Recently my girlfriend bought herself a Wii, and for Christmas I got her the Skylanders: Spyro's Adventure starter pack. We've played through a good portion of the game together, and have been enjoying it quite a lot. But it recently started to get me reminiscing about the very first Spyro game I played...more than a decade ago.
Spyro is one of those old classics I didn't get to play until way late in my PlayStation's life. In fact if I recall, I beat the game on my PS2, well after replacing my PS1 (and let's be honest here, the PS1....way better than the PS2). I rank Spyro quite highly, up there with Crash Bandicoot: Warped in terms of platformers. And to be honest, it's not even my game; my sister got it for her birthday. Which never made much sense to me, seeing as the current console hooked to the TV was mine. But alas, I decided not to play evil brother...because hey, free game. And when you are a cash strapped 14 year old in need of a new game...you take what you get.
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| Like this little treasure |
So naturally I let my sister play first, I'm not a bastard (court judges may rule otherwise). And of course the typical problems of running into walls and dying started happening, this is the consequence of when you let a 12 year old sister behind the wheel of a quadrupedal dragon that can breath fire. This of course also lead to the inevitable hand-off of the controller to me.
And that's when it all fell into place...
Spyro was one of those games where you let the faults pass, and just enjoy the game. Sure, Spyro ran around like a cranked up psycho with an inner ear disorder because of the camera. But it was worth it because it was so much fun to run around like a psycho..igniting sheep on fire and hearing their bleats for mercy....hmm, I better not go further down this path.
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| The human equivalent of Spyro. |
And yeah, the platforming and jumping was tricky sometimes, frustratingly so at certain moments. But you forgave it, because unlike Crash Bandicoot, Spyro never scared the hell out of you for no reason what so ever (this is for another time, I promise).
It's one of those games I tried hard to 100%, but never could. I tried to find all the secrets and dragons. Beat every boss many times over. Honestly Spyro was one of the best PS1 games I played. Eventually my PS2 went buggy on me, refusing to play most PS2, and PS1 games. I did have my PS1 still though, so every now and then I would dust it off, and give the old library I once over. Now I have no idea where my PS1 is, or most of my games for it....
Sadly, being the cash strapped teenager I was, I lacked the money to get the other games in the series. And anytime I did get money...I spent it on true gems like Tomb Raider: Revelations, Grudge Warriors, and X-Squad.
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| You know it's good what it's got an X that big in the title |
So through my dumb ass tendencies (a younger me that is....I'd like to think I grew past this), I missed out on what is probably one of the biggest franchises from the early Playstation days. It was one of the better games I played in my youth, and I almost forgot about it completely, until I started playing Skylanders. And it's kind of sad to think Spyro almost faded into obscurity or mediocrity like so many other major stars from the late 90's. But of course, with the success of Skylanders, maybe we will see a return of a solo Spyro game. And knowing my luck Activision will run him into the ground.
HumorTumor is digging through classics, just for you!
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