French gamemaker Michel Ancel doesn’t work for Ubisoft anymore, but he was once considered their most valuable employee, having created the Rayman series and its first few releases. His “magnum opus,” though, was Beyond Good And Evil, an action adventure title that got a lot of praise from critics, but was ignored by gamers.
If you don’t know the name of Michel Ancel, you’re probably familiar with his most famous creation, a thing with floating limbs and a big nose named Rayman. He’s regarded as the French Miyamoto, and….now he’s not making games anymore.
Last October we reported that a prototype for Rayman on the SNES existed. The proto was from the very earliest days of development when Michel Ancel’s original platformer was intended to debut on the SNES-CD. This obviously didn’t happen, and the game would ultimately come out on the Playstation and Saturn instead.
The long-awaited Beyond Good & Evil 2, which was announced last year, won’t be shown at this year’s upcoming E3. Series creator Michel Ancel made the announcement, confirming the absence of the game as he did not feel it would be the best time or place to show off progress. However, it looks like an official reveal will be coming at some point later in the year.
The original Rayman was one of the most solid platformers of the 90’s and put designer Michel Ancel on the video game map. The game would make its debut on Jaguar and later appear on Playstation and Saturn (Playstation was where everyone discovered it, natch). But it was originally intended for the Super NES — and the reason it didn’t come out was because the SNES CD add-on didn’t happen.
Michel Ancel, creator of Rayman and Jade, and France’s greatest known game designer, has created a level in Super Mario Maker. Nintendo France filmed Ancel as he designed his own level and also interviewed him on how he approaches level design. The video is entirely in French with no translations or subtitles, but it’s not difficult to figure out what is being said thanks to the visual graphics being used. Ancel’s favorite Mario game is apparently Super Mario Land for Game Boy.
Beyond Good & Evil 2 is still in development, according to Michel Ancel, game designer at Ubisoft.