Ripto’s Rage adds more traversal abilities, such as climbing, swimming, or a brief hop at the end of a glide that really helps the level design shine. In the first game, Spyro has a fairly basic suite of abilities: he can breath a puff of fire, he can glide, and he can charge enemies with his horns. The most fascinating part of playing all three games is seeing how each one handles adding new mechanics. Spyro enters a world hub, gathers the various collectibles in each level, and heads off into the next world hub to rinse and repeat. Each game has its own unique villain, setting, and charming cast of side characters to interact with, but overall they each have roughly the same flow. In Year of the Dragon, Spyro must travel the worlds to recover dragon eggs after they’re stolen by the evil Sorceress. In Ripto’s Rage, Spyro is summoned to the land of Avalar in order to stop the evil Ripto and his goons from taking over. In Spyro the Dragon, you play as the titular character, travelling the land of dragons to stop the evil plot of Gnasty G’norc, who has imprisoned all of Spyro’s fellow dragons in crystal. Certain quality of life mechanics from later titles that were not originally present in the first game, such as your dragonfly companion pointing the way towards nearby gems, were retroactively added, as developer Toys For Bob has attempted to bring these relatively dated games into modern times. These remakes are complete with re-recorded voice lines, remastered music, and a brand new, upgraded look for everybody populating Spyro’s world. Spyro Reignited Trilogy is, as one would expect, a set of full remakes from the ground up of Spyro The Dragon, Spyro 2: Ripto’s Rage, and Spyro: Year of the Dragon - originally released in 1998, 1999, and 2000, respectively. Was this a worthwhile decision? Overall, I’d say yes. Having never played a Spyro game, these new trips into the world of dragons piqued my interest, but I wanted to wait until a Switch release so that I could take them with me on the go. Of course, in 2018 the answer to that question wound up being ‘yes,’ when Spyro Reignited Trilogy was finally announced. When the bandicoot got his series of remakes, the question on everybody’s mind was whether or not Spyro was next.

On the other side of the coin, many of my friends’ childhoods existed in the realm of the PlayStation, where their 3D platformer fixes came from Crash Bandicoot and Spyro the Dragon. I grew up with a Nintendo 64, so when it came to 3D platformers, my life was filled with the likes of Mario and Donkey Kong.

Spyro switch game