Rayman on the Game Boy Color is not a shrunken copy of the 1995 original. It takes the hero, the moves and the villain, Mr. Dark, but plays out across its own levels, so one reviewer said you might as well call it a sequel to the 2D original. It came out in North America on March 29, 2000, and in Europe that July. In Japan it carried the subtitle Mr. Dark's Trap.
A quarter of a century later, it came back. On September 23, 2025, ModRetro, the company behind the Chromatic handheld, released a new edition of this very cartridge in partnership with Ubisoft, with a fresh soundtrack and a save feature the original never had. So there are now two Game Boy Color Rayman cartridges, and they are not quite the same game.
A looker that critics kept praising
Of everything critics said about Rayman in 2000, the graphics came up most. Total Game Boy gave the graphics a perfect 100%, praising "the colour packed into the graphics", and called it "effectively a PlayStation game on the small screen". Nintendo's own description called it a beautiful platformer that moves through a wide variety of colourful settings, and The Video Game Critic later wrote that it "makes excellent use of the system's palette with lush green plants, sparkling blue waters, and blooming pink flowers".
The praise kept coming in retrospectives. A list of Game Boy games that pushed the limits of the hardware's graphics and sound includes it, pointing to colorful, lush backgrounds and more graphics packed in than the average Game Boy Color game. Another reviewer called it a visual masterpiece, more lush in color than most games on the console, and when the ModRetro edition came out in 2025, CGMagazine wrote that it "looks quite stunning for a handheld release". It isn't a perfect copy, mind you. The handheld version makes notable changes next to the bright, vibrant graphics of the original, and some levels were modified or simplified.
Rescue the Toons from Mr. Dark
The setup is classic Rayman. Mr. Dark has caged Rayman's friends, the Toons, and taken the light away from the world, so Rayman sets off across seven worlds to free them. Nintendo counts 30 stages, scrolling both sideways and up and down.
Rayman starts with his trademark fist throw, which also punches platforms into motion, and he earns new powers as he goes, such as Helico Magic and a grappling ability. To finish everything, you have to backtrack into early levels with the new moves. Rescue all the Toons and a new set of levels opens up, along with a Time Trial mode.
Lush worlds, thin music
Rayman himself animates beautifully for a character with no arms or legs, and he grabs ledges when a jump comes up short, which is just as well, because that happens a lot. There's even a CGI-animated Rayman dancing before the start screen, put there just because they could.
The sound is a different story. Total Game Boy gave it 40% and summed it up as "plink-plonk", and one retrospective suggested turning the sound off because the soundtrack is painfully underdeveloped. That weakness is exactly what the ModRetro edition set out to fix.
Tough levels and one long password
This is a hard platformer. Reviewers at the time warned that you'll lose plenty of lives, and a later review found the levels clever but sometimes obtuse, with hidden switches and sudden changes of direction. When Rayman swings, the screen shifts back and forth enough to make you queasy, and one stage asks you to climb ahead of rising water while the screen scrolls more slowly than you'd like. The best moment, though, is a late level in which your own shadow follows a few steps behind, copying every move, and touching it means death. (Being chased by yourself is a very Rayman way to have a bad day.)
Boss fights are mostly gone, apart from the final one, which disappointed fans of the original. Progress is saved with passwords that mix upper and lowercase letters, which made The Video Game Critic grumble that it "just sucks". The cartridge also supported Ubisoft's Ubi Key, which used the Game Boy Color's infrared port to share data between games and unlock extras.
Two cartridges, one game
The original 2000 Ubisoft cartridge is the game as described above, password screen and all. Critics rated it well enough, at 79% on GameRankings, and it later appeared on the 3DS Virtual Console.
The ModRetro edition, released on September 23, 2025, under the label's Classic Collection, is the same game with a few changes. It has a brand new soundtrack, which one review said far eclipses the original's grating chiptunes. It also adds an enhanced save that remembers your password and enters it for you when you boot up, and according to one report it refines color, sound and performance for the Chromatic's display. The level design itself is mostly untouched, so the frustrating bits are still there. It comes in a purple cartridge with a full-color box, a printed manual and a Rayman charm for the Chromatic, and costs $44.99 from ModRetro's website. Despite the Chromatic branding, it also runs on original Game Boy hardware and on devices like the Analogue Pocket.
There's a third way to play it as well. Rayman: 30th Anniversary Edition, released in February 2026 for Switch, PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X/S and PC, includes the Game Boy Color version alongside the original console versions.
Still one of the prettiest games on the system
Rayman on the Game Boy Color is hard and its original soundtrack is weak, but it looks wonderful, and critics have said so for 25 years. The ModRetro edition is the version to get today, since it fixes the music and the passwords without touching what made the game worth reviving.
