Spyro the Dragon is a 1998 platform game originally developed by Insomniac Games and published by Sony Computer Entertainment for the PlayStation. The first game in the Spyro series stars the title character, a young purple dragon named Spyro, and his dragonfly friend, Sparx, who must journey across the Dragon Kingdom to defeat Gnasty Gnorc, who has overtaken the five dragon Homeworlds by trapping the other dragons in crystal and turning their hoard of gems into an army of minions. Spyro the Dragon is an open-ended 3D platformer, featuring large, sprawling levels in which the player must locate collectable items, among which are gemstones, crystallized dragons, and stolen dragon eggs. Spyro's abilities as a dragon include fire breath, a head-on charging attack, and a mid-air glide, which he can use to scale large distances, all of which must be used strategically to find items and defeat enemies.
Insomniac began developing Spyro the Dragon following the release of their debut title, Disruptor, which had sold poorly but was praised by critics and impressed Universal Interactive enough for them to encourage the studio to make another game. After artist Craig Stitt suggested a game about a dragon, the team initially drew inspiration from the film Dragonheart, intending the project to be a mature title with a dark, realistic tone. Direction was eventually shifted towards a whimsical and light-hearted tone to appeal to a wider audience. The game was one of the first on the PlayStation to utilize shifting levels of detail among rendered objects, thanks to a panoramic engine developed by Alex Hastings, which allowed the game's open-ended nature to be fully realized. Stewart Copeland, the former drummer for the Police, composed the game's music, and the titular character was voiced by Carlos Alazraqui, with additional voices being provided by Clancy Brown, Michael Gough, and Jamie Alcroft.
Sony Computer Entertainment released Spyro the Dragon as part of a broader effort to reach younger demographics and compete with the Nintendo 64. Although sales were initially sluggish, it found larger success following the advent of the 1998 holiday season and went on to sell nearly five million copies worldwide, making it one of the best-selling PlayStation games. Critics praised the game's graphics, gameplay, and music, while some noted its low difficulty level. Several reviewers also highlighted the game's unusually long draw distance and rendering techniques, with some publications describing the title groundbreaking in the platformer genre. The game established Spyro as a well-known platforming mascot on the PlayStation alongside Crash Bandicoot, and two sequels, titled Spyro 2: Ripto's Rage! and Spyro: Year of the Dragon, were later released for the PlayStation in 1999 and 2000, respectively. Although Insomniac gave up development rights to the Spyro series after the third game, the success of the PlayStation titles led to a continued series across various platforms. The game, alongside its two successors, was later remade as part of Spyro Reignited Trilogy in 2018.
Gameplay
thumb|left|Gameplay on a Sony PlayStation showing Spyro and his companion Sparx in the first boss level "Toasty"
Spyro the Dragon is a 3D platform game; Worlds consist of six dragon "home worlds", and a hidden flight stage that involves flying throughout an environment and destroying a number of objects.
The levels in Spyro the Dragon are open-ended, and they revolve around exploring and obtaining various collectible items to progress in the game. Each stage contains a number of crystallized dragons, whom Spyro must turn back to normal by locating and stepping on their statue bases. These dragons give the player advice on how to progress through the game, as well as their respective locations acting as save points after the dragon has been freed.
Spyro has two main offensive moves, which are used to attack enemies as well as destroy certain objects: charging, in which Spyro sprints forward and rams into things with his head, and breathing fire. These attacks must be used appropriately for certain enemies and situations; for instance, some enemies carry fireproof metal armor, meaning that they can only be defeated by charging, while larger enemies can only be hit using fire breath, as they will immediately crush Spyro otherwise. Throughout the game, Spyro is accompanied by Sparx, a yellow dragonfly who protects Spyro from taking damage and serves as the player's system of health. Sparx's current health is represented by the color of his body; if Spyro is hurt by an obstacle, such as an enemy or by touching water, Sparx changes colors, with yellow, blue and green representing different subsequent amounts of withheld damage. If the player is damaged too many times, Sparx disappears, leaving Spyro vulnerable to losing a life if he is hurt again. Sparx can be rejuvenated by consuming butterflies, which are found by killing passive creatures such as sheep that roam throughout most levels. Sparx also helps Spyro collect items by retrieving any gems that Spyro passes by. One day, a TV interview with a pair of dragons from the Artisan realm catches the attention of Gnasty Gnorc, a powerful gnorc (half gnome and half orc) who was banished from the kingdom due to his abrasive demeanor and sent to an abandoned junkyard, which he has renamed to "Gnasty's World".
The idea of a game about a dragon was introduced by Insomniac artist Craig Stitt, who suggested the concept out of his own interest in the mythical creature. The original pitch was made under the title Lifespan, and would have involved the dragon defending its lair over thousands of years and experiencing nine different eras of human invaders. This would have included both union and confederacy attackers during the US Civil War; it would have been possible to "get them to fight each other". Lifespans gameplay would have alternated between that of a flight simulator and corridor shooter for interior and exterior areas. At the game's climax, a tenth era would have featured an alien invasion and would align the dragon with earth's forces to face the invaders in space. A revised pitch, then titled DragonSpan, increased the scope to twelve eras and had the dragon age and grow over the course of the game. The complete pitch documentation for both versions were donated to the Video Game History Foundation by Stitt in 2025.
