Rayman Raving Rabbids
Developer(s)	Ubisoft Montpellier
Publisher(s)	Ubisoft
Director(s)	Florent Sacré Jacques Exertier Patrick Bodard Yoan Fanise
Designer(s)	Christophe de Labrouhe[1]
Artist(s)	Florent Sacré
Engine	Jade engine
Platform(s)	PC, PS2, Wii, GBA, NDS [1], Xbox 360 [2], Mobile
Release	Wii November 14, 2006 December 7, 2006 December 8, 2006 December 14, 2006 Game Boy Advance November 14, 2006 December 7, 2006 December 8, 2006 PS2 December 5, 2006 December 7, 2006 December 8, 2006 PC December 7, 2006 December 8, 2006 December 11, 2006 Nintendo DS March 6, 2007 March 15, 2007 March 16, 2007 X360 April 24, 2007 April 5, 2007 April 6, 2007
Genre(s)	Party Platform (GBA and DS only)
Mode(s)	Single-player, Multiplayer (2–4)

Rayman Raving Rabbids is a video game in the popular Rayman series released by Ubisoft as a Wii launch title. The game consists of more than 70 “trials” (minigames) with the Wii controller in mind, though the game is also available on the PC, PS2, Wii, GBA, Nintendo DS, Xbox 360. There are two main gameplay modes: by playing through Story Mode, the various minigames can be unlocked, while playing Score Mode unlocks challenges and bonus material. Story Mode follows Rayman's plight as he attempts to escape from imprisonment at the hands of the Rabbids. Score Mode allows replaying the minigames unlocked in Story Mode to better one's score or compete against other players (through either multiplayer or the use of a “web code” system with online standings at Ubisoft's Rayman website). Ubisoft released a sequel, Rayman Raving Rabbids 2, in November 2007.

There are two different modes of play in Raving Rabbids: Story Mode and Score Mode. In Story Mode, the game follows fifteen days of Rayman's imprisonment by the Rabbids. Each day, Rayman must complete at least three trials, followed by one special “boss trial”, such as a first-person rail shooter using plungers or a racing game in which the players controls a warthog and uses a flyswatter as a riding crop. Completing trials earns Rayman some costumes and matching music, including Gangsta, Raymaninho (a portmanteau of the title character's name and football star Ronaldinho), Disco, Gothic, Caramba, Rock'n'Roll, Granny, DeeJay and Bunny. Trial completion also earns plungers, and after accumulating enough, Rayman builds a ladder up the edge of his jail cell and escapes to freedom. In Score Mode, they player can repeat past trials in an attempt to improve one's score or as a multiplayer party game.^{[citation needed]}

Minigames fall into four categories: Bunny Hunt, Sports, Challenges, and Shake your Booty! Dancing minigames. Bunny Hunt comprises first-person rail shooter stages, all appearing in Story Mode as “boss” stages that the player may play for Score, Time, or Survival with the goal of obtaining the highest score possible with only one life. Two players can participate in Co-op Bunny Hunt, but Survival is not available. The Sports minigames can be played for Workout, which requires rapid movement of the Wii Remote, and Precision, which involves the controls of the remote. Sports minigames also include Get Going! racing stages, including four warthog racing games and a skydiving race. Challenges are various games found in Score Mode which must be played one after the other with the goal of a high combined score in a Triathlon, Pentathlon, or Decathlon. The Shake your Booty! minigames involve dance-themed minigames, and are found in Story Mode each day. Also, there are "Skill" minigames that do not fall under any of the other categories.^{[citation needed]}

The Rabbids are the common enemy in this game. Their technology varies from the advanced giant robots to the insane close combat tools such as plungers and feather dusters. Characters do not have the voice acting that was first used in Rayman 3. Instead, the voices become regular gibberish, except for a few words like "Hey" or "Wow". Besides the Rabbids, there are also warthogs, seen in the game's warthog races, and various other animals (such as sheep, cows and pigs). One of the minigames actually requires the player to point the members of the same species out.^{[citation needed]}

The game begins with a cutscene showing Rayman having a picnic with the local Globox kids. Their picnic is interrupted when an earthquake erupts and the Globox kids sink into the ground while 3 Rabbids appear in their place. Rayman offers them food, but they ignore him. Their commander Sergueï kidnaps Rayman and throws him in an arena with angry Rabbids, several armed with weapons. Rayman must complete his first trials now, and afterwards Sergueï takes him to his cell and gives him a plunger. As Rayman completes more trials, he becomes popular among the Rabbids and they cheer him on, in addition to making his jail cell more hospitable. Eventually, Rayman amasses a collection of plungers as rewards for completing the trials. By building a ladder out of all his plungers to reach the window, Rayman manages to escape and free himself. Once liberated, he remembers the Globox kids and attempts to return through one of the Rabbid holes to rescue them, but winds up getting stuck.^{[citation needed]}

