The Spyro Reignited Trilogy was released for the PlayStation 4 and Xbox One to coincide with the 20th anniversary of the original Spyro the Dragon video game which came out for the original PlayStation system way back in 1998. The Spyro Reignited Trilogy collects the first three Spyro video games: Spyro the Dragon, Spyro 2 Ripto’s Rage and Spyro Year of the Dragon. Each game has been carefully remastered from the ground up with enhanced graphics, voice acting, music, and controls. Jumping back into Spyro after so many years has been both a treat and delight!
Spyro fell out of popularity years ago after the release of a few not-so-exciting video games like Spyro A Hero’s Tail and most people who grew up with the loveable dragon wondered if he would ever have a return to glory or fall into obscurity. Thankfully Activision and Toys for Bob helped resurrect Spyro and his hype as the leading character in the Skylanders franchise of video games. The Skylanders video games helped usher in a new era for Spyro to brand new fans but conventional purists were eager for a proper Spyro video game to be released. Ironically it was Toys for Bob who handled the remastering of the Spyro Reignited Trilogy – bridging the gap between Skylanders and the original Spyro franchise.
For those interested in picking up the Spyro Reignited Trilogy – know that you will be getting three classic Spyro games remastered from the ground up at a discounted suggested price of $40. You can start any of the three games at any time and jump around from game to game if you so desire. When these Spyro games were originally released they didn’t have support for camera controls on the thumbsticks but now do and Tom Kenny (voice of SpongeBob SquarePants) re-recorded dialogue for all three games.
These original Spyro games offer hours of enjoyment and replay value however they are not without their flaws. The frame-rate is not always ‘rock solid’ so you’ll catch a bit of jitter here and there when moving the camera around or moving through the environments. Another issue we had was trying to customize the controls for gameplay – which are rather limited. We couldn’t figure out a way to set up our controls so that the Y-Axis was standard for flying and swimming in the water but inverted for walking around and general movement. The controls for swimming should have been more refined so that you swim in the direction of your thumbstick and not have to rely on pushing any buttons.
If you can get past some of the strange controller option issues then you’ll find that the Spyro Reignited Trilogy is an excellent collection which helps showcase three classic Spyro games into one package at a reasonable price.