With the announcement of the first original Spyro game in nearly 20 years, GameCentral rolls back the clock to when the purple dragon was a PlayStation icon. If I could summarise my identity at nine-years-old, it would be a shiny Charizard carrier, Jar Jar Binks impersonator, and avid Spyro The Dragon completionist.
Video games had been a staple of my entertainment diet for some years at this point, but it was an awkward age where there were few I’d have the patience, drive, and smarts to see through to the end. In this respect, 1998’s Spyro The Dragon was a breakthrough. It was more forgiving than Crash Bandicoot or Super Mario 64 and didn’t require the same platforming dexterity. Instead, the joy of its challenge came from exploring every nook, collecting every gem, rescuing every dragon, and discovering all its secrets at a serene, approachable pace.
Spyro The Dragon, and its sequel Gateway To Glimmer (or Ripto’s Rage for those outside the UK), instilled my respect for the completionist mindset. The pride in showing a clean 100% level completion to every man, woman, or dog within my orbit was pure smug ecstasy. The kind of dopamine rush I associate today with close-call tube runs and the dramatic price drop at the supermarket checkout when you swipe your loyalty card.
The Culmination: Spyro Year Of The Dragon
This compulsive obsession culminated with Spyro: Year Of The Dragon, the third entry of the original trilogy and the last Spyro game by developer Insomniac. It was released in Europe in November 2000, and while I had it lined-up for a Christmas present for that year, I was given it early because my parents didn’t want to waste money renting it from the local Blockbuster, and probably because they didn’t fancy a whole month of my desperate requests.
Spyro: Year Of The Dragon is synonymous with the time I broke Christmas – a power no child can be prepared for – but within the context of the series, it broke convention too. Instead of just controlling Spyro, there were now dedicated levels for other characters like Sheila the Kangaroo and the penguin James Bond spoof, Sgt Byrd. Not all of them worked, like the aggravating boxing minigame with Bentley the Yeti, but the variety and vibrancy in its gameplay and characters fleshed out Spyro’s world in a way that hadn’t been seen before.
Overstuffed but Consistently Surprising
You could argue Spyro: Year Of The Dragon is overstuffed – a gluttony of minigames and new characters rammed into the classic formula – but it’s consistently surprising in a way the prior two games aren’t. Skateboarding, improved speedway races, top-down shooter levels hinged around his dragonfly companion Sparx… it was Insomniac’s grand culmination where it felt like nothing was off limits – and it was all the better for it.
While Spyro’s legacy continued with various games across the PlayStation 2 and Game Boy Advance (I checked out after 2001’s clumsy Spyro: Season Of Ice), none of them evolved the formula – or even replicated it – in the same way. Much like Crash Bandicoot, Spyro’s position as an iconic PlayStation mascot dissipated with each passing entry, as people moved onto the next major IP from their respective original studios; Ratchet & Clank and Jak And Daxter.
Nostalgia and the Future
You could interpret this as an audience aging out of a franchise but, as we’ve seen with both Crash Bandicoot N. Sane Trilogy and the Spyro Reignited Trilogy, there’s a nostalgic thirst for those original games among the millennial masses. In the case of Spyro, I think it goes beyond my generation’s nostalgia and speaks to its design as an excellent gaming gateway for kids – at a time when Sony, outside of Astro Bot, has stopped making games for that demographic.
With the recent announcement of Spyro: A Realm Beyond, the purple dragon’s first original title since 2008, I felt targeted by Activision’s board room meetings – but also curious about its potential. In comparison to Crash Bandicoot, which received a similar sequel revival in 2020, Spyro feels like a franchise with more room for evolution. There’s only so many new gimmicks you can throw at a tightly-spun platformer like Crash without it straying from its original appeal, but Spyro’s open-ended collectathon formula is more malleable to modern gaming trends and sensibilities.
We already know Spyro: A Realm Beyond will have a greater emphasis on flight, which sounds like a smart way to elevate its scope. In some ways though, while the majority of the 16 million trailer views are likely from wistful millennials like myself, I hope Spyro: A Realm Beyond isn’t looking backwards. The thirtysomethings are never going to connect with Spyro in the same way as those early PlayStation years – as much as Activision would like us to – so developer Toys For Bob should strive to reassemble its accessible tenets for the next wave.
If anything, kids need more alternatives to Minecraft, Lego games, and Nintendo in the video game space. That’s perhaps a lot to put on Spyro’s shoulders, but if any franchise from the late 1990s could break through again, I’m putting all my eggs in the dragon’s basket.
