The original Spyro trilogy was the greatest platforming series that was an exclusive to Playstation consoles

The PS1 Spyro games are really solid. I haven't played 3 in a long time, but I replayed 1 and 2 recently (3~ months ago, finished 1, got halfway through 2), and there was never a part where I got bored or felt like my enjoyment dipped.
Crash is kinda the same, but I think that Crash 2 scratches its itch better than any Spyro does. Though Spyro does better than Crash 1 and 3.

Spyro: Year of the Dragon suffers a bit, similarly to Crash Bandicoot: Warped, in that it offers a good amount of variety more than the previous games, but not all of it is as polished as it could have been (in regards to Spyro, that game was on a bit of a time crunch to have the launch still fit the title, 2000 having been a "Year of the Dragon" by the Chinese calender). Not that that makes either one them bad games, but still. At least with YotD if you view the likes of Agent Nine as proto-Ratchet, there's a sense of gratefulness to be had that Insomniac got that base attempt out of their way with a side character in an otherwise worthy game, instead of the entirety of the first Ratchet and Clank feeling like Agent Nine's bullshit.

That's not Ape Escape, i want a fourth one right fucking now.

Friendly reminder
If Insominiac and Naughty Dog weren't fuckbuddies these two trilogies would have been really fucked

Not like it had much competition.

糞死ね

It was strange how the first Spyro gave me a fear of loneliness

At least all of Spyro's games are solid and don't make you want to break your controller in half trying to complete them.

I swear, this marketing autism is one of the worst things about big devs. There's always some dipshit coming up with a single gimmick to attach the total quality of the game to and then when it's actually sold none of the customers give a shit about the gimmick and care a lot about the total quality of the game. You shouldn't rush good games just for marketing gimmicks.

Bare in mind it wasn't just because of that. The PS2 released the same year and there was a genuine fear that PS1 games would drop off in sales.

This was proven to be true with some games. Like Syphon Filter 3 released a year after the PS2 released and it didn't sell very well compared to SF1/2

There are some mild examples of how Spyro 3 was rushed beyond the controls of some of the other playable characters. A good example is the original black label version doesn't play the entire OST, and there's a bug where if you leave a particular world before obtaining it's egg, the egg disappears and you are locked out of 100% completion. This version is also the one on the PSN store. Both were fixed in the green label version.

Oh and the secret bonus world was originally supposed to be far in the distance on Midnight Mountain. And instead someone created another island within gliding distance but didn't delete the island off in the distance. As a result there's no actual way to get there without cheating.

Well I don't mean to imply in this case it was necessarily entirely tied to that one gimmick, it just reminded me of shit like what Bethesda pulled with Skyrim and I felt like putting it out there that there should be more reason to push a release than just a marketing tagline/date. If there was, good.

Spyro, especially 2 and 3, is more a collectathon than a platformer. Still very good, and the second best series PlayStation ever had, but Crash's focus on actual platforming makes it a better platformer, and CTR being one of the best kart racers ever made helps ensure that Crash is the best series.

The PS1 games are some of the best of all time. Play them again if you aren't thoroughly familiar with them, or even if you are.

Enter the Dragonfly on PS2 is like Sonic '06 levels of unfinished, but it at least tries to play like Spyro. If you're really desperate, this is as close as you're gonna get to more of the PS1 games. It's a real mess, but if you love the original gameplay enough, here's more of it, just in a broken form.

The GBA games are actually surprisingly good for what they are. Shorter, and now isometric, but the gameplay translates better than you'd expect. Not the best thing ever, but worth looking at for sure. Note that the Crash crossover doesn't count because it has different gameplay and it and the Crash counterpart are both shit.

A Hero's Tail on PS2 isn't broken like Enter the Dragonfly, but it changes seemingly small yet key elements, and as such changes the gameplay in ways that I just couldn't get over. Little things that make it seem like the devs didn't even play the original games. For example, Circle is Charge and Square is Flame. How the fuck do you fuck that up? That's like making Mario Jump with B and Run with A. Also, Gems are unlimited because you have to buy usable items, so going around and actually searching for all of the gems is out the window. This is the game I was never able to slog all the way through, but all the later games would reboots in other genres, so it's still better than those.

He is.

Spyro 3 does a good job with not making you play as any side character too much. Each one has a single level, and then one section in a level in the world after it, and the world before it. I wouldn't say it goes too far with it. If anything, it's just a much longer game than the first two (and those aren't short games by any means), so it does take more time to beat, but it stays good the whole way through.

YOU NO WANT KAWAII PIPOSARU? YOU WANT ACTUAL GAMEPLAY? TOO BAD, HERE MINIGAME, FUCK YOU.

