![]() The sound of Sparx’s ‘nnyyng’ as it collected treasure around you, the rounded chomp as it ate butterflies to restore health, the finger-drumming canter of Spyro when you held down jump and charge at the same time… all of these elements combined to create a short, immediately identifiable audio imprint that (thanks to months and months and months of repeated play) would become a soundtrack to many a PlayStation players’ childhood. The result? A trademark polygonal style, sparing textures, and sound samples that would repeat over and over again. A remake for the dis-Cerny-ing gamerĬerny took his expertise over to Insomniac Games and Spyro, crunching an incredible amount of content down into a neat little package that would fit on one disc. Luckily, the hardware was more robust than the company gave it credit for and the game – and console – became a resounding success. Long story short, Cerny and Naughty Dog managed to trick the PSOne into reading three times more data from the Crash disc as it should have at any one time, leading a nervous Sony to estimate the average player would only get ‘about three weeks of playtime’ from the game before the PSOne disc reader gave out. Without the arcane coding skills of one Mark Cerny (you know, the guy that would go on to lay the technical foundations for the PlayStation 4 and PlayStation Vita), Crash could never have been born. Take the first Crash Bandicoot, for example. But if we’re honest, none of these games are ever going to supplant the originals in our mind, because for all the spit and polish and development wizardry the new generation console allows for, there’s something beautiful in the technical minimalism that lead to the game’s creation in the first place. Sane Trilogy was great, and the MediEvil remake is looking great and the upcoming episodic Final Fantasy VII Remake is looking…. In other words, as a Remaster - the Reignited Trilogy is great. we don’t think an 8-year-old version of ourselves would have ever imagined describing Spyro that way, but here we are. There’s something about his eyes, too, that comes off almost Pixar-esque: expressive, communicative, honest. He was a husky pug of a dragon before, and this revitalised version of him is so much better. Spyro has been animated with such personality you’d be forgiven for thinking he was this fluid and sleek all along – the stouter, blurrier dragon of the past smudges into this perfect HD being within minutes, and quickly gets to work rearranging history for you in your head to make you think ‘wait, didn’t Spyro look like this all along?’ No, he didn’t. The vivid, colourful universe of the Dragon Worlds resurrected by Toys for Bob makes a point of beautifying and sharpening everything from Gnorcs to Rhynocs across the trilogy, giving you – the player – a much better time interacting with everything around you. Hitboxes, enemy animations and environmental dangers are all much more readable, too. Spyro doesn’t handle like a tugboat anymore, and for that, we’re eternally grateful – the plucky little purple upstart now rounds corners like a motorbike, sharp and responsive, his glides and hovers instantly responding whenever you jab the buttons with your gleeful little fingers. Where Spyro Reignited Trilogy does some stellar work modernising these 3D platformers, it also misses some of the key elements that made the originals so captivating. So this current trend of seeing everything getting remade, reskinned, rethought – with new devs using Unreal Engine 4 like Crispr to splice and edit the genes that were left by their creators – seems like it would be perfect for a nostalgic reconciliation, right? Well, the sad reality is… not really. ![]() Crash Bandicootoccupies the same pedestal, with Final Fantasy VIIItaking the crown of best RPG (again, your first equals the best, right?) Even a wyrm will turn Unsurprisingly then, Spyro has cemented itself in my memory as one of the best (read: first) 3D platformers ever made. So is Spyro Reignited Trilogy actually any good, or are we just getting excited about Activision’s latest venture with the benefit of rose-tinted glasses? In our opinion, it’s a little bit of column A and a little bit of column B: Toys for Bob’s take on Insomniac’s trilogy remains a decent platformer with some nice ideas (and incredible production values), but unlike the immortal dragons that inhabit his world, Spyro has aged noticeably over his 18 year hiatus.Īs a ‘90s baby, this writer was seven years old when the first game came out. It needs to reassure fans that these retro games are actually worth re-playing (and rebuying) in an industry where so many remakes or HD ports have been unacceptably slipshod. Sane Trilogy setting the charts on fire last year, and with Sony set to revive PS1 classic MediEvil in 2019, Spyro Reignited has a lot to prove.
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