Hello, gamers everywhere! We are about to explore the most iconic and memorable character of the PlayStation One era: Spyro the Dragon. You’d be hard-pressed to find someone who grew up with a PlayStation and didn’t play, or at the very least, hear of the delightful purplicious character that was Spyro. The franchise had a very die-hard fan base from the very beginning and left players of all ages clamoring for each new entry. Let’s take a look at the history, the journey, and the price that was paid to allow the little dragon to go from platforming excellence to the underperforming mascot that is just as iconic: the purple dragon named Spyro.
The PlayStation was a global hit in the late ’90s. With its mostly 3D platform, this game console offered a rarely-matched gaming experience. But some games did stand out: among the great ones was Spyro the Dragon. It was released in 1998 among a line-up of innovative games that were mostly hits on that console. For those around in the late ’90s, it was a great time to play games, and several of today’s adults remember that game fondly. But you have to consider that, in game design, the late ’90s were a primordial soup, even for today’s most successful game designers.
The very first time I put the disc into my PlayStation and heard the familiar, magical, and adventurous theme music, I felt like I was participating in a marvelous fairytale. The game, to my young mind, was incredibly simple, but as those who know what they’re talking about would say (yes, Mom), the best children’s games embrace the straightforward instead of the convoluted. The ease with which you can pick up the game isn’t a one-off feature for a beloved 32-bit title; it happens because the good people who made this classic for a then-budding console knew both system and audience.
Spyro stood out from the platformers of the time in that it had an open-world feel. It wasn’t just about the levels you played. It was about the entire interconnected world in which you jumped. And that world had an almost unbelievable amount of stuff to find inside it. Moreover, it was really nice, open, safe, and really, really easy to play. The controls weren’t convoluted, the basic setup was really simple to navigate. Until Insomniac made it glossy.
Among the many great experiences in gaming, few have the die-hard nostalgia factor that Spyro the Dragon has for millennials. The image, even a mention of the name, thrusts us back to our childhoods, when most of us likely first played it. The first interaction with the game that I can remember also happens to be its most iconic, for a couple of reasons: a) you’ve got the statue that towers over you and b) the PS1 start-up sequence usually follows that first game moment.
Spyro the Dragon existed in a lavish, heightened dreamscape. The particular domain of each world was a well-thought-out and wondrous journey. An incredible focus on detail and a strong mix of colors heighten the already storybook-like fantasy and imbue the game with a real sense of enchantment. Those games remain magical to me, even now, and it’s not difficult to see why that potent magic helped the original Spyro the Dragon sell millions of copies.
Entering the Peace Keepers world for the first time is something I’ll always remember. The almost Southern California or Northern Mexico-like desert scenery, with fortresses and cacti, was such a different habitat to see. The enemies in this second world took on more of a life of their own than those I’d previously encountered, and I had to adapt my strategies if I wanted to take them down. I charged and dodged around this desert basin, living out some fantasy—a Saturday morning cartoon pitching war against these gnorcy foes.
The game’s score, composed by Stewart Copeland (known most famously as the drummer for the band The Police), was also a real high point for me and is a personal favorite in terms of overall soundtracks. The way the game’s PS1-era score (performance at this point had to be calculated by the system and could be affected by the on-screen action) was processed made it sound almost like Appropriately enough, a good handful of the tracks (Sunny Villa, Cloud Spires, Molten Crater, and Evening Lake) in the GBA version of the game are reused from the first three titles.
Spyro the Dragon was a game in which the money was in the amount of exploration and curiosity it rewarded. Players opened larger parts of this overworld series of environments by rescuing Dragon Elders in these and adjacent stages where they were held in crystalline captivity. Clearing these areas also gave players the command with which to open portals in the overworld map. And the music was goo, really good.
Though, this is why ambitious ‘90s kids wanted to play it.
