It’s tough to create a dominating platform hero that is recognizable and successful when you aren’t a first or second party company. It’s often the best idea to have your own system in order to hype your lead character – Mario, Sonic, Crash Bandicoot and the like. Yet UbiSoft has gone out and made their Rayman character successful amidst ever-growing competition that is getting fiercer and better all the time. Starting with the Sega Saturn, PSOne and N64 then moving up to the Dreamcast and every system since then, the Rayman series has become successful for one good reason – the games so far have been top-notch.

Known for bringing the challenge back that was long missing from the genre, Rayman was taken to the GameBoy Advance from the system’s launch. The first Rayman game (a port) was a launch title. Since then more Rayman goodness has hit the system, this time in order to coincide with the Rayman 3: Hoodlum Havoc game the big-boy systems are getting. While the console versions are 3D, the GBA game manages to use the characters and shared plotline nicely; all while moving it back to the 2D format the series became famous with.

Globox, Rayman’s fat purple friend, has swallowed a Dark Lum and it’s doing terrors to his stomach. Driven crazy, he runs off into dangerous territory, leaving Rayman to chase after him. Simple plot, but most platformers are. Aided by his magical fairy friend, Rayman goes after Globox through four very large worlds.

Plenty of things have stayed stable throughout the series. Making a return is the ‘progression of skills’ in which Rayman gets his new skills one at a time throughout the game in order to unlock new challenges and avenues of gameplay. They’ll give you a few levels to get acquainted to using this new skill and once the mastery level has been reached, a new skill is given. The basic moves and skills are back – helicopter twirling, ring hopping, butt-stomping (in a form) and the usual far-punching action can all be found here as usual. The new addition that old fans won’t remember seeing before is the new double-punching technique. Rayman can now use both his detached hands to do rapid punching attacks using both hands, a nice feature that should’ve been in the series from the start.

Besides the moves, the control is the same stable and excellent layout. Although the levels get deviously challenging, the game’s tight control makes you always think you’re the one at fault for dying. Speaking of level challenge, it was surprisingly good here. The first hour or so is a pushover, which leads to the false impression that the whole game will be a cakewalk. This isn’t true, and one problem I had with the game was this easy difficulty for the first couple of levels. The game assumes you know the moves and what to do so it isn’t walking you through it as if you were a novice. If it assumes we know the moves and have played a Rayman game before, why not ramp the difficulty up right away? Seems like a waste of space and time to me. Other than that, the mix of gameplay elements here is refreshing as always. The game has a way of teasing the skills along and then throwing a really large challenge right at you. It’s certainly satisfying to pass what at first seem to be simple hop-and-jump platform moments. The programmers found devious ways to make everything ‘not as simple as it seems’.

The biggest new addition is the change of enemies. Using the Rayman 3 plot, the enemy characters have now been changed to the Hoodlum race, a cross between sorcerers and the scarecrow from The Wizard of Oz… if he was given a shotgun. The tactics at defeating these Hoodlums is certainly different than defeating normal Rayman villains. They have shields and more advanced AI tactics than the usual enemy selection. This is only good news for those who felt the enemy challenge lacking in past installments of Rayman on the GBA.

Another year has come, and another Rayman GBA game hits the market. Needless to say, fans of past Rayman games will have a blast here, as will anyone in the mood for a solid 2D platformer. They don’t come much better playing than this, and on a system where Nintendo seems content just recycling its old Mario games and Sega is producing Sonic games that feel like you’ve played them before, it’s great to see UbiSoft sticking with its limbless hero and his special brand of mayhem. Take my word, in a few years I’m sure Rayman will be as notable a househould name as Mario or Sonic.

The one thing the Rayman franchise has always been famous for (and indeed what made it famous in the first place) is the gorgeous 2D artwork that surrounds the levels. Rayman 3 is no exception, and features delightful background art that is both colorful, sharp and detailed. Whether in the jungle or on a pirate ship, Rayman has never looked better on the GBA. I dare say it’s beginning to roughly equal what the PSX Rayman games looked like. The animation is spot on, although not quite as fluid as Rayman’s console counterparts. The only really surprising thing is that when looked at overall, the Rayman series hasn’t made big leaps and bounds graphically since it first arrived on the GBA. It pretty much came out swinging right off the bat.

The sound is the usual mix of easy listening “platform music” (smooth jazz, some synthesized stuff and just light, airy tunes) and the Rayman trademark gibberish. There’s more of that gibberish speech both by Rayman and the Hoodlums, combining to form a nice atmosphere where things are definitely not taken seriously. While this game has a slightly darker turn than brighter and happier Rayman games of the past, you wouldn’t know it from the music. This isn’t really the game’s highpoint, but it does the job fine.

The replay value is pretty good. Although the game is on the short side (depending on how good a player you are), it makes up for it by packing plenty of multiplayer games onto the cart. Admittedly, the three and four players options need multiple copies of Rayman 3 to enjoy. The two player games, however, can be accessed through one cart and a trusty Link Cable. Such instant classics as Tag Mode and Burglar Mode help to cast away the time. While the game itself is short – probably around five hours long for most experienced gamers – the multiplayer efforts are a nice treat. The game also supports the GBA-Cube Link Cable to unlock some bonus levels in the Gamecube version of Rayman 3.

Overall, Rayman 3 is a definite purchase if you’re a fan of platform games. A breath of fresh air on a system that has seen far too few good platformers, Rayman 3 has the gameplay and visuals to back itself up. A short play-through time is improved with some fun multiplayer games, and the GCN Link Cable compatibility is a nice touch. It’s worth the money and I advocate a purchase. Also look into buying the original Rayman for GBA, now in bargain bins. Together they’ll create quite the pair.