Rayman Raving Rabbids

Rayman Raving Rabbids is the fourth major installment in the popular Rayman series. The game's development is being led by Michel Ancel, original creator of Rayman, at Ubisoft's Montpellier studio. Ubisoft released two short teaser trailers of the game for the Electronic Entertainment Expo 2006, but did then not release a workable demo. The game was brainstormed whilst Montpellier worked on the King Kong video game, and began full development shortly after King Kong went gold.

At Games Convention 2006, Ubisoft showed and demoed the game, revealing the concept. The console game consists of an initial story mode, which takes you from one mini-game to another to progress through the story. These mini-games can be replayed as a multiplayer party game.

Plot

After planning since time immemorial, waiting for the day they could make their presence known and take over the world, the Rabbids come out from their underground home. So far, their plans are successful; they have attacked and imprisoned the populace, including Rayman. Rayman discovers that by performing various "trials" he becomes popular among the Rabbids, more so than their obese emperor, and he can use this to his advantage and save the world.

Release

The game will be a launch title for Nintendo's Wii. It was originally conceived as a traditional platformer available for all consoles, but the development team liked the innovative design of the Wii's controller and decided to solely focus on that particular version.

Features

* The game will feature 80 trials of varying gameplay. There will be 50 mini-game trials, 10 FPS-style trials, 10 dancing trials and 10 race trials. Each different type of trial aims to use the capabilities of the Wii controller in a new way.
* Rayman can manipulate various creatures including sharks, eagles, rhinos, spiders, and angelfish, as a means of transportation.
* Rayman can change his appearance to reflect those of punk, pop, rock, hip hop, goth, clown, disco and others.
* As the game progresses, Rayman will earn various items with which he can customize both his own appearance as well as his jail cell, in order to make it increasingly luxurious. It is also where the game's many unlockables and secrets can be acessed.

Characters

* "Most of the loved characters" will return, but will be used for the rabbids' "strange purposes". However, these are not yet to be fully identified, and may have in fact been mentioned as an example of cliché plotlines. [4]
* Characters will not have the voice acting that was first used in Rayman 2: Revolution. Instead, it will return to the subtitled gibberish spoken in Rayman 2.
* The Rabbids are the common enemy in this game. Their weaponry varies from highly technological (rabbit-eared spaceships equipped with lasers) to the inane (toilet plungers, toilet brushes or draining ladles).
* The Rabbid Emperor is to be Rayman's arch nemesis in this game. He strongly resembles Jabba the Hutt from Star Wars.
* The game's plot is similar to Gladiator, except that instead of fighting armies and battling lions in the colloseum, you're hurling cows and trying to avoid being hit in the face with a plunger.

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