The retro community was rather giddy when in late 2016 Michel Ancel announced that he had recovered the only known Super Nintendo prototype build of the original, unreleased version of Rayman. It is always a rather exciting prospect when lost software is recovered and there's a whole community of people out there working really hard to preserve such knowledge.

Earlier today, the Co-Founder of Lizardcube (of Wonderboy: The Lizard’s Trap fame) and owner of SMS Power (website dedicated to preserving lost retrogames) Omar Cornut announced that he had successfully dumped the prototype and released a playable build of the cartridge ROM data to the public. We eagerly threw it at an accuracy-correct emulator to give it a spin.

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Short and to the point, this very early prototype certainly had the fundamental in place. It would have been interesting to see how the finished product would have looked like and how it would fare against the other famous Super Nintendo character who threw both arms and legs to dispatch enemies, " Plok " by the Pickford brothers.What do you think, NL readers? Would the original vision of "" made him a memorable mascot in the vast 16-bit landscape of the nineties? Fire up those comments below!