Rayman, as a character, was fully created by the French game designer Michel Ancel during his teenage years. When he decided to present his Rayman video game project to Ubisoft, he brought a 150-page file describing the whole game and a demo. Totally convinced, the Guillemot brothers gave him two years to create his game for the expected Super Nintendo CD-Rom hardware. The ways of videogame history decided otherwise and Rayman became an Atari Jaguar project, and was also ported to the incoming PlayStation, thanks to Ubisoft's recently created Tokyo branch.
Often considered as reflecting his designer's somewhat eccentric personality, Rayman is a 2D cartoon-style character deprived of arms and legs, capable of launching his fist to defeat opponents or flying short distances thanks to his helicopter hairstyle. Very unique artistic and graphic designs helped the game reach quite a commercial success, meaning a sequel was inevitable.
