Rayman's canceled SNES debut found by creator after almost 25 years

Rayman creator Michel Ancel created a stir today when he unearthed and posted to Instagram images of the EPROM cartridge and screen (above) for the Super Nintendo version of the original Rayman — which was never released on that console.

"Four people in the world have seen this," Ancel said. "We thought it was lost, but somewhere in the cold electronic circuit, something was alive."

Only four days before, Ancel had believed the SNES build of Rayman was lost forever.

Pixel lovers ... Did this 25 years ago , the game was playable on the Super nintendo console but was never finished + We've lost the build . All these pixels are lost , like tears in the rain ...

A photo posted by Michel Ancel (@michelancel) on Oct 18, 2016 at 1:18pm PDT

Then he found the EPROM today.

Incroyable !!!! We have found the old unique Rayman SNES ROM !!!! It was sleeping for 24 years ..... Time to wake it up !!!!

A photo posted by Michel Ancel (@michelancel) on Oct 23, 2016 at 1:11am PDT

Rayman, which launched in 1995, was planned for the SNES but those plans changed with the advent of CD-ROM support in consoles like the Atari Jaguar, Sony PlayStation and Sega Saturn. The result is the Rayman that actually launched is profoundly different from the one on this EPROM.

Ancel teased Rayman fans with the suggestion that this recovered work-in-progress might still see the light of day. "Should do a Switch version of this," he said, referencing Nintendo's new console, due to launch in March.