Ape Escape was a game made to sell a gimmick controller, the Dual Analog controller, where you use the dual joysticks to control a wide variety of gadgets such as a baton, a net, a handheld helicopter, and a slingshot. Years later, Sony released another gimmick controller, the PS Move, and announced an Ape Escape game for it. Fantastic? Actually swinging the controller to swing the baton and the net, twirling it above your head for the helicopter, using it like a slingshot in like 90% of games that use the Move anyway. This is the perfect game to use the Move.

Instead it was a rail shooter. I have never seen a more wasted opportunity in my life.

Crash 3 came out like a month after Spyro 1. Insomniac didn't have a chance to influence Crash as much. Maybe CTR.

You talkin' shit about Jersey Devil and Blasto?

Thanks for admitting you never played video games until the Xbox gen. Every time I see this posted it comes down to some underage faggot getting mad because they want to use the joysticks on every game. Controllers at the time didn't have the joysticks, and they didn't need them. Anyone playing any Crash game when it was released would be using the D-pad and liking it. Even after the joystick controller was released, it wasn't a must-buy, since Ape Escape wasn't out for years. The games were made with the d-pad in mind and the joystick compatibility was a neat extra feature that is never actually needed.

Casuals maybe

Or if you get a Gem or a Key. Bonus Rounds are for casuals who aren't good enough to 100%.

get gud

I bought the game on release and have completed it dozens of times. Literally never noticed this.

What did blow my mind though is that the original release had a bug that caused an entire cutscene to never play. It's luckily the least important cutscene in the game, that just shows a boss being created, but still, seeing it years later blew my mind.

It wasn't the D-pad, the game was just way stiffer than the later games and as a result it was way harder than it needed to be. I didn't own a dualshock until I got my PS2 and as a kid I thought Crash 1 was way too frustrating.

It's a big reason why barely anyone plays the original game

I've only known one person who actually completed Crash Bandicoot 1, I've never known a single person that bothered to complete it.

That's a problem when you're talking about how "perfect" a game is when barely anyone who plays it actually wants to beat it because of how stiff it plays.

It's one of the speedway levels. Iirc the one for Evening Lake. Only occurs on the black label version.

Sorry I forgot to put "I've never known a single person that bothered to complete it 100%"

Oh wow I was wrong the glitch actually occurs for every speedway level

spyro.wikia.com/wiki/Speedway_Glitch

The controls for Crash 1 are practically the exact same as in 2 and 3. Every time I've heard this complaint before, prodding the complainant eventually revealed that they were mad that they couldn't use the joystick in Crash 1. I really can't see how you could find the controls significantly different from the sequels if you're using the d-pad either way.

Granted, Crash 1 is a much more challenging game overall, but that's part of the fun. It's still less challenging than trying to get all Platinums on Crash 3.

I hope the remakes actually give you a reward for beating the Dev Times, though since they're remakes, even if very accurate ones, perhaps the Dev Times would be different to make up for any tiny differences in the level or physics.

More like "Because they can't get good." Challenging games might scare off some people, but that doesn't make them bad.

I don't prefer 1 over 2 and 3. 1 is more bare bones but that extra difficulty keeps me coming back, since the other games now feel very easy for me. 2 improves on 1 in every way except arguably difficulty, because it's by far the easiest in the series. 3 improves on 2 in every way when it comes to the actual platforming levels, but half the levels are vehicles or swimming or some other gimmick, and while I like those, I don't like them as much as the regular platforming levels. The relics give a lot of extra stuff to do though. Really encourages you to learn the levels and hone your skills. I always have a hard time deciding which is my favorite.

Possibly. Haven't played them in a long time, but I might prefer Crash.

Of course, Spyro doesn't have horrendously bad games on PS2, so I guess IT IS a better series exclusive to PlayStation. Skylanders doesn't look like something that I would enjoy, but it can't be that bad, and it barely counts.

Good job, OP, you are technically right.

You just suck at video games, user. It's the same thing, except harder. 2 and 3 are too easy. Hell, even 1 is easy. I played it again after more than 10 years and only died two or three times in the entire game.

Because they suck. I have been hearing casuals whine about this game being too hard pretty much since it came out. The whiners back them couldn't handle Crash 1 either.

Git fucking gud, faggut.

Pic related.

Crash 1 is just better. You play it more because it's a better game.

I like collecting things, but that is only necessary in easy baby games like Mario. It's just padding.

Spyro's PS2 games are far, far worse than Crash's PS2 games. Wrath of Cortex and Enter the Dragonfly are both just poorer versions of Crash and Spyro 3, respectively, but Wrath of Cortex is at least competently made and not the PS2 equivalent of Sonic '06. Twinsanity and A Hero's Tail both tried to change the series, but Twinsanity did it in a way that didn't fuck with the core concepts as much. At least they got the controls right, and the changes to the aesthetics were much more fun.

