Spyro the Dragon

About

Spyro the Dragon^[1] is a franchise of platformer/adventure video games originally created by Insomniac Games and published by Sony Computer Entertainment and Universal Interactive Studios. It stars the titular Spyro the Dragon, a small, young, purple dragon. The Spyro franchise has sold over 20 million units worldwide.^[11] Currently, the franchise is held by Activision, and has been used and featured in the Skylanders game series.

The series is well known for the soundtrack, made by ex-Police drummer and co-founder Stewart Copland for the four main games.^[2]

History

The first Spyro game was released in North America (September 10th, 1998), Europe (October 23rd, 1998), Australia (November 15th, 1998) and Japan (April 1st, 1999) exclusively for the PlayStation, starring the eponymous character as the hero of the game.

He's confronted against Gnasty Gnorc, who stole all the gems of the dragons and imprisoned them with a spell, and his army of Gnorcs, made with the stolen gems.

After the success of the first game, two sequels were made for the PS1:
- Spyro 2: Ripto's Rage : NA (November 2, 1999) / Gateway to Glimmer : EU, AU (November 5, 1999) JP (March 16, 2000)

Following the events of the first game, Spyro decides to take a vacation in the Dragon Shores with Sparx, but his destination has been changed to the Avalar world by The Professor, Elora the faun, and Hunter the Cheeta in order to help them free their world from the Riptoc's army, commanded by Ripto and his two henchmen, Glup and Crush.

- Spyro: Year of the Dragon (2000) : NA (October 11, 2000), UK (October 25, 2000), PAL (November 10, 2000), JP (Unreleased)

Following the events of the previous game, it's the Year of the Dragon in the Dragon Kingdom, an event only occurring every 12 years when new dragon eggs are brought into Spyro's world to bring about the new generation of dragons.
However, the dragon eggs have been stolen by a rabbit girl named Bianca and the Rhynocs, a race of anthropomorphic Rhinoceros, commanded by the Sorceress, ruler of the "Forgotten Realms", who wanted to take out the wings of the baby dragons to create a spell to make herself immortal.

After the PlayStation 2’s release, Insomniac moved on to the Ratchet & Clank series, leaving Universal Interactive Studios (now Vivendi Universal Games) to develop the series. Developed by Digital Eclipse Software, the first game made without Insomniac was Spyro : Season of Ice, released in 2001 for the GameBoy Advance. In 2002, a sequel named Spyro 2 : Season of Flame was released.

In 2002, Spyro: Enter the Dragonfly was released for the Playstation 2 and the Nintendo GameCube, the first game of the sixth generation and multi-platform. Because of a rushed development to make the game available in winter, it was badly received by critics for the numerous problems the game suffered, but the fan reception has been mixed-to-positive.

In 2003, a third GBA game called Spyro: Attack of the Rhynocs (known as Spyro Adventure in Europe ans Australia) was released. In 2004, a crossover game with Crash Bandicoot called Spyro Orange: The Cortex Conspiracy (known as Spyro Fusion in Europe and Australia) was released. It was the first Spyro game to be developed by Vicarious Visions.

The fifth console game, Spyro: A Hero's Tail, was released in 2004 on the previous consoles. It was the first game to be released on the Xbox, and introduced a new antagonist, Red, a former Dragon Elder banished years before the events of the game, and a new playable character, Blink the mole. The last game to use the original cast is Spyro: Shadow Legacy, released in 2005 for the Nintendo DS and developed by Amaze Entertainment.

Legend of Spyro Trilogy

Starting in 2006, Sierra Entertainment released a new set of Spyro games dubbed “The Legend of Spyro” to lead up to the 10th Anniversary of the franchise. The series included A New Beginning (2006), The Eternal Night (2007), and Dawn of the Dragon (2008). The story revolves around Spyro, the protagonist, and his efforts to stop the antagonist, Malefor, from destroying the world. The series introduced a wide cast of new characters, while also including ones from the previous games. The games received mixed-to positive reviews, being highly praised for it’s story, voice acting and graphics while being criticized on how the formula of the games were heavily changed, the most noticeable being the removal of collectibles and inclusion of a combat system.

