Have you been living in a hole?
As for what ffamran said, Rayman is known but just not on the level of the characters he mentioned but he's around the range of others like Crash Spyro Sly cooper etc.
Should be noticed more often the past half decade since, well, he's gotten some really good games compared to some of em lol.
By some, you mean Crash and Spyro who were caught in the Activision Apocalypse. Sly Cooper recently had a game that basically was Sly 4. Not a lot of innovations and not a lot of hey, this is different. It felt like another Sly Cooper game which is good, but I do wish there was more. Jak & Daxter, well, let's call this Naughty Dog project abandonment. Every generation, Naughty Dog just drops a franchise and I wouldn't be surprise that after say, Uncharted 4, they'll drop Uncharted and never make another one while moving onto another project that willl be dropped as well. The issue is that they just don't care enough to find another developer who understands the series and would love to continue a series. I mean, remember Jak and Daxter: The Lost Frontier?
Ratchet & Clank is literally the Super Mario Bros. of Insomniac Games. They're fun and they don't really do much besides being fun. Each game despite All 4 One and Full Frontal Assault being different and "not" Ratchet & Clank games still keep their humor, insane weapons, and essentially, their souls. If there was one character(s) from Sony aka a competitor that I want in SSB even though it's impossible, it would be Ratchet & Clank. Sly would end up like Greninja with a cane while Jak & Daxter would be a bit like Link. Ratchet & Clank would be like Mega Man who has different weapons per move instead of different weapons/gadgets per Special like Link and Jak & Daxter.
Also, there's Ty the Tasmanian Tiger who is relatively unknown by many. He also got screwed over by becoming more edgy and dark for some reason.
Then there's Dante who more or less became more well-known because of the DmC fiasco and I bet Bayonetta since people kept complaining about how Capcom can't make games. No, it's not Capcom can't make games, it's the heads of Capcom who don't know jack while the developers there are talented. I mean, each major developer that left to do their own thing ended up making incredible games. Platinum Games was Capcom's Clover Studio the makers of Okami, Viewtiful Joe, God Hand, and because Hideki Kamiya was involved, Devil May Cry, and Kenji Inafune was an artist for Mega Man, the producer for Onimusha, Lost Planet, and Dead Rising all of which were great, but the heads of Capcom killed them off or decided some questionable design choices would appeal to gamers. Inafune ended up leaving to make Mighty No. 9 with his own studio, Comcept. You can just look at Dragon's Dogma and see that a large world with pretty good AI for enemies and wildlife was held back by consoles at the time. Aside from some bugs, it wasn't game-breaking like Elder Scrolls. The combat was awesome since it was like Devil May Cry infused with Monster Hunter which makes sense since Hideaki Itsuno was the director of DMC2 and onwards. Y'know, the guy who messed up with DMC2 and brought DMC3 to the world? The guy who made DMC4 which people feel like Capcom had budget issues and could have been more? This is the guy who took fine, spectacular combat to an open-world, medieval, fantasy-themed RPG. The developers at Capcom are awesome, but Capcom as a company is bad to say the least.
Should I also mention that Capcom helped out Nintendo with The Legend of Zelda Oracle of Ages & Seasons, Four Swords, and Minish Cap? Inafune said he loved A Link to the Past and made Mega Man Legends as an homage to Zelda and ended up working on Minish Cap. Link to the wiki:
http://zeldawiki.org/Capcom#A_Link_to_the_Past_.26_Four_Swords.
I bet you could give the devs at Capcom, Platinum Games, and Comcept something like Metroid, SSB, Mario, Zelda, Fire Emblem, Dynasty Warriors - Capcom made Sengoku Basara -, God of War, or anything like even Call of Duty and they could ramp up the combat to 11. If only Capcom wasn't run by a bunch of... I feel like beating a dead horse.
