There's a re-textured revamp version of Spyro the Dragon that just came out. So what better time to talk about the original game then right now, while everybody gives a crap about it.
So you get an opening scene of a bunch of dragons talking to a news anchor about how many gems they have and how much they dislike the character nasty Nork.
I guess Nork is watching this at the exact same time and decides to freeze them all into crystals.
For some reason this doesn't hurt Spyro who decides to go and free everybody from their crystal holding.
While doing so you can pick up a bunch of gems and kill a bunch of random enemies (Some times a "Boss").
All of that is completely optional. All you have to do is rescue a bunch of dragons, get enough to go on and hot air balloon move to the next World. Repeat until you eventually get the nasty Nork. Then you kill him and the game ends.
That's all you have to do. There's no secondary characters, long diatribes or pointless extra cut scenes along with artificial walls of payments that you need to complete to move on to the next level. The Simplicity is one of the key reasons this game works out so well.
Alongside some surprisingly solid mechanics (even by the standards of today) and a very colourful World mixed in with fantastic music.
Obviously the graphics for the old game are a bit under par, but I think they hold up well enough to tell what you're doing.
There are small bits of dialogue you can have with the dragons but you can skip over them if you don't want to be bothered. The levels are all relatively simple with the occasional exception. So it's easy enough to find all the dragons and it's simple to find all the gems if you're willing to take a few minutes.
There was the one-off bubble here and there where you would run around aimlessly for 20 minutes looking for that last gen that you probably missed at the beginning of the level still it's the exception to the rule.
One of my favourite things about playing this game is realising that the mechanics are still pretty good. I have this horrible fear that the whole game was going to be a horrible disappointment and that I wouldn't be able to deal with Antiquated controls. But spiral moves around relatively easy. The only dislike I have is that you can't use the thumbstick. You have to use those little d-pad Keys instead. Which isn't the worst thing in the world but it does hurt your thumb after a while.
My only real complaint about the game of the flying levels. I've never liked them, rather it was when I first played them as a dumb kid or is it stupid adult now they still take me off. If you make one little mistake but timers pretty much gone and you'll have to redo the whole thing over and over again. Whole reason I like the original Spyro games because you could take your time and every level and slowly and meticulously go through every section making sure you found everything.
But I can forgive the game for those horrible flying levels. You don't need to complete them to finish the game you only have to do them if you want the final treasure room and possibly some sort of secret ending you get with 100%. I couldn't tell you if there is a secret ending because I don't remember getting it and I can't be bothered to look it up now.
This game is something of an anomaly for me. I'm not much for 100% a game. Even ones that I really like. But there's something about collecting all the Little Gems that's just so exciting.
Really I don't understand why Spyro is going around collecting these gims either.
Wouldn't it just be easier to kill the enemies and leave the gems there?
After all you're going to release all the dragons anyway.
So who cares where the gims are.
You own the entire territory. Just get rid of the infestation and then don't be bothered with the gims.
Maybe Spyro is stealing the gems from the dragons too. And he's decided this is the only form of payment he's going to get for all of this. At the end of the game the dragons are penniless and they have to just deal with you as their Overlord because you're the only one with any form of economy.
That is until the dragons open an investigation on you and find out that you're artificially inflating some of your gems and stealing loads of money from an already dwindling economy and this might lead to some form of indictment and get you kicked out of the vice presidency. And this is all the more problematic given that the guy above you was already in hot water via Watergate.
Leading to Spyro sending a letter of resignation to Henry Kissinger.
Anybody else think that Spyro on that cover looks like he belongs in the cartoon show Reboot.
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