For all intents and purposes (the correct usage of that phrase) this should cover the ranking of the 1998 release as well.
Spyro the Dragon fits that fun mold of game where I was so young when I played it that I cannot scrounge up one single bad memory from my expierience. Seriously, the time I spent running around a field, frying sheep and freeing dragon statues, might be the last remaining untainted memory I have left… so naturally I had to go and ruin it by playing the remake.
That lead up aside, I can only assume Spyro was an amazing platformer at the time. I mean, the graphics aren’t all that worse than those in the remake….
It’s weird how satisfying it is to beat the borderline gigantic basic bad-guys this game provides. Not to mention Insomniac foreshadows its better games with unique-ish charging and flying segments.
When all is said and done, there’s satisfaction in popping open an imprisoned ally and letting him wax poetic for a bit while you wonder why this much larger dragon hasn’t offered to help you out on the whole “rescuing your entire race mission”.
Regardless, mining the Spyro Universe for logic is likely an excercise in absurdity. Gnasty Gnorc opens events by casting a curse on every single dragon (with one notable exception) and follows it up by letting the runt of the dragon litter meticulously burn his way through the entire gnorc army.
I suppose we have to assume that Gnasty couldn’t simply just cast that spell again after Spyro has freed the final dragon… right? It didn’t seem like it was all that difficult to cast, though there is little explanation why it had total coverage sans Spyro (my guess is that he’s little).
So, while the story of Spyro might be noting to write home about (yet), there is always value within a solid/nostalgic/colorful platformer. It’s honestly difficult to find games that thread the needle between engaging enough to be worth playing but not engaging enough that I don’t fee guilty watching TV while I do it. In that task, Spyro is the perfect game.
Gamer's Daytimer 