Spyro the Dragon Review

 (Originally published to Glitchwave on 4/3/2025)

[Image from igdb.com]

Spyro the Dragon

Developer: Insomniac

Publisher: SCEI

Genre(s): 3D Platformer

Platforms: PS1

Release Date: September 10, 1998

In the league of PlayStation exclusive 3D platformers in direct competition with Mario on the N64, Spyro the Dragon was as decorated a soldier as Crash Bandicoot in the bloody battle to dismantle Nintendo’s console market supremacy. Sure, we cannot discount the valiant efforts of the whole roster of PS1 platformer exclusives like Tomba and Ape Escape, but Spyro is the only other representative on the console that matches the renown of the orange marsupial. Not only were both series perceived worthy of receiving the trilogy treatment on their debut systems, but the retrospective, nostalgic ardor from those who fit the young demographic at the time of the PS1’s campaign is equally as fervent. When those kids reached adulthood two decades later and the Crash trilogy was remade for modern gaming standards and sensibilities, the same paint job was given to the Spyro trilogy only a year later due to the vociferous clamoring of fans–who stated that neglecting to revamp Spyro’s three PS1 classics would have diminished the impact of the N. Sane trilogy by proxy. Crash and Spyro have had genuine collaborative tie-in titles in the past, and their respective developers of Insomniac and Naughty Dog, acknowledged the association between their PS1 mascots when they sparked the same tongue-in-cheek rivalry for their following properties: Ratchet & Clank and Jak and Daxter. Needless to say, with all the evidence at hand, Crash and Spyro are like brothers from different mothers. They are like Metallica and Slayer: two separate entities with their respective icon statuses that are consistently grouped by a similar objective during their period of inception. The last parallel I’m going to connect to Crash is that the course of Spyro’s PS1 trilogy shares the same progression arc exhibited per entry as the bandicoot’s. In saying this, one could infer from this statement that Spyro’s self-titled debut is rough, blunt, and rudimentary, and you’d be correct. However, the first Spyro the Dragon game manages to evoke all of those substandard adjectives in a completely different way than that of the first Crash game.

My personal history with Spyro also shares similarities to Crash, as I was introduced to both franchises with their more lukewarm, post-original developer entries in the subsequent console generation on account of having the undeveloped motor skills of a toddler during their PS1 prime. Sorry to soil the fanbase’s illusion that both series are of an unequivocal repute, but I’ve always preferred Crash to Spyro–and it’s not as if I’d put the de facto face of the PS1 on my Mount Rushmore of gaming franchises. The reason why I give Crash a slight edge over his plucky purple compadre is that the Spyro games verge towards a jejune tone and atmosphere. Both series may target a prepubescent demographic, but the kooky, Looney Tunes aura emanating from Crash is more appealing to a general audience than the “once upon a time” storybook construct that comes with a child-friendly game revolving around a dragon. Still, at least Insomniac modestly attempted to balance the sugary sweetness of their work with some self-aware, borderline satirical elements that subvert the classic fairytale tropes, and three years before Shrek would become synonymous with this formula, I might add. This subversion is apparent from the anachronistic microphone seen in the corner of the news interview taking place with some dragon elders. The interviewer asks the scaly beasts about a potentially menacing character named Gnasty Gnorc, but one of them confidently assures the man that Gnasty Gnorc is too “simple and ugly to be a threat to the Dragon Kingdom.” However, the green ogre in question responds to this slander by firing a series of energy blasts from his morning star scepter that immobilize all of the dragon elders in a crystalized casing. However, the hazardous beams either missed the young Spyro due to his smaller physical stature, or Gnasty Gnorc didn’t bother targeting him because he misjudged him by his size. If the latter is the case, Spyro is going to make Gnasty wish he hadn’t settled for a half measure, for now he’s on a quest to free his brethren from their glassy prisons and incinerate Gnasty Gnorc for his transgression against the Dragon Kingdom. Spyro the Dragon’s premise is a Saturday morning cartoon cliche akin to an episode of He-Man, whose exposition is rushed during this introduction. Still, at least there’s a touch of levity, so it doesn’t veer too heavily on the spectrum of a sincere epic or too deeply into the territory of a schmaltzy fairytale that its presentation would imply.

