[RETRO GAMING] Remember the Original 'Spyro' Trilogy?

The year was 1998, a simpler time when songs from the Backstreet Boys were playing on the radio, Microsoft had just become the biggest company in the world, and people were playing "Half-Life" on their computers after school or work hours. Sony's PlayStation (PS1) was the most popular video game console due to its ability to produce polygon graphics, giving players their first taste of three-dimensional games.

It was at this point that Spyro came flying into consoles and TVs. Since then, it has captured gamers' hearts and is still fondly viewed as one of Sony's mascots for the PlayStation consoles. Activision even remastered all three of Spyro's games in 2018 for the PlayStation 4 and Xbox One, according to Business Wire.

You're about to find out why.

'Spyro' Trilogy: Game Details

The original "Spyro" Trilogy is a collection of platform games developed by Insomniac Games and published by Sony. All three games were released for the PS1 from 1998 to 2000.

As with all platform games, players were tasked to guide Spyro through various homeworlds and collect a certain number of items, defeat enemies and bosses, and win some races to progress through the games. These games were the PlayStation's answer to Nintendo's "Super Mario 64." Both were open-world 3D platform games that let players do whatever they want in the game whenever, wherever, as noted by IGN.

Needless to say, both have benefitted from such a design.

The games let players join the titular main character of the series, Spyro, in his adventures across different settings, as per the Spyro wiki. In the first game, "Spyro the Dragon," players join Spyro in his quest to defeat Gnasty Gnorc and free his friends who were turned into crystalline statues. In the second game, "Spyro 2: Ripto's Rage," players rejoin Spyro during his quest to save Avalar and defeat the sorcerer, Ripto.

Finally, in "Spyro: Year of the Dragon," players team up with Spyro to recover 12 dragon eggs from the clutches of "the Sorceress".

The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly

Whether you plan on playing the original three games on a PS1 or an emulator or play Spyro Reignited Trilogy doesn't matter: you'll get the same experience on both iterations. You'll just get revamped graphics, visuals and a new soundtrack on the latter, per Polygon.

However, that also means the remastered version has the same set of flaws as the originals.

"Spyro the Dragon" is lauded as one of the most beloved and memorable games of the PS1. It is a textbook example of what a 3D platforming game should be: simplistic and easy-to-learn, even if it feels dated by today's standards, Super GameSite 64's Matthew Owen reported. It gives you various platforming levels, shows you the goal and sets you loose. How you complete them is up to you. However, collecting gems can be a bore sometimes and keep in mind that careful exploration is the key to finding difficult to find gems, as DigitalTrends' Steven Petite discovered.

Meanwhile, "Spyro: 2: Ripto's Rage" is generally lauded as the improved version of the first game, per TheGamer. The game gives players new abilities, such as swimming, new challenges to use these new abilities with, and powerup gates, which gives Spyro special abilities for a limited time. You no longer have to collect every gem in the game like in the first game, but boss fights are now mandatory.

Last but not the least is "Spyro: Year of the Dragon." It is the third and final game of the original trilogy. It has better graphics when compared to the first two, better music, and more minigames to test your skills. It garnered positive reviews from GameSpot, IGN and MetaCritic, which praised the game's multi-character focus, appeal to all ages, variety of minigames and more.

However, players looking forward to playing as Spyro could dislike this game for the multi-character focus critics loved, as Super GameSite 64's Matthew Owen pointed out.

Despite some criticism, almost everyone has placed the third game as the best among the three and it feels like it. It is the combination of the first two games, plus more content to give it variety.

Whether it's played as intended or in the remastered version, the original Spyro trogilogy is here to stay in the hearts of people regardless of age.