Rayman 3 (mobile)

Rayman 3 arrived on keypad phones in 2004 as a mobile offshoot of Ubisoft's console platformer, prepared for Java and Symbian by the studio Gameloft. The game took over the basic framework: the armless hero Rayman, his ability to throw punches at range, and the fight against the henchmen of the dark lord Razorbeard. The graphics were of course reduced to a few dozen pixels and the color palette that period displays could handle, but the silhouette of the characters and the basic humor of the series remained recognizable, as did the emphasis on jumping platforming sections.

Controls were adapted to a numeric keypad, the keys 2, 4, 6, 8 handled the direction of walking and jumping, while attack and interaction were handled by button 5 or 0. The level design was simplified into shorter, more linear sections so they could be managed without an analog stick and with a noticeable delay between pressing a button and the reaction on screen. Even so, it was one of the better-crafted licensed platformers from Gameloft of that time, because it preserved smooth movement and readable jumping sections, unlike many other mobile ports that just mechanically shortened the level design.

The game was released through carrier portals as a paid download, typically for a few credits or a couple of euros, which was the common sales model for mobile games before the arrival of the App Store and Google Play. The title fit into the wave of licensed mobile platformers with which Gameloft was building its position in the market for keypad phone games in the middle of the decade. Today it's officially unavailable, the portals disappeared along with the era of keypad phones and the only way to reach the game is through archives and Java emulators.

Why play it: for collectors of mobile history and Rayman fans who want to see how a console platformer fit into a pocket phone with ten buttons.