Short answer? The game was unreasonably rushed to pass, with a significant amount of planned content and much-needed polish left undone and / or scrapped entirely. With Spyro’s wings having been so suddenly and noticeably clipped between installments, critics and consumers were left asking “What the hell happened?” And on the day of its eagerly awaited release, players could only be left largely aghast by the downgrades on display: Presented with sparsely-populated and over-large levels, wildly fluctuating framerate, and a litany of bugs so severe that you might inadvertently meet the game’s final boss – the only boss, at that – within a minute of starting a new save file. Publisher Universal plans to carry their profitable purple dragon’s momentum with a new mainline installment intended for the leading platforms - boasting bigger worlds, more seamless models, and new powers for the daring young dragon. The new millennium is finally upon us, and brings with it a new generation of console hardware. Surely, Spyro could only continue on his ascent toward video game stardom. All three titles in this original trilogy would ultimately be labelled as ‘Greatest Hits,’ denoting their status as top-selling software. Aside from inspired design and programming, Spyro was simply an appealing character, who toured fantastical locations and jaw jacked with a whole cast of anthropomorphic pals - all set to solid soundtrack courtesy of former Police drummer Stewart Copeland, and featuring talented voice actors the likes of which included Carlos Alazraqui and Tom Kenny (two actors who would take to portraying Spyro). The original Spyro trilogy on Sony’s PlayStation was something of a technical marvel: On hardware where most games were subject to seemingly arbitrary render distance – past which things simply weren’t there – Spyro’s world presented technical trickery allowing players to peer deep into that distance - using a tool known as ‘Level of Detail’ to great effect.

And where other mascot platformers flopped, Spyro would soar to reach his most popular contemporaries. So was the state of the industry that inspired the likes of Spyro the Dragon developed by relative newcomer Insomniac Games, and published by Universal Interactive.

Furthermore, with the advent of 3D games, there was an added pressure to always be chasing the latest tech and genre trends. Where onlooker developers had seen the success of Sonic the Hedgehog in ‘93 and Crash Bandicoot in ‘96, they wanted desperately to have a piece of that pie - even if only just the crumbs. In the world of video games, the ‘90s fad for introducing cartoonish mascot platformers was well upon us with a trail of failed endeavors and characters having missed their marks, all for one reason or another. Let’s travel back to 1998: We stand on the verge of a new era, with all the change and advances the passage of time brings.

“I heard a Riptoc talking about sausages!”

Spyro year of the dragonfly