Spyro the Dragon: PlayStation’s Purple Hero I Still Love
Christmas morning, 1998. I was twenty years old and home from college on winter break, expecting the usual haul of sweaters and gift cards. Instead, my parents surprised me with a PlayStation and a copy of Spyro the Dragon. “We thought you might want something fun between all that studying,” my mom said, clearly not realizing she was essentially gifting me a GPA reduction device. I was genuinely touched – they’d been paying attention when I’d thumbed through gaming magazines during Thanksgiving break, pointing out the games I wished I could play if I had the right console.
That afternoon, while my extended family engaged in their traditional post-Christmas dinner coma, I snuck away to hook up the PlayStation to the basement TV. That startup sound – that iconic PlayStation jingle followed by the Insomniac Games logo – still triggers a Pavlovian response of excitement in me. Then came the intro cinematic: a news report showing dragons being interviewed about some villain named Gnasty Gnorc, who overhears himself being called ugly and promptly uses magic to crystallize all the dragons and turn their treasure into his minions. Not exactly Shakespeare, but it established the lighthearted tone perfectly.
And then there was Spyro himself – this small purple dragon with big eyes, stubby limbs, and an attitude that somehow balanced cocky and endearing. From the moment I took control of him in the Artisans homeworld, I was hooked. The way he moved was nothing short of revolutionary for 1998. Most 3D platformers of that era felt stiff, with characters that moved like they had broomsticks taped to their spines. Spyro, though? That little dragon had inertia, weight, and fluidity. He’d dig his claws in when turning sharply, his tail would swing behind him as he charged, and his idle animations showed actual personality instead of just standing there blinking occasionally.
I spent that entire vacation exploring every nook and cranny of Spyro’s world. My cousin Jake came over the day after Christmas, and we took turns playing, collectively losing our minds when we discovered you could glide after jumping. “Dude, try charging and then jumping off that ramp!” he’d yell, and I’d execute the maneuver while we both held our breath, seeing how far we could send the little dragon flying. The gliding mechanics hit a perfect sweet spot of being forgiving enough for casual play but requiring genuine skill to master, especially when trying to reach those infuriatingly distant platforms holding extra gems or a dragon statue.
Speaking of those dragons – freeing them from their crystal prisons was immensely satisfying. Each one had a unique design and personality, and I loved how they’d offer little snippets of advice before magically vanishing. Some were genuinely helpful: “Spyro, you can glide longer if you press X at the height of your jump.” Others were amusingly useless: “Thank you for releasing me!” followed by absolutely no useful information whatsoever. I started ranking them in my mind from most helpful to most useless, with a special category for the ones who just seemed confused about the whole situation.
The worlds of Spyro were vibrant, colorful affairs that contrasted sharply with the more “mature” and muted games that were becoming popular at the time. The Artisans world felt like a medieval storybook come to life, with its castles, green fields, and stone architecture. Magic Crafters had an ethereal, mystical quality with its floating platforms and purple hues. Beast Makers was a swampy, bubbling landscape that felt genuinely different to navigate. Dream Weavers played with gravity and perspective in ways that made me question what was possible in a 3D platformer. And Gnasty’s World brought everything together for a challenging finale. Each realm had its own musical theme, color palette, and enemy types, creating a genuine sense of journey as you progressed.
Let’s talk about Stewart Copeland’s soundtrack, which deservedly has achieved legendary status among gaming music. The former drummer of The Police created music that wasn’t just background noise – it was an essential part of Spyro’s identity. Each world had its own distinct theme that somehow captured the environment perfectly. The Artisans world music with its medieval-inspired melody and driving percussion. The Dream Weavers theme with its dreamy, almost psychedelic quality. The music dynamically changed when you went underwater, adding a muffled, echoey quality that was a technical achievement for the time. I found myself humming these tunes while walking to classes when I went back to college, earning some strange looks from people who didn’t recognize them as video game music.
