There are not many games where a new recording or remaster would attract me. If I loved a game, I generally played it enough to not want to pay $ 70 to play it again, just more beautiful, and I don't think the often pedalled line as a successful remake puts the ground for a new game. Dead Space's Remake would be followed by (the interrupted) Dead Space 2 remake, and Dead Rising is already teasing that direction. But I would make an exception for Rayman 2: The Great Escape.
It's not that I especially love Rayman 2. I prefer huge rivals in the 90s, the trilogies from Crash and Spyro, both of which have already had remakes. These two are exceptions to my remake rules because I have obviously not played them enough because I still dip in both something regularly. But lightning strikes that are three times is not what I am looking for either – nothing could set aside the replayability for Bandicoot and the dragon. But Rayman 2 is the kind of game I want to give a second chance.
Rayman was dazzled by other platform players in the 90s
There were basically two kinds of platform players in the late 90s, and crash and spyro capture both ends of the spectrum. You started either at one end and had to get to the other while you overcame gradually more difficult obstacles (crash), or you were dropped into a wide open space that had an exit somewhere or other but most challenged you to find all its secrets (Spyro). Rayman was one, then it was the other.
The first Rayman, simply with the title Rayman, was a 2D platform player launched in 1995. Full of intricate designed levels and extremely difficult platform challenges, it was an immediate classic. But that blanket classic. When Crash and Spyro swung up at Playstation with a third D in their arsenal, Rayman seemed comparatively (and literally) flatterers. So four years later in 1999, Rayman 2: The Great Escape emerged as a 3D game far closer to the Spyro walk than the first game's Gauntlet style similar to that in Crash.
This made it no less loved with public audiences, but playing it as a child, it just never felt like Rayman. As a result, I did not like it much and gave up long before the goal. I did not know then that it had originally been intended for 2D, I just knew it felt. And to this day, only Rayman Legends (another 2D game) stands together with the original in my personal ranking.
Rayman deserves better
That is why I am keen to give Rayman 2: The Great Escape Another Go. I did not appreciate it then, and not in any deeply artistic way that I missed its core theme and would just understand its mastery as a more sophisticated adult. I literally didn't appreciate it. It was called Rayman, but did not play as a rayman, which is why it was bad.
I don't have much desire to test for games I love still hold up. There are so many new games every year that I always feel mildly annoyed by Remakes, such as being forced to watch a TV show that I have already seen. I am also aware that developers who spend years to do about a thing that already exists, just to sell it most to people who already own and love it, feel like a waste of creativity and resources. That's the whole reason so few games attract me.
But with Rayman 2 it wouldn't be an old favorite just to eat out on nostalgia. It would also not use a new recording to introduce myself to a series I had missed, something I would rather do with a completely fresh game made in conjunction with progress in game design 2025. It would be a second chance for me and the game to agree . Best buds. Big comrades. How we were always meant to.
It just feels as if the mascot has never fully realized its potential. Caught in an identity crisis encapsulated by the aesthetic change brought with Rayman 2 and returned by Rayman Origins, abused as a co -star in (by all things) Rabbids and victims of a constant stop starting in “Stop” mode, Rayman deserves better . In fact, he deserves better than a Rayman 2 remake, with a bona Fide new game hopefully on the horizon. But if we need to settle for a new recording, Rayman 2 would be worth breaking my rules for.

Rayman 2: The Great Escape
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October 31, 1999