When Crash Bandicoot debuted in a PlayStation game, he became (albeit temporarily) Sony's mascot just as Sonic is for Sega, and Mario is for Nintendo. But if there's a character who rivaled Crash's popularity in the PlayStation scene better than anyone else, it's Spyro the Dragon.
Despite appearing in numerous games like Crash, I honestly can't say Spyro is at Crash's level of star power. I mean I've been knowing Crash since the late 1990s. As for Spyro, I didn't know the dragon was a thing until I saw a cover of his first game at a website just a year ago. So why is that? Perhaps Crash's adventurous yet goofy personality made the bandicoot more appealing to game fans than Spyro who is daring, serious, and a little sadistic.
When stores began retailing Spyro plushes and a compilation of the character's first three games, that was when my curiosity for Spyro grew. Thus I ask my sis to find a PS1 copy of this game which I played in my PS3.
Spyro is a 3D platform game released during the 3D craze of the 1990s kickstarted by games like Super Mario 64, Crash Bandicoot, and a PS1 game featuring an orange tabby which was lackluster but involved some respectable effort. Although the character can be controlled with the analog stick, I decided to stick with the d-pad. Why? Because analog sticks were new at the time of the game's release, I bet a lot of gamers who played this game only had the original controller which only had a d-pad. Therefore, I got interested in getting a more authentic feel of what those gamers of the day experienced.
Spyro attacks his enemies by letting out flames which spread but are short-ranged. With this, playing this game is like playing a third-person shooter with a soldier armed with a shotgun.
In most games, the character has a life bar which tells the player how much damage the character sustains before dying. But in this game, Spyro has a firefly that flies around him. Each time Spyro gets hit, the firefly changes its color until it disappears. If Spyro is struck without the firefly around, he'll lose a life.
To move to the next world in most games, you have to defeat the boss of the world you're in. While there are bosses in Spyro, defeating them is for other purposes, and they are not the keys to the later worlds. To reach the later worlds, the player has to collect a certain number jewels or free a number of dragons trapped in statues.
When it comes to taking on the final boss, this act is more of a game of tag rather than a boss fight. I mean the boss is often running away from Spyro in the fortress. Yes, the boss would stop sometimes and shoot projectiles at Spyro. But as Spyro comes close, the boss would start running. I imagined a lot of players getting frustrated and giving up because of how difficult it is to land a hit on the boss. But in my case, I just kept trying until I figured how to have a better chance scoring a hit. Once Spyro lands that first hit, the boss runs into multiple passageways in the fortress where Spyro has to jump on several platforms and avoid falling into the lava below. After the chase, the boss will stop to fight the approaching Spyro. And once Spyro lands that second hit, the boss is down for good. With this, I understand why the final boss was running a lot.
What can I say about this game? Well, the graphics are detailed, the controls are fine as in any decent 3D platformer, and the voices fit the characters. Fun fact, Spyro is voiced by Carlos Alazraqui who would later voiced Lazlo, the monkey in the Cartoon Network series Camp Lazlo.
While he may remain being second fiddle to Crash in the list of famous mascots in the PS1 scene, Spyro is certainly a household name in video games.
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