The gem collecting tapped into something primal in my brain. That distinctive sound when you picked one up, the visual effect of them being magically absorbed, the counter in the corner showing your progress – it was all perfectly designed to create a compulsive need to find every last one. I’d sweep through an area thinking I’d been thorough, only for my dragonfly buddy Sparx to still be a color indicating gems remained. “Where is it?!” I’d mutter, before eventually discovering a hidden cave or a platform requiring a particularly tricky glide. The satisfaction of finally reaching 100% in each world was genuinely euphoric in a way I’m almost embarrassed to admit.
Sparx himself deserves special mention – this dragonfly companion who served both as a health indicator and a gem collector. His color changing from gold to blue to green to red before disappearing entirely created an instantly understandable health system. And the way he’d zip over to collect nearby gems saved us from having to precisely position Spyro over each one. It was a brilliant piece of game design that made collecting feel good rather than tedious. When I lost Sparx to damage, the game felt suddenly more tense – not just because I was one hit away from death, but because I’d formed this strange attachment to my silent dragonfly buddy.
The combat was simple but satisfying – you either charged with your horns or breathed fire. But different enemies required different approaches, creating tactical decisions rather than mindless button mashing. Metal-armored enemies needed to be flamed because charging bounced off. Fast-moving enemies were better handled with a charge attack. Some enemies needed to be approached from specific angles. The sound design was spot-on too – the whooshing of the charge, the distinctive “fwoosh” of the flame breath, the yelp enemies made when defeated. I can still hear these sounds perfectly in my head over two decades later.
I distinctly remember a Saturday in January after I’d gone back to college, when my roommate Tom had gone home for the weekend. I set up my PlayStation in our dorm (which required some creative cable management and moving furniture around), determined to finally reach 100% completion. I started playing around noon. When I next looked at the clock, it was past midnight, and I’d completely forgotten to eat dinner. That kind of time distortion is the hallmark of a truly engrossing game, and Spyro had it in spades.
The boss fights were admittedly not the game’s strongest feature – most involved chasing and flaming a larger enemy rather than complex patterns or strategies. But in some ways, this fit the game’s accessible nature. Spyro wasn’t about punishing difficulty; it was about exploration, collection, and the joy of movement. The final confrontation with Gnasty Gnorc himself was more memorable for the chase sequence than the actual battle, but it still provided a satisfying conclusion to the journey.
When Spyro 2: Ripto’s Rage came out in 1999, I was first in line at the campus software store. The sequel expanded on everything that made the original great while adding new mechanics like swimming, climbing, and hovering. The NPCs were more fleshed out, the worlds more varied, and the challenges more diverse. Instead of rescuing dragons, you were helping the inhabitants of each realm with specific tasks, creating more narrative context for your actions. I appreciated the evolution while still missing some of the simplicity of the original’s “free the dragons, collect the gems” approach.
Year of the Dragon completed the original trilogy in 2000, adding playable characters beyond Spyro himself. While I enjoyed controlling Sheila the Kangaroo, Sgt. Byrd, Bentley the Yeti, and Agent 9, part of me felt the game was moving away from what made Spyro special – that perfect flow of running, jumping, gliding, and breathing fire as a small purple dragon. The minigames and varied gameplay kept things fresh, but sometimes I just wanted to glide around collecting gems as Spyro without distractions.
What made the Spyro trilogy special compared to other platformers of the era, particularly the other big PlayStation mascot, Crash Bandicoot? For me, it came down to freedom. Crash’s levels were primarily linear affairs – expertly crafted, certainly, but essentially corridors with occasional branching paths. Spyro’s worlds were wide open, encouraging exploration and discovery. You could see distant platforms and figure out how to reach them, feel the joy of mastering a particularly challenging glide, or just run around headbutting sheep for fun. Crash was an obstacle course; Spyro was a playground.
The technical achievements of Spyro are easy to overlook now, but Insomniac pulled off something remarkable on the original PlayStation hardware. The draw distance was impressive for the time – you could actually see far-off objectives rather than having them obscured by fog (a common trick used to mask technical limitations). The worlds were colorful and varied at a time when many 3D games were struggling with muddy textures and limited palettes. The loading times were surprisingly quick, maintaining the flow of gameplay as you moved between areas. The camera, while not perfect, was more reliable than many of its contemporaries. These might seem like basic requirements now, but in 1998, they were notable accomplishments.