Skylanders Spin-Off

Started in 2011, The Skylanders franchise is a series of games that features Spyro, Cynder, Sparx, and Moneybags (renamed Auric) and hundreds of new characters that make up the roster. Originally titled Spyro's Kingdom, and created by Toys for Bob, Skylanders has the player place figurines on to the Portal of Power, where the characters come to life in the game. Skylanders: Spyro's Adventure was the first Spyro game developed by Vicarious Visions since 2004's Spyro Orange: The Cortex Conspiracy.

Each new installment adds a new gimmick to the gameplay: Giants, released in 2012, adds Giant-sized Skylanders; Swap Force, released in 2013, adds swappable Skylanders (upper and lower parts), along with a new Portal to detect them; Trap Team, released in 2014, adds Elemental Traps which can be used to trap enemies inside them to use afterwards, along with a new Portal to use them; Superchargers, released in 2015, adds vehicles.

Even though he was not present anymore in the title of the series, Spyro got new forms such as a Mega Ram and a Mini Skylander form called Spry.

Remaster

On April 5th, 2018, Activision announced that they will be releasing a remastered version of the Spyro the Dragon series.^[12] It will be called the Spyro Reignited Trilogy and will be released for Playstation 4 and Xbox One on September 21st, 2018. The original games were remade "from the ground up," and will feature over 100 levels.

Online Relevance

On November 28th, 2003 the first definition for "Spyro the dragon" was submitted to Urban Dictionary^[9] by user Dragon dude. Several more definitions have been submitted for "Spyro" and "Spyro The Dragon" since then, the most positively voted one being of "Spyro The Dragon" on August 4th, 2008,^[9] by user Seagulls of Satan.

Discussions regarding Spyro the Dragon can be found on a number of websites, such as reddit,^[3] Tumblr,^[4][8] and Facebook.^[10] The Spyro Wiki has over 1,500 pages, since December 24, 2007.^[1][5] On the art sharing site DeviantArt, searching “Spyro the dragon” yields over 54,000 results.^[6] Searching “Spyro the dragon” on Youtube gives over 160,000 results.^[7]

Related Memes

Sheep

The sheep are one of the well known neutral fodder creatures introduced in the first game
In game, they serve as a way to regain heath for Sparx by killing them, which makes a butterfly appear for Sparx to eat.

Enemy sheep exist in the form of the protesting sheep (used during the TV advert for the first game), Toasty, the boss of the Artisans Homeworld, and the Sheep UFOs, encountered in Spyro 2 and Year of the Dragon.

They are mentioned in the ending credits of the three original games as not "harmed in the making of this game".

Thieves/Egg Thieves

The Egg thieves are foes introduced in the first game. They keep the stolen dragon eggs and will run away from you if you try to approach them.

The most common are the blue variant, who carry the stolen eggs. They also exist in different colors (red, green, purple and yellow) and can carry keys or gems.

They are well remembered because of their laugh and the difficulty of retrieving eggs from them, due to their speed.

MoneyBags

Moneybags is an anthropomorphic bear introduced in the second game. He acts as a toll to Spyro, asking a certain amount of gems to let him pass the area he keeps locked or asking for a small fee to teach him new skills. He's widely regarded as an annoyance and only acts as a friend towards Spyro because of the gems given to him.

While in the second game the player retrieves all the gems taken by MoneyBags during a cutscene at the end of the game, in the third game he's given the task to chase Moneybags after the battle against the Sorceress in order to retrieve every gem taken by him during the adventure, and gains an egg Moneybags wanted to sell at an auction.

Various Examples

"Trouble with the trolley, eh?"

Trouble with the trolley, eh? is a line said by Fisher the Breezebuilder in Spyro 2 when you fail during his sidequest, Gear grab, in the Breeze Harbor level.

It is remembered due to the fact that you hear it every time you fail, and given the difficulty of the mission you may hear it a lot. It is also may be taken by some players as a certain form of trolling.

Various Examples

Search Interest

External References