The 2010's are a strange time. Everything old is new again: Paying 6 different services to watch 4 shows, waiting a year for games to come out on PC (despite a beta test existing due to exclusivity deals), and playing games with simple geometry and explosive amounts of color are all in vogue again. Enter the dragon! Spyro the Dragon, to be precise. Re-enter him, I mean. I think this metaphor got away from me somewhere. Let's move on.

You've definitely played Spyro, or at least a game like it, before. This whole genre is what you'd call a "collectathon"; Gather up a large amount of things across a variety of stages, go to the next one, and do it all over again. The general plot motivator is that a villain has stolen a large volume of something of importance, and it's your job to get it back. Boss fights may or may not punctuate the whole affair (they do in this one). The twist here is that, much like the Crash Bandicoot remaster, the whole original trilogy is included! Yep, that's right. All three games, but now they look more like how your nostalgia would remember them instead of the clunky polygonal messes they were originally. (Can you believe the Playstation 1 used affline texture mapping? Kids these days have it so easy...)

There isn't a lot of nuance to this one, honestly. Yes, it's Spyro. Yes, it's a lot like it was back when they originally came out, but now it looks prettier. As the trilogy goes on, there's a bit more depth added; Spyro 2 introduces the concept of additional challenges in order to collect trinkets (like running an obstacle course or playing a game of trimmed-down hockey), while the third installment goes so far as to add more characters to play as for some sections that have their own types of gameplay, but for the most part, you're still gonna be a purple dragon with a bit of an attitude collecting gems and doo-dads. It is a pretty solid gem-and-doo-dad collector, though. Going into it expecting a "children's game", I was pleasantly surprised to see a reasonable range of difficulty, especially in Spyro 2, where it's simple enough to get to the end of a level, but not always a cakewalk to complete a level's checklist.

I didn't really feel like it was fair to judge this remaster too harshly compared to "more modern offerings", since, well, it effectively came out in 2000. With that being said, I didn't play it back on the PS1, so keep that in mind. First, the first game really felt like a slog. It quickly became clear to me that when people are talking about how good Spyro was, they were probably not talking about this one. By the time the end of the year rolled around, "collection fatigue" was also starting to set in, but that is more of a subjective issue. More importantly, there are also a few problems, at least with Spyro 1, relating to the framerate lock making some levels not work properly. This is an incredibly minor nitpick, especially since it only comes up a handful of times if you're only playing through each level once, but any game where it's an issue at all bears a cautionary mention.

So what's the verdict? First, if you were a Spyro fan, you probably already own this, but if you don't, go ahead and get it. It really is just like you remember, for better or for worse. It looks very pretty even if the gameplay is a little dated. At the same time, if you weren't enamored with Spyro, or collectathons in general, before this, I highly doubt this trilogy will change your mind. I'd suggest you look for it to be about twenty dollars, unless you really are dying to play Spyro again.

The 2010's are a strange time. Everything old is new again: Paying 6 different services to watch 4 shows, waiting a year for games to come out on PC (despite a beta test existing due to exclusivity deals), and playing games with simple geometry and explosive amounts of color are all in vogue again. Enter the dragon! Spyro the Dragon, to be precise. Re-enter him, I mean. I think this metaphor got away from me somewhere. Let's move on. You've definitely played Spyro, or at least a game like it, before. This whole genre is what you'd call a "collectathon"; Gather up a large amount of things across a variety of stages, go to the next one, and do it all over again. The general plot motivator is that a villain has stolen a large volume of something of importance, and it's your job to get it back. Boss fights may or may not punctuate the whole affair (they do in this one). The twist here is that, much like the Crash Bandicoot remaster, the whole original trilogy is included! Yep, that's right. All three games, but now they look more like how your nostalgia would remember them instead of the clunky polygonal messes they were originally. (Can you believe the Playstation 1 used affline texture mapping? Kids these days have it so easy...) There isn't a lot of nuance to this one, honestly. Yes, it's Spyro. Yes, it's a lot like it was back when they originally came out, but now it looks prettier. As the trilogy goes on, there's a bit more depth added; Spyro 2 introduces the concept of additional challenges in order to collect trinkets (like running an obstacle course or playing a game of trimmed-down hockey), while the third installment goes so far as to add more characters to play as for some sections that have their own types of gameplay, but for the most part, you're still gonna be a purple dragon with a bit of an attitude collecting gems and doo-dads. It is a pretty solid gem-and-doo-dad collector, though. Going into it expecting a "children's game", I was pleasantly surprised to see a reasonable range of difficulty, especially in Spyro 2, where it's simple enough to get to the end of a level, but not always a cakewalk to complete a level's checklist. I didn't really feel like it was fair to judge this remaster too harshly compared to "more modern offerings", since, well, it effectively came out in 2000. With that being said, I didn't play it back on the PS1, so keep that in mind. First, the first game really felt like a slog. It quickly became clear to me that when people are talking about how good Spyro was, they were [i]probably not[/i] talking about this one. By the time the end of the year rolled around, "collection fatigue" was also starting to set in, but that is more of a subjective issue. More importantly, there are also a few problems, at least with Spyro 1, relating to the framerate lock making some levels not work properly. This is an incredibly minor nitpick, especially since it only comes up a handful of times if you're only playing through each level once, but any game where it's an issue at all bears a cautionary mention. So what's the verdict? First, if you were a Spyro fan, you probably already own this, but if you don't, go ahead and get it. It really is just like you remember, for better or for worse. It looks very pretty even if the gameplay is a little dated. At the same time, if you weren't enamored with Spyro, or collectathons in general, before this, I highly doubt this trilogy will change your mind. I'd suggest you look for it to be about twenty dollars, unless you really are dying to play Spyro again.