Spyro the Dragon also greatly differentiates itself from Crash Bandicoot in its direction. They’re both undoubtedly 3D platformers, but Spyro was conceived after Super Mario 64 had defined the course of the genre with its collectathon format and was obliged to follow suit. The Dragon Kingdom, facing a crisis of stasis, is divided into five major districts, with Gnasty’s industrial island fortress rounding that number to six as the climactic ending area. Each of these six hubs features around three to four sub-areas that branch off of the central sector, similar to the winding floors of Peach’s Castle in Super Mario 64, except that the transportational medium to these forking paths is gateway arches instead of portal paintings. However, even though the player can clearly detect what the hub area is by its relation to the levels that stem from its perimeter, none of the medians fit my definition of a typical hub. A hub should be a place of respite separated from the action of the levels in its close, yet distinctly defined, borders. Yet, the objective of rescuing the ensnared dragon elders is still a relevant task between arch traveling, with the chaos of enemy activity still functioning as a background noise, or so to speak. The continual action that seeps into the hubs may illustrate how rampant Gnasty’s influence has become with all of the adult dragons out of commission, but I think the cohesion is intended to represent the encompassing level design at play. Including the hubs, Spyro’s areas all display a freeform design that gels beautifully with the collectathon format. A moderately straightaway path will lead Spyro to a podium that will transport him back to the hub he came from, but each area provides plenty of opportunities to divert from this eventual destination and will often reward the player with additional gems or finding dragons frozen in concealed locations. The districts of the Dragon Kingdom even supersede the first PlayStation’s graphical restrictions. The near-sighted graphical fuzz that usually limits the player’s line of sight is washed away, and levels like “Cliff Town” and “Haunted Towers” implore everyone to take advantage of the graphical unclouding by gliding to the location in the distance after looking at them from a prime vantage point in awe. Impressive as the landscapes are from a visual standpoint, their lack of graphical haze could mislead the player into conflating their splendor with their expanse. Even with their intricate, exploration-intensive designs, each level in Spyro the Dragon is likely going to be an ephemeral excursion. The majority of the dragon statues tend to be along the beaten path to the exit, and the alternate routes tend to circle around to the same conclusion anyway. Only on rare occasions will freeing a dragon require a keener exploration effort, such as darting around the tracks of “Tree Tops” or hugging the edge of a cliff in “Dry Canyon.” I’m not suggesting that Spyro the Dragon should’ve implemented the abrupt boot-out system that artificially prolonged each area in Super Mario 64, but I’d gladly trade the defogging of the visual distance in exchange for expanding the total breadth of each area.

Then again, perhaps having the levels load in real time as the player traverses onward and forward would be especially jarring with Spyro’s physicality. Gliding is an innate ability for the little dragon that could, and it’s quite complementary to be able to see the platforms from afar so Spyro can elegantly soar to them from his position. I’d describe Spyro’s sky-skimming as graceful if it weren’t for the fact that the player cannot command Spyro to stop in mid-air, so a miscalculated trajectory can often lead to Spyro falling into the abyss below the clouds. His offensive headbutt maneuver, where he lowers his head and places his horns front and center like a battering ram, can also be quite precarious with its ramming speed and inexhaustible energy. This is why it’s essential to alternate between Spyro’s charge and blowing a blast of fire out of his nostrils, a close-ranged dragon staple with a more stable attack momentum. Still, even though Spyro’s abilities can potentially result in him overreaching past a solid footing, controlling him overall is comfortably smooth as silk. His general physicality isn’t afflicted with the same stifling rigidity akin to Crash in his first outing. However, even with his superior control scheme right out of the gate, Spyro’s mascot appeal is reduced by a few unfortunate characteristics. Downscaling a dragon to a winsome size is a brilliant prospect that would win over anyone, but Spyro’s inherent advantage in the charm department is spoiled whenever he opens his toothy mouth, revealing himself to be a dork who says overbearingly optimistic one-liners. I’d grab a beer with the silent goofball Crash without question, but I’d be afraid that Spyro would fink me out to the authorities for public intoxication.

