001]

Ubisoft redesigned the rabbids back in the prototype stage (or atleast some of them, probably because of how creepy they used to look), you can notice the current ones on some old screenshots, there's one where Rayman rides a shark and rabbids are lying on beach beds, though it might have just been a deleted minigame, who knows?, you can't always trust the wikis, there's also another one where Rayman runs on a beach in his disco costume with rabbids pursuing him. Some people also skimmed through RR in-game files and found unused animations for Rayman and the rabbids which most likely tie to the prototype, if you manage to get Rayman to move freely in some stages and make him get close to rabbids, their eyes would turn red, I don't remember such thing in the original though I could be wrong. Their wackiness and such would have probably stayed the same so depending on the audience's response, they could have continued the series with minigames similar to the ones we actually got. It's an interesting case, people nowdays would have probably wished for Rayman 5 to come out instead of 4 (if the prototype was meant to be a sequel to 3).

[Hunchman801]

That's right, they were actually redesigned earlier than I thought in the development process. Still, I think the Rayman spirit might already have been lost at that point.

[paulnewman2001]

Yeah, even if the the prototype came out, the current situation of the franchise would have probably been the same. That said, while some of the things in prototype sounded cool, there were also other ones that I was sceptical about, giving Rayman a girlfriend of the same species would have been IMO a bit cliche, though depending on how they would have handled the character, it could have been passable. Speaking of the good things, Rayman would have most likely been more emotive in that game in comparison to 3, in some previews you can hear him panting while running and saying "Yeah!" while flying meaning that David Gasman already recorded some of the lines for the prototype (or maybe they were from somewhere else, though I've never heard those lines before). Here's a video for proof: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6dEE-kEyCcA

[Hunchman801]

While I think the original idea for the RRR prototype might have led to an interesting game, I'm much more curious to see what would have become of the actual Rayman 4 prototype!