The game began development in Ubisoft's Montpellier Studio, during the later stages of making King Kong, when the developers were looking to create the "ultimate enemy" for use in the next Rayman game. The studio head Michel Ancel sketched an initial concept for a rabbit character, and from there, the idea of a mass invasion of bunnies grew. The team then began work on a traditional action adventure platformer, then tentatively called Rayman 4. However, upon receiving development kits from Nintendo, the team began focusing on implementing a wide range of gameplay types. When it became clear that these were not going to fit into a traditional platformer game, Rayman Raving Rabbids was altered to become a game consisting of separated trials. Because of this, some of the trials and concepts revealed before the game's release did not appear in the final game, such as hawk and tarantula riding. While Ancel was seen as one of the main figures behind the project before E3, he left the project after the revamp, and is only credited with character design in the final game. Raving Rabbids is currently available for the Wii, Game Boy Advance, PlayStation 2, PC, Nintendo DS and Xbox 360.^{[citation needed]}

Additionally, the PC-Version of the game suffers from serious bugs, some most likely related to a flawed copy protection mechanism (Securom). On numerous systems, the copy protection will cause the game’s main executable to crash and the game cannot be started. The copy protection also seems to frequently identify genuine installations of the game as illegal copies which cause the game to subtract 20% of the score of each part of the game rendering these significantly harder or unbeatable. The game’s JADE engine is incompatible to current CPU power saving technologies like AMD's Cool'n'Quiet and Intel's SpeedStep. The developers of the PC-Version reused the installer of Peter Jackson's King Kong: The Official Game of the Movie without changing the Globally Unique Identifier. This causes failure to install Rayman Raving Rabbids on systems where Peter Jackson's King Kong is also installed while corrupting the previously installed game in the process. Until now there has been no official statement on whether a patch has been announced or released.^{[original research?]}

The game features the following licensed songs during the dancing levels:

1. Dick Dale - Misirlou
2. Chic - Good Times
3. Cyndi Lauper - Girls Just Wanna Have Fun
4. Naughty By Nature - Hip Hop Hooray
5. Ritchie Valens - La Bamba
6. Mark Griskey - Dark Iron Bunnies
7. Mark Griskey - The Butcher Deejay

The game has generally been received positively. IGN and GameSpot complimented the game's "sick sense of humor" and a heavy emphasis on fun, as well as the design of the bunnies and the game in general. Reviews highlighted the story, music and sound, and said that gameplay is addictive and optimized for the Wii. A few critics claimed that other developers of Wii launch titles had simply ported their games and "tacked on" Wii controls. It is currently the highest-selling third party game for the Wii. The game was subsequently released on other platforms, including the PC, PS2, and Xbox 360. However, reviewers in general found these versions to play at an inferior level to the Wii version due to the fact that the game's controls had been optimized with the Wii in mind.^{[citation needed]}

Several shortcomings were cited. Some of the minigames were said to be "duds", being unenjoyable or broken; the game could not run in progressive scan mode; and not all of the trials had multiplayer opportunities, "reducing the game's potential as a party game". Nintendo Power stated that a lot of promised features had been cut out. Several fans of the series have expressed disappointment on Rayman's small presence in the game, and the large changes in atmosphere and gameplay.^{[citation needed]} The Wiire awarded this game with Family Friendly, Ease of Use, and Multiplayer Mayhem awards.^[3]

One common criticism of the Wii version among US reviewers was that the game was unable to run in 480p mode. The game's manual mentions a menu item entitled 'Options', where one could configure the video modes; however, the actual game featured only an "Audio Menu" with volume options. Ubisoft acknowledges this error in a support article on its website:

Unfortunately, there is a misprint in the game manual. The video option was removed from the game, but was not removed from the manual. The reason it was removed from the game itself is that you have to use the Wii console Menu to switch video options such as the 16:9 aspect ratio.^[4]

• Official UK Rayman Raving Rabbids site
• Official US Rayman Raving Rabbids site
• Official Rayman Raving Rabbids mobile game site
• Ubisoft's Rayman E3 page
• Rayman Raving Rabbids at Game Rankings
• Template:GameFAQs
• Rayman Raving Rabbids at IGN
• Rayman Raving Rabbids (PlayStation 2, Windows, Wii) at MobyGames
• Rayman Raving Rabbids (J2ME) at MobyGames