Mark Cerny, an executive at Universal Interactive Studios and the game's producer, advised that the team create a game with more mass market appeal, as the demographics of the PlayStation were decreasing and its selection of children's titles were greatly outnumbered by the Nintendo 64's. Stitt's production documents also listed support characters for Pete that were not retained, such as a friendly gnorc named Gruph, a sheep named Shank, a centaur love interest named Amber, and Snorch- Pete's father and king of the dragons. Spyro was originally going to be green, but the developers worried he would blend in with grass, so they eventually changed him to purple. During development of Spyro, Insomniac had a very close relationship with Crash Bandicoot creator and fellow PlayStation developer Naughty Dog, who had their office located across the hall from theirs. The two developers frequently worked together, playing early builds of each other's games and later sharing game technology. As a result, a demo of Crash Bandicoot: Warped was hidden in Spyro, and vice versa. Spyro the Dragon was unique compared to other 3D platform games of the time; Spyro's ability to glide allowed him to travel long distances in the air, meaning that the player could cross almost an entire level if starting from a high enough point. While this made designing levels more difficult for the team, it also meant that levels could be made more open-ended and explorative in nature. To make Spyro’s controls feel fluid, Matt Whiting—a NASA engineer who specialized in flight controls—was brought on to help with programming camera movement as well as Spyro's movement controls. The game's camera was particularly challenging; initially, it always followed directly behind Spyro, but the resulting high-speed movements were found to make several playtesters feel nauseous. This was most evident with Spyro's basic jump, which triggered the camera to quickly tilt up and down, compared by Whiting to the motion of a rocking boat; this was ultimately tweaked so that the camera would stay steady.
The game made extensive use of vertex shading to colour objects and provide light and shade- with the smooth skies entirely reliant on the technique to depict clouds and other distant details without the use of textures. Base textures were intentionally kept relatively desaturated so as to prevent them from becoming oversaturated with use of the technique.
Audio
thumb|[[Stewart Copeland in 2006]]
The game's music was composed and produced by Stewart Copeland, formerly the drummer for the British band the Police. Copeland was given early builds of the game's levels, which he played through to get a feel for them and come up with a fitting composition. He was also given game cheats such as invincibility so that he could have an easier time clearing levels. Copeland wrote "roughly three songs a day", each of which he further developed and polished the next day. Alazraqui did not continue in this role after the first game, being replaced by Tom Kenny for the sequels.
Release
Spyro the Dragon was first unveiled at the 1998 E3 convention in Atlanta, Georgia. According to Sony Computer Entertainment's American Marketing Vice President, Andrew House, at a press party in Las Vegas, the game, along with other upcoming 4th quarter PlayStation releases such as Crash Bandicoot: Warped, A Bug's Life, and Rugrats: Search for Reptar, was part of a general effort to appeal to a wider demographic of younger audiences and provide more games suited for younger players to compete with the Nintendo 64, which had a far larger library of children's titles at the time compared to the PlayStation's largely adult-centric demographic. An advertisement campaign was pushed to promote the game, featuring a character from the game, Toasty the Sheep, protesting against the title character's actions against sheep. The campaign included TV commercials, featuring an actor in an animatronic costume of Toasty, and a promotional website, sheepagainstspyro.com. On August 16, 1999, SCEA announced that the game would be included as a part of their "Greatest Hits" lineup of budgeted releases alongside other games such as Crash Bandicoot: Warped, Gran Turismo, Cool Boarders 3, and Twisted Metal III, and alongside the announcement of a price drop for the PlayStation console to compete with the highly anticipated launch of the Sega Dreamcast. On December 12, 2012, the game was digitally re-released to the PlayStation Store together with Spyro 2: Ripto's Rage! and Spyro: Year of the Dragon. A remake of the game, alongside its two sequels, was included as a part of the Spyro Reignited Trilogy compilation for the PlayStation 4 and Xbox One in November 2018, followed by the Nintendo Switch and Microsoft Windows in September 2019.
Sales
According to Spyros developers, sales were initially slow at the game's launch but quickly began picking up following the holiday season. In the week of November 29, 1998, it was the third best-selling game in the UK, behind Tomb Raider and FIFA 99. At the 1999 Milia festival in Cannes, it took home a "Gold" prize for revenues above €20,000,000 in the European Union during the previous year. Spyro the Dragon received a "Gold" award from the Verband der Unterhaltungssoftware Deutschland (VUD) by the end of August 1999, for sales of at least 100,000 units across Germany, Austria and Switzerland. By December 1999, the game had sold 1,000,000 copies in North America. As of 2007, the title had gone on to sell a total of nearly 5,000,000 units.
Reception
Spyro the Dragon currently holds a score of 85% at GameRankings, based on an aggregate of 18 reviews.
Legacy
The popularity of Spyro the Dragon helped to push the character of Spyro as a popular platforming mascot for the PlayStation alongside Crash Bandicoot. It was the first game in what became an expansive video game series, spawning 2 more platforming sequels for the PlayStation – Ripto's Rage and Year of the Dragon – released in 1999 and 2000, respectively. As of the year 2000, the series had sold more than 3.2 million copies in the U.S. and over 4 million copies worldwide. Insomniac stopped developing the Spyro series after Year of the Dragon, as it finished off their 4-game contract with Universal Interactive. Despite this, the series was continued across various different developers, and shifted to several other platforms besides PlayStation.