It's no secret that Rayman Legends was a title many had high hopes for. Starring a limbless purple clad character known as Rayman who winds up his fists, throws said-fists, and even uses his hair as a helicopter to fly his way through levels, the game was set to be a prime reason to get the Wii U at launch.
A platforming game that mixes gorgeous hand-drawn backgrounds with manic co-op action, Rayman Legends looked to take things even further, by allowing up to five players take part, with four players on-screen at once, and an additional player using the touch screen on the console's GamePad to control Murfy, a constantly smiling fly that can help out in various ways, from grabbing pesky enemies, to activating levers and shuffling platforms to help you traverse through the levels. Those of you, like us, who were desperate to go hands-on with the limbless wonder's latest, though, will now have a little bit longer to wait, as news hits the web that the game has been pushed back, and will no longer be available for the Wii U on launch day.
Rayman, heading for disaster.
A statement given to Eurogamer reveals Ubisoft's own words on the delay; "Rayman Legends will launch worldwide in the first quarter of 2013. We're happy that fans are excited about the game, and we are taking the time to make sure we deliver a game that lives up to and hopefully exceeds their expectations. We'll have more details to share soon."
While the details of the reason for the delay are as yet unclear, it seems somewhat odd for a game to be pushed back from a game's launch. Usually, publishers fall over themselves to get games out for a console's launch - a developer we recently spoke to told us he was sometimes working until 1:30am to get a Wii U launch title ready for day one - and if anything, it usually ends up being that levels get cut from the game to make launch day, so you can only speculate what may have happened here. Perhaps Ubisoft decided it made more sense to not go head to head with Mario's own platforming effort, New Super Mario Bros U on launch day - or maybe there's a more interesting reason behind the delay. When the game was first announced, by way of a leaked trailer, it showed a feature that has since been quietly removed from the game - the ability to place a plastic figure on the WiiU's GamePad, and scan it in, not unlike Skylander's Portal of Power, and then have it activate in game as a power-up. Letting you do all manner of weird things, from adding a giant Rabbid to the game, to something as simple as scanning a heart to restore health, the feature was quietly dropped from the game's repertoire - perhaps the delay to 2013 will see it reinstated?
Q1 2013 means the game's release will arrive sometime between 1st January till the 31st of March - still in Nintendo's official "launch window", but no longer day one. Although this is no doubt disappointing, there are still plenty of highly anticipated games releasing for the Wii U on launch day, and Rayman taking a back seat gives Nintendo's New Super Mario Bros U a clean run come day one. Meanwhile, Ubisoft will still have plenty out on launch day, too, with their crop of eight games now having dropped to "just" seven - the Mario Party-esque minigame fun of Rabbids Land, the Wii Sports-alike Sports Connection, a version of Just Dance 4 with exclusive Wii U features, stealth adventure Assassin's Creed 3, sweat creator Your Shape 2013, Marvel themed beat 'em up Avengers: Battle for Earth - and, of course, the apocalyptic London based zombie game, ZombiU - all available on day one - so there's still plenty of games to choose from!
