I’ve been a big Rayman fan ever since I got my hands on the original for PC as a kid. The bright and colourful worlds rivalled even Mario’s at the time, whilst the rock-solid difficulty made for a game worth returning to challenge myself and get just a little farther through the Glade of Dreams.
As much as I enjoyed its 3D sequels later down the line, I had always longed for a return back to the series 2D roots. Rayman Origins would answer those calls, but just a few years later, we’d also get a sequel in Rayman Legends. As far as I’m concerned, both of these games are absolute classics – timeless platformers with such a stunning art style I can’t ever imagine will age some ten, twenty or more years later on. So, you can imagine my reservations upon hearing of a remake of Rayman Legends…
Alongside the whys, another particularly important question that sprang to mind was how? How do you go about remaking a 2D platformer? Sure, a graphical update would be a starting point, but we’re not exactly dealing with 16-bit origins here. After sitting down with the game, though, it all started to make sense, and suddenly the hows started to disappear.
The cleverly named Rayman Legends Retold is an extremely faithful remake, but at the same time looks to be injecting some fresh extras. From a gameplay standpoint, everything controls the same, the levels are laid out the same, and the structure is again pretty much the same. From a visual standpoint, it may have the same Rayman charm, but it’s definitely a new look. As for the extras, these will be coming in the form of new levels, cutscenes, voice acting and general tweaks and adjustments to the game’s presentation. In a sense, then, it’s a retelling.
My playtime was limited to a handful of levels from the first two worlds of the game, Old Teensie Kingdom and The Stinkbog these based on Teensies in Trouble and Toad Story from the original game. As soon as I started the first level, things felt instantly familiar to me, not just from a controlling perspective but the level design itself. Any fan of the original game will recall your first Teensie cage hiding just to the left of the starting point, and that is exactly the same case here. In fact, when it comes to all the stages I played through, as far as I can tell, they appear to be pretty much identical to their original counterparts. You’ll still be searching for ten Teensies, discovering two bonus rooms and even unlocking time trials afterwards to earn bronze, silver or gold trophies.
Murphy returns (this time voiced by Billy West, who, interesting fact, provided the voice of Rayman in the original cartoon decades before) and his sections once again require the simultaneous juggling of controlling your character and triggering his actions to move platforms or remove enemies. While it works, it’s not as intuitive as the original Wii U’s functionality, where one player used the GamePad’s touchscreen as Murphy to help another player controlling Rayman.
Connecting each of these levels was a similar style of hub to the original – albeit one that feels more connected. Where the original game was little more than a series of paintings lined up for you to leap into, here you’ll actually be walking and jumping your way through each of the game’s six worlds, leaping into portals. These hubs appear to offer a few chances to explore, as I managed to uncover a few hidden coins tucked away. It does add a nice sense of world-building to the mix, I’ll give the game that.
While I didn’t get to see any of the promised new stages (from the game’s extra sixth world or new music stages), I did get to try out two of the newly introduced flying stages. These on-rails Star Fox-style romps had Rayman riding atop a rather large dragon and flying through a whole barrage of obstacles and enemies. Whilst your dragon could move pretty sharply, you also had the ability to dodge left and right and, of course, shoot fireballs to attack. I will admit, there were a couple of times I struggled to gauge my positioning due to the camera angle swooping to different angles, resulting in a Teensie flinging knock on an object or enemy. Of course, I’d expect repeated visits to these stages to refine my piloting.
Obviously, the game has been given a rather notable visual update, moving away from the original’s cartoony style and instead opting for a 2.5D look. The end result is one I actually found myself liking, the 3D environments making great use of lighting, giving stages a rather different atmosphere from the original. Not only that, but certain segments of stages see the angle slightly adjust from the traditional 2D view. For example, when flying through the beanstalk-filled courses of The Stinkbog, the camera would lower slightly, offering a more dramatic view of events.
While nothing game-changing, it offers a more cinematic style, and I’m excited to see more of these tweaks. So, does Retold look better than the original? No, definitely not. Is it worse, though? Again, I wouldn’t exactly say it’s worse, but rather it’s just a different style. It’s something that I think people will need to adjust to, but after a few levels, I felt right back at home with the game’s look. At the end of the day, this was still a Rayman world, 2.5D or not.
It’s going to be interesting to see the reaction to Rayman Legends Untold’s reveal. Any remake is always going to see some percentage of scepticism, but a game that for many was already seen as pretty timeless… well, that result feels a little more unpredictable. Having played roughly an hour of the game, though, I’m more than happy to dive back into Ubisoft’s updated take on this classic adventure when it releases later this October.
Rayman Legends Retold will be released at retail and digitally on the Nintendo eShop for Nintendo Switch 2 worldwide on 1 October 2026.
