When Rayman hovers while wearing the Mario Hat in the Wii U and Nintendo Switch versions of the game, wings pop out on it, paying homage to the Wing Cap power up from Super Mario 64.

Rayman Legends was first made known through a leaked trailer in late April 2012 that showed off early stage designs and suggested it would feature special Near-Field Communication functionality on the Wii U, allowing new gameplay opportunities by placing certain objects on the controller. This was demonstrated using figurines of a Heart, Globox, a Rabbid, and Ezio from the Assassin's Creed series. Ubisoft later confirmed that this trailer was merely demonstrative and consisted of prototype material intended only for their internal production teams, and did not represent what features the final game would have.

The game was originally planned to be released exclusively for the Wii U. However, because of the commercial failure of Wii U exclusive ZombiU, Ubisoft believed that Rayman Legends would not be proftiable as a Wii U exclusive, and decided to make it multi-platform.

However, rather than release the already-finished Wii U version on its previously announced release date and release the other versions later, Ubisoft decided to delay the release by 6 months so that all versions could be released simultaneously. This upset not only the fans who had been eagerly anticipating the game, but also the development team.

To try and counter-balance the negative press, Ubisoft introduced an free application to the Wii U, in the form of a Challenges App, that provided a number of different challenge based levels for users to compete for higher scores and faster times on an online leaderboard without purchasing the game.

Four of the six rhythm levels feature covers of licensed music:
• Castle Rock - "Black Betty" by Ram Jam
• Mariachi Madness - "Eye of the Tiger" by Survivor
• Gloo Gloo - "Woo Hoo" by The 5.6.7.8s
• Dragon Slayer - "Antisocial" by Trust

Of the remaining two, "Orchestral Chaos" features an original composition, and "Grannies World Tour" is a remix of the "The Land of the Livid Dead" theme from Rayman Origins.