For me, the Tree Tops level was the standout of the trilogy. It’s fun, it’s got a quirky internal logic, and it was always rewarding in the end. The ramp-design was especially enjoyable as you had to navigate between these different pieces of land that were put together in such a way that you were always meant to take this specific path. A speed-boost mechanic in this level was also very important: if you didn’t hit the ramps at full boost, you weren’t going to make the jump.
Over the years, Spyro matured in stride with his fans. Indeed, as players got older, so too did Spyro—particularly in the second and third games in the franchise, the latter of which is arguably the most serious in tone. So while, yes, it is amusing to those who’ve been following the purple guy’s journey to make the canary do opera, we fans who were children when these games were released genuinely appreciate that one can’t just happen upon a karaoke bird like that in life. That’s a world-building experience we can share and bond over. We can’t help it; it still makes us laugh.
Spyro 2: Ripto’s Rage! is an evolved form of its precursors. The game carries with it a greater emphasis on story. Spyro is compelled to journey into Avalar and fight the good fight because of the distress signal that new friends, Elora, Hunter, and Professor—send his way. What good friends, I don’t know. In Ripto’s Rage!, Spyro learns new skills. He can sort of swim now. I say “sort of” because if you look close enough, it really just looks like pressing a controller button makes Spyro paddle his wings around underwater. Pressing another button makes him rise to the surface. But I figure it’s mostly me not having played a 3D platformer that contained swimming since.
Spyro: Year of the Dragon is a video game I hold dear to my heart. It is the third installment in the original Spyro the Dragon” game trilogy that started on the PlayStation. The game’s plot centers around the theft of dragon eggs by a malevolent sorceress and her minions, who have names that sound like they were pulled from really bad ’80s fantasy movies. While trying to stop the sorceress, whose name is the Sorceress, Spyro is aided by several friends, characters who are actually playable within their very own levels and sections of the game.
The 2000 title Year of the Dragon had so much for players to sink their teeth into, and that was more the case here than for any Insomniac title to predate it. The game’s go-anywhere, do-anything, get-everything structure was largely intact and, if anything, featured some obnoxious tasks, which were less redeeming than the ones that appeared in any of those pair of predecessors. This was a real feast of a game, which remastered in Fur-K shaders is nearly bursting at the seams.
Spyro developed on both a software and hardware level alongside the original PlayStation, with an initial pair of games known for vibrant visuals that truly brought the classic Insomniac style to the living room floor on a 32-bit console. The first two games did the heavy lifting of establishing the world of dragons that the tiny, purple, smart-mouthed one inhabited. And then after the turn of the century, an audio wow to go along with the visual pow came in the form of Stewart Copeland’s soundtracks. Insomniac knew they had something special, and seemingly everyone else did too.
How Spyro affected the world outside the game is really special. He became a cultural symbol, a part of our young life at the time. He was in our Happy Meals, our comics, our TV shows, and, of course, our video games. We didn’t know Spyro very well until the first eponymous title was released in 1998, but the influence of that game and what came after was to plant a seed in the minds of future developers and players, a seed that grew into the love and nostalgia that we can look back on today.
The Spyro Reignited Trilogy brought renewed life to the original in 2018. This remastered collection of plucky little dragon tales represents a sublime mix of nostalgia and modern game design principles. And the trilogy’s bright delivery only underscores its shining core content, which is that the Spyro universe exists as an exemplar of what made the original PlayStation-era set of action platformers great and an acceleration of what many elements of game design Toys for Bob and Insomniac Games (original developer) got right in the first place.
The Spyro Reignited Trilogy felt like a homecoming. All the worlds, characters, and music that we grew up with were there in our return to the Dragon Realms, but they were, dare I say, even better than we remembered. The reignited graphics were vibrant and almost popped off of our screens. The music was still iconic but also felt fresher. The attention to detail was just short of mind-boggling and really showed the love that the developers felt for the original triad of games that many of us hold dear.