Insomniac’s design philosophy shone through in how accessible yet engaging they made the experience. The basic controls could be mastered in minutes, but there was depth in how you combined movements – the timing of jumps at the end of a charge for maximum distance, the positioning needed to flame multiple enemies in a single breath, the precise angle of approach for certain glides. They understood that depth doesn’t require complexity; it can emerge from simple systems combined thoughtfully.
I’ve replayed the original Spyro trilogy numerous times over the years, most recently through the Reignited Trilogy that rebuilt the games from the ground up with modern graphics while preserving the feel of the originals. The visual upgrade is impressive – Toys for Bob did an admirable job capturing the spirit of the original designs while adding details and flourishes that would have been impossible on the original PlayStation. Yet the core gameplay remains largely unchanged, a testament to how well-designed it was in the first place. Even the soundtrack offers an option to switch between the remastered versions and Copeland’s original compositions – a respectful nod to how integral the music was to the experience.
What strikes me now is how different the original Spyro games feel from most modern titles. There’s a purity to them – no microtransactions, no downloadable content, no online components or leaderboards. Just you, a purple dragon, and worlds filled with gems and challenges. The game didn’t need to artificially extend its length with repetitive side quests or grinding; it was exactly as long as it needed to be, with enough content to be satisfying without becoming tiresome.
I’ve tried to analyze why the character of Spyro himself resonated so strongly with me and many others. He wasn’t particularly complex – his personality could be summed up as “brave, slightly sassy, and determined” – but there was something appealing about his understated heroism. He wasn’t saving the world because of some grand destiny or tragic backstory; he was doing it because, well, someone had to, and he happened to be the dragon who didn’t get crystallized. His size relative to the worlds and enemies emphasized his underdog status – this small dragon taking on creatures many times his size through determination and cleverness rather than raw power.
The original Spyro trilogy represents a specific moment in gaming history – the late 90s when 3D platformers were coming into their own, developers were still figuring out what worked in three dimensions, and character-driven games dominated the console landscape. It’s easy to be cynical about mascot platformers as marketing tools, but Spyro transcended that through sheer quality and charm.
My PlayStation is long gone, replaced by subsequent generations of hardware, but I still keep my original Spyro discs in a special case along with other games that defined different periods of my life. Sometimes I take them out just to look at the cover art and feel that rush of nostalgia. I remember that Christmas, the hours spent in college with friends crowded around a tiny dorm TV, the satisfaction of finally reaching 100% completion.
A few years ago, my nephew Jake (named after the same cousin who played Spyro with me that post-Christmas day, coincidentally) was visiting, and I set him up with the Reignited Trilogy. Watching him experience the joy of controlling Spyro for the first time – the same wide-eyed excitement, the same “Did you see that?!” moments when pulling off a perfect glide – felt like watching history repeat itself in the best possible way. The tech had changed, the graphics had improved dramatically, but that core experience remained intact: the simple joy of being a small purple dragon in a big colorful world.
For all the advances in gaming over the past two decades – the photorealistic graphics, the complex narratives, the online connectivity – sometimes I still just want to charge around as Spyro, collecting gems, freeing dragons, and listening to Stewart Copeland’s perfect soundtrack. In an industry that often seems fixated on bigger, more complex experiences, there’s something to be said for the elegant simplicity of controlling a purple dragon on an adventure that’s challenging enough to engage but accessible enough to feel like a vacation rather than a job.
That little purple dragon wasn’t just a mascot or a vehicle for gameplay mechanics; for many of us, he was a companion through a specific moment in our lives, a consistent source of joy during college stress, relationship drama, and the general uncertainty of early adulthood. Games come and go, consoles become obsolete, but Spyro – in all his flame-breathing, gem-collecting, sheep-headbutting glory – still holds a special place in my heart and on my gaming shelf. Some heroes wear capes; others have purple scales and an attitude. I wouldn’t have it any other way.
