Spyro the Dragon

Insomniac games may be best known for their Ratchet & Clank series and Marvel's Spider-Man right now, but their earliest success involved an early PlayStation mascot, a purple dragon named Spyro from their second ever video game, Spyro the Dragon. Spyro is far from obscure, but with Insomniac’s more recent successes, I thought it would be interesting to look back at their roots and see how well their first series held up today. Spyro the Dragon certainly feels like an experience only Insomniac could deliver, but time has only highlighted its flaws.

Spyro the Dragon has a rather simple story, but it’s enough to motivate the player forward and establish the main lore of the game. One day in the Dragon Kingdom, a TV interview catches the attention of the banished Gnasty Gnorc. When he hears the dragons insult him, he magically encases all of them in crystal and turns their prized treasure into gnorc soldiers that will do his bidding. As the only dragon not struck by magic, it’s up to Spyro and his dragonfly companion Sparx to defeat Gnasty Gnorc and free the Dragon Kingdom from his evil reign.

The game’s minimalist story lets it focus more on the gameplay, which hits the ground running and wastes no time dropping Spyro into the first Homeworld, where he can immediately free the first dragon and start his quest. From here, the controls are rather easy to learn, with the ability to jump and glide for traversal and ram and burn for combat. Early levels also quickly establish that the player will have to balance ramming and burning, since some enemies can only be burned and enemies coated in metal can only be rammed. These rules remain consistent throughout the game, as do any quirks introduced for specific levels. Eventually, Spyro can also ram down ramps with arrows for a useful Supercharge and receive a kiss from a fairy for a temporary Superflame that burns anything.

The game wastes absolutely no time.

I really enjoyed the focus on pure platforming and many of the level designs, which always allow backtracking and aren’t easy to get lost in. With a few dragons and hundreds of gems scattered throughout each level, some of them are hidden pretty well and encourage exploration and mastering the game’s mechanics. If you find an unbreakable crate, for instance, then that means there’s something nearby or later on in the level that can help you break it. Some jumps are tricky, but not impossible, and for the most part it’s fun trying to get 100% completion on every level. There’s also some freedom in that players can tackle the levels in each world in any order they wish, save for Gnasty’s World, which has a more linear progression in a small hub.

Throughout Spyro’s journey across the game’s six worlds, taking damage or even losing lives from enemies, touching water and falling down pits is inevitable. This is where Sparx comes in, as he not only picks up nearby gems, but doubles as Spyro’s health meter. Spyro can normally take four hits before losing a life, represented with Sparx changing color from gold to blue and then green before completely disappearing.  Fortunately, Spyro can regain lost health by killing a certain animal in each world, like sheep or chickens, and releasing a butterfly that Sparx chases and consumes. There are also two ways that Spyro can obtain extra lives. He can either find them in certain chests or collect twenty orbs from enemies he’s already defeated once before. The lives don’t mean too much though, as although I haven’t had this happen, losing all of them is more of a slap on the wrist, forcing you to start the current level all over again with five lives.

Balloonists can take Spyro from one world to the next, but only after completing a certain requirement, like freeing enough dragons or holding enough dragon eggs. The ride is also a one-way trip, meaning that Spyro can’t go back to a previous world until he reaches the final one, Gnasty’s World.

Although Spyro the Dragon hasn’t aged very well visually, I still enjoyed the cartoony art direction they took. Each world, and each individual level, has a consistent theme and no two levels look alike, plus they all have a unique track that matches the atmosphere nicely. I could easily tell all elements apart from each other and knew how to approach each enemy just by looking at them. Likely due to hardware limitations, however, the eighty dragons Spyro can free simply look like recolors of the same few character models. While the dragons sound varied enough from each other even with only three voice actors between them, I also noticed that Spyro’s original voice actor, Carlos Alazraqui, sounded just a little nasally.

Each level feels distinct from one another.

While I mostly enjoyed my time playing Spyro the Dragon, some things stood out that could have had better execution. Aside from a lack of subtitles, which I’m aware the industry didn’t standardize for the longest time, the camera controls pretty awkwardly, lacking a right analog stick function despite supporting the DualShock. Instead, you can toggle between a Passive camera, which relies on using L2 and R2 on an inverted X-axis, or an Active one that automatically locks position behind Spyro; I found the latter easier to use.

Each of the first five worlds has a flight-based level that requires Spyro to complete four objectives within a time limit. While it wasn’t too hard finding and following the best line, there is still some trial and error and the timing sometimes felt so tight that I had to approach the level like a speedrunner. The game also doesn’t tell you that you can fly faster by repeatedly pressing Cross, which helped at the cost of wearing out my muscles faster from constant button mashing (I had no idea of any proper rhythm).

On the actual platforming side, some of the secrets rely on Supercharge jumps that naturally take getting used to. However, one dragon in Tree Tops requires a specific series of jumps that I never would have figured out without a guide, as it includes jumping from one supercharge ramp to another, then running backwards on the second one and jumping off of that. Thanks to Spyro’s turn radius while supercharging and some odd timing, I lost a few lives attempting this jump even after looking up the solution, which alone made Tree Tops the most annoying level in the game. I’m aware that other levels have earned a reputation for their difficulty, but I personally didn’t really have much of a problem with those.

That’s actually something else worth keeping in mind, that this game isn’t actually too difficult. It’s challenging and even a little frustrating when you mistime a jump or somehow miss something you shouldn’t have, or wear out your arm on flying levels, but I pretty much breezed through most of the game. Bosses don’t really put up much of a fight either, not even Gnasty Gnorc himself. One boss, Jacques, actually felt like a complete joke, ending with only one hit after a twenty-second chase. In fact, I went for the full 120% completion right off the bat and got it on my first try since it actually wasn’t too much to ask of the player. Achieving this also felt worth it, since you get a secret additional ending for the effort.

Even from the outset, none of the bosses are that challenging.

The original Spyro the Dragon holds up today as a solid platforming experience, with consistent mechanics and great music, but some of the more awkward design elements can drag down the experience nowadays. Even with its faults, however, I’d highly recommend trying this classic game. Insomniac knows their stuff now and they clearly knew it back then.