The updated control scheme a real high point in the remastered trilogy. Now the games just feel better to play. The characters go where you want them to go and do a good job of keeping up with you or waiting when you fall back or get too far away. Sometimes they clip through the scenery or knock into you a little bit, but the artificial intelligence and natural movements that BioWare used to make the game are good. You also now get a close-up view of the game’s panels, another positive.
The first playthrough of the Spyro the Dragon level in Spyro: Reignited Trilogy is something that remains fresh in my mind. It was one of my favorites as a kid and now, as an adult, it’s almost like a make-believe dream come true. The updated visuals are that good. Nothing stands out more in the Artisans level than the nicely populated town full of charming wooden and stone bridges and paths. It’s by far the best in terms of evoking the joys of Spyro by making use of new-era art and music.
The remastered trilogy also brought with it some improvements that just made the whole thing a lot nicer to play. Being able to keep tabs on what was going on in the game and which of the multitude of crazy gamey things like Totems of Power or Taylor’s Mmmbop one hadn’t yet found or seen was an act of mercy for those of us who like to attempt “100%-ing” a game. In addition, it just ran and in many cases looked a lot better, with loading times being cut down to next to nothing; the promised buttery smoothness achieved; and, most importantly, controller vibrations now scaled to one’s personal level of intensity and enjoyment.
The re-recorded dialogue is another salient aspect of the Reignited Trilogy. The games remain authentic because the original actors came back to do the new dialogue. The character of Spyro is, I think, in part, way, way more me now, in the second version, says voiceover artist Tom Kenny, who returned to do just that. “I’ve been with the character so long, I sort of know how he’d react in almost any situation.”
The launch of the Spyro Reignited Trilogy was like the spy returning after a long war. It brought a beloved character to a new generation of devotees and gave old ones a second chance to live out their childhoods once more. And in light of that, the trilogy made enough of a splash in new news and old news to reaffirm the enduring nature of the character’s appeal. The remastered trilogy is more or less a lasting testament to the original trilogy experience. And even more, it’s a lasting impact experience for the fans of the “Reignited” character himself.
When I think back on the very rich history of video game characters, it’s impossible for me not to linger on Spyro the Dragon. He was birthed on the PlayStation console, where I was first introduced to him, in an era that is mildly associated with platformers and “collectathons.” And those are mechanics that are mildly taboo today as exploitative, or at least seen as lower brow. But that really wasn’t the case for me personally. I found them engrossing, and even when the game was intensely challenging (where “failure” meant a reset to some distant checkpoint), the parts I’ve retained in memory are the moments of joy climbing up a tree or scaling up a wall to find a hidden gem. And that’s, of course, the beauty of it.
Spyro the Dragon’s tale is one of constant development. It is almost a direct reflection of the advancements that the video game industry has seen. When the industry grew, so too did Spyro—into a form that allowed him to show off an ever-larger and more impressive array of tricks and techniques. And yet, here we are, at an industry that has, in certain respects, evolved past its protagonist. But let’s look at the beginnings.
Reflecting on my path with Spyro fills me with nostalgia and thankfulness. He is a charming and plucky character who’s more likely to leave you with a smile rather than, say, text in a journal waxing poetic about him. However, he is also one of those characters who leaves you with awesome memories. What’s more, Sparx, the dragonfly who never leaves Spyro’s side throughout these adventures, spreads just as much charm and next-level coolness. For this kid, there were no stories in Interactive Entertainment quite like the ones in the 32-bit world of dragons.
In the end, Spyro the Dragon is more than a PlayStation platforming hero. He’s a cultural symbol with what seems to be no canonic end in sight. Sony has even built a statue of Spyro that now stands in Sony Interactive’s Crayola-colored HQ. While Disney Princesses Noruka and Kato replaced Spyro as the heroes of the pioneer-1-era of virtual reality, we believe – and this is wild speculation based on the game’s playfully shameless self-promotion, that PSVR will see the return of Spyro in a game designed in his honor. That’s a statue we’d pay to see.
