Given that the physical edition of the 30th Anniversary Edition of the game is two weeks away from its official launch date I guess it's safe to say that the soundtrack problem wasn't sorted, which disappoints me. Despite of that I'm not cancelling my pre-order as I want a playable Rayman 1 in the Nintendo Switch console.
I was excited when the new release fell from the sky back in February and it was the first time in a long time I was playing Rayman 1. It wasn't just a perfect experience because of the altered music. My problem isn't on the Rémi (peace to his soul) remixes that were done, they sound great; it's the tracks that apparently no one knows very well who were the authors or their whereabouts. Like Hunch pointed out, I don't understand why this wasn't a problem with Rayman Classic. And the original OST is still available in GOG's Rayman For Ever, or even in PSN's PSOne Classics and PlayStation Classic release.
The tone of the new music don't suit Rayman 1, my brain was constantly thinking I was playing Rayman Origins and that's a red flag.
What was that weird shower singing in Space Mama's Crater (Yes, I still remember of the credits artwork of hers)?... I admit that when I replayed the game on Steam for the achievements I had to turn off the music, it was distracting me too much. Héral is a very professional musician, but I feel this project didn't work that effectively (I believe in having had limiting executive directions to be able try other things). Those who experienced the original title as it was in the past are all consensual that the soundtrack was one of the highlights of the game (even the specialized critique remarked that in 1995). I'm not fond how we can't choose the covers (Sonic Origins allows players to toggle between the North American, Japanese and European covers.) or even the Magician voice acting but knowing how the game files look like, it would just steal a lot of storage space.
Moving on to positive observations about this celebration release:
- It was a good surprise for me to see how the obscure Atari Jaguar and even the MS-DOS expansions were included. The latter can be a true headache for people to setup if they don't have the GOG release and even for this one it lacks the 60 Inédit Levels pack. I'm happy it made these extra levels more accessible for people to try out, even if two of them were blocked out due to crashing issues according to what I've read once.
- I spent a few hours to read and watch through all the Making Of section to learn about the developers retrospectives on the work on the game. I liked the story about the Raysona drawing scaring the primary school teacher.
- Having a full 1993 game design document available for a free read for the first time ever was not in my bingo card. We had so much few information about the 2D prototype, and suddenly this guide was made public! I spent two hours alone reading all those nearly 80 pages and I do find both fascinating and haunting how some ideas are still in the final game, while others were a nightmare fuel if they carried on. That storyboard of the game's intro looks so ominous with all those shadows, I feel it would look creepy if 3D-rendered at the time. When I finished to read everything I kept wondering if the original concept of the human that travels to inside a computer would have been as successful as the final product. I do think that the key elements that changed everything were Alexandra Ancel and Éric Pelatan joining the project by bringing the iconic visual identity that stuck around until Rayman 3.
- I still didn't go through the whole Atari Jaguar with the altered songs but the few I heard were already a completely different vibe just because the kazoos weren't there. I didn't find terrible.
- Congratulations to Droolie for having inspired Ubisoft to use the RayTunes track names on the new soundtrack release.
I dunno how long it will take, but maybe soon it'll be out.
(Or did he have an official name before?)
Who would have thought we'd end up basically curating the official releases?
