Rayman Raving Rabbids

Frenchman Michel Ancel made his name with Rayman, an armless videogame mascot along the lines of Mario or Sonic who debuted way back in 1995. Raving Rabbids is the fourth in the series but is only tangentially related — rather than being a platformer, it's a collection of hilariously surreal mini-games starring insane and aggressively stupid bunnies and rife with pop culture allusions and gaming in-jokes. Stuck in jail, Rayman must win a series of gladiatorial-style games, often involving some form of animal torture, in order to collect plungers that he can use to climb up the wall and escape his cell. There are around 70 games in all, include flinging cows into a field, shooting carrot juice into scuba-bunnies' snorkel masks, kicking rabbids into a soccer net and racing warthogs. Most of the games involve whipping the wii-mote and/or nunchuk around, either rapidly or in rhythm, in order to win — it's challenging, exhausting and endlessly amusing. Though available for the PS2 and eventually the 360, PC and Nintendo's handhelds, I really can't imagine why anyone would want to play it on anything but the Wii, since the game makes near-perfect use of the motion-sensitive controllers. The multiplayer mode could be better since this game is inherently designed for groups, but given its critical and popular success, the rabbids will return soon enough — and maybe next time they'll ditch the old Rayman.