It’s more likely that Spyro will deplete his stock of lives when the player gets overly eager with his abilities, rather than facing off against the smattering of enemies. The invasive goons in the Dragon Kingdom are abundant in numbers across the magical realm, sometimes even lining up in unison so Spyro can knock them down like bowling pins with his headbutt charge. On the basis of an individual encounter, each enemy is fairly predictable in their attack patterns, with the trick between all of them being whether or not their armor is impenetrable to flames or physical buffeting. If the player doesn’t seem to catch on to this pattern of enemy defenses and they harm him as a result, Spyro’s health system is one of the series’ most idiosyncratic properties, and it’s surprisingly disturbing. While not uttering a single word could make the player question his role as a bona fide character, Spyro is accompanied on his quest by his dragonfly friend/pet Sparx. This glowing bug functions as a refurbished Aku Aku from Crash, a floating augmentation to the protagonist’s health that acts as a shield. Where they differ is that Sparx is a health reserve granted to Spyro automatically instead of an earned perk that can be easily relinquished. Sparx’s base color is a radiant golden, but as Spyro takes damage, his healthy glow will diminish to a sad blue to a sickly green. After that, he’ll realize a pattern and leave Spyro to save his own hide, and Spyro suffering one more hit after Sparx abandons him will result in his death. To either convince Sparx to return or replenish Sparx’s vigor beforehand, Spyro must prey on the small, gentle animals located in packs around the field known as “fodder.” Once Spyro butchers them like the apex predator he is, Sparx will consume the butterfly that pops out of their lifeless bodies to regain his golden sheen. Ghastly ghouls and demonic hellspawn are known to devour souls, but this innocuous-looking insect performs this barbaric act in droves in the name of protecting his buddy. If the player finds this method of regaining health unsettling, it’s unlikely that they’ll have to murder these cute little creatures all that often on account of the game’s general ease. I should also add that enemies are known to drop orbs whose accumulation increases Spyro’s number of lives, so there are more than enough tools offered to keep Spyro afloat in tandem with the unlikelihood of exhausting them.

Spyro the Dragon’s progression difficulty could also be described as leisurely to a fault, but I think the more applicable term is unimpactful. In order for the balloonist to whisk Spyro away on his gallant hot air contraption, Spyro needs to collect a certain amount of the game’s various collectibles to satisfy him. In addition to using Spyro’s magic touch to free the dragon elders, Spyro must also collect the colorful quantity of gems and retrieve dragon eggs from veiled thieves wearing burqas who operate on the field alongside the enemies. Acquiring these collectibles should come naturally through standard traversal, but the player can sign up to do the “flight” stages that involve collecting or extinguishing a series of the same objects or enemies in a sequential order under a time limit. The rhythmic pacing of these optional levels is probably the most demanding the game gets with its typically lenient error margins. Hell, one might become slightly irritated by the swift darting of the thieves while pursuing them, and the irritation might escalate to overzealous anger due to the cheeky bastard’s taunts and chortles. The process of obtaining these secondary collectibles in of itself is not an issue, but how the process overrides finding the dragons on the field in engagement and value. Every collectathon’s main collectible should be the primary focus that furthers the story, and muddling its impact by mixing its importance with all of the others diminishes its impact and relevance.

The facile factors of Spyro the Dragon I’ve discussed before could be excusable from a certain perspective, but the game’s “bosses” are downright embarrassing. I put the term bosses in snarky quotation marks because imposing baddies in gaming that conclude every milestone usually involve direct conflictive contact on the part of the protagonist. For Spyro, every arena is a curved track for the youthful dragon to chase them down like common thieves. To make the encounter even less stimulating, every one of Gnasty Gnorc’s cohorts falls with only a couple of headbutts or singes from Spyro’s fire breath. Surely, the big, stinky cheese in charge of the anti-dragon operation should warrant an epic duel as the game’s climax, right? Wrong. All that Gnasty Gnorc’s narrative significance does for his final “battle” is make the track that Spyro chases him on slightly longer. Two scorching fire blasts are all it takes for the unsightly green ogre to perish, and the anticlimactic scene had me astonished in disbelief. People tend to criticize Crash’s bosses for not being Herculean enough compared to the levels that precede them, but at least they inarguably fit the definition of bosses as opposed to the piddly, inconsequential pursuits that comprise every notable bit of progress in Spyro the Dragon.

It should be no wonder that fans often speak of Spyro in the same excitable breath as Crash Bandicoot in the ranks of PlayStation platformer mascots. While Crash Bandicoot was placed on a higher pedestal in Sony’s minds due to predating Spyro by a few years, Spyro’s whimsical adventure through a graphically alluring fantasy realm with an adorable (as long as he keeps his mouth shut) purple lizard at the helm places it on equal measure with Naughty Dog’s work in terms of a shared accessible, lighthearted charm. Comparisons between the two are also derived from their first entries’ amateurish lack of polish. However, whereas Crash’s rough template beats the player to death with harsh, unflinching demand, Spyro’s conversely relaxes them to the degree of being ineffectual. Because the game is a little too light on difficulty, level length, and substantial boss fights, the entirety of Spyro the Dragon comes in one ear and quickly exits the other. If this was a concentrated effort on Insomniac’s part to cater towards an extremely young audience, I should warn them that dumbing down the content will wear thin on even the most impressionable children. Still, if we use Crash’s evolution through three entries as an example, perhaps broadening Spyro’s formula through its sequels will conjure up something more resonating.