I don't play it more though. I typically go through all three. Maybe I'll repeat 2 more often but that is because it's easier. I can beat 2 100% in an afternoon at this point, the others take much more investment.

Really? I have never even seen them before.
I guess Crash is better, then, because CTR exists, and Spyro Team Racing doesn't.

I like to play all of them as well. Last time I played 1, I marathoned the original trilogy and played CTR some time after that. It was fun as hell.

1 is definitely my favorite, though. The whole game feels a lot more like a pure platformer, compared to 2 and 3. It actually captures the feel of a 2D platformer more successfully than pretty much any other 3D platformer, being more about the actual challenge of platforming and linearly going through the levels without dying than about collecting things (not that I'm against that type of game by default, they just focus on something different).

Also, many of the stages are practically 2D. The game actually succeeded in being both a 2D and a 3D platformer at the same time, which is really nice.

The controls in this game are perfect somehow. Nothing has really been able to live up to it. I tried mario64 after hearing similar claims about that game but realised it played like dog shit. I second guessed myself for a while because I kept hearing how good it was from weird people but now I know I was right. That was my first encounter with autism.

But Crash 2 and 3 aren't more about collecting things. There are gems in all three games, but very few hidden crates. Crystals are never hidden and are really just there to show you completed the level at least once, you have to go out of your way to avoid them. Relics are just Time Trial rewards, not collectables in the sense of Banjo or something.

The camera in particular was far better in this game than in things like Mario 64 or Banjo Kazooie. The camera only "clicking" into a few predetermined angles instead of you being able to "slide" it around really makes Mario 64's camera shit. Some games, like Crash, get around it by making it so you never need to touch the camera, but Mario and Banjo really require it strongly.

Definitely the comfiest platformer I've played.
Just 100%'d Spyro 1 for the 3rd time and nabbed a copy of Spyro 2 on eBay.

More than 1. There is certainly more of a focus on getting things. Not too much, though. Less than Mario and Banjo by far.

Crash 1 pretty much has the structure of 8-bit platformers. It's a linear challenge about being linearly challenging.

I actually just got done 100%'ing this series again recently after not having played any of them for almost 20 years. I remember slaving away for hours on some minigame or something as a child that I did in one try as an adult. The PS1 was kept at my grandmother's and it took several visits just to finish one game completely. Now it took me virtually no time at all. It's very surreal looking at it in retrospect.

I tried Enter the Dragonfly and Hero's Tail too of course. Both dogshit. I had originally tried EtD on the Gamecube when it came out and hated it then too.

I have no intention of trying the Legend of Spyro series. It looked dumb when I saw it debut years ago. It looked dumb when I looked it up again recently. And it was especially dumb when I read what it's actually about.

But all three have nothing to collect except crates. I suppose there are the five colored gems that are hidden throughout each game, while in Crash 1 you get them for getting all the Crates like normal, but even those basically involve just taking a really hard route that you are told beforehand is really hard.

If you're desperate for more Spyro, the GBA games are okay. Better than any other non-insomniac one.

That's like saying collecting stars in Mario isn't really collecting because they're just rewards for beating different level missions that you are told about beforehand.

2 and 3 kinda compel me to collect things a lot more. On Crash 1, I barely realize that the game even has collectables a lot of the time.

If I select a level and I see that there are things left to collect if I play them again, I interpret that as "try and get this, skrub, it's part of the challenge".

Crash 1 feels more about just moving forward, not so much about going back and getting things.

Not too different, though. The biggest difference is in level design, and the linearity itself. Crash 1 always seems to require more precise jumping, and the fact that it's linear just makes me want to beat it as quickly as I can.

CTR definitely makes me want to get everything even more than the platformers, though. I don't think I have ever been able to play through that game and not get 100% and unlock everything. I always take my time with CTR.

My point is that they're still linear platforming, there are just a few sections (like five) where you can step on a platform and go to another linear path with harder platforming than if you didn't get on the platform.

Yeah Crash 1 has a lot more precise platforming. Crash 3 gets there though when you're playing the time trials. Everything is paced so that all the movements of enemies and traps lines up just right so long as you're moving fast as fuck and getting every jump perfect.

Beating Oxide's Ghost on every track in CTR is probably the hardest thing I've ever accomplished in any video game.

It is a shame Spyro got ran into the ground with things like Skylanders, hopefully Crash doesn't get the same fate.

Crash did get the same fate. It got ran into the ground with shitty cash grab sequels, then they tried to make it a beat-em-up with shitty designs with Crash of the Titans and Mind Over Mutant, and now Crash is in Skylanders. He even had an episode of the show all about him.

The only difference is they're also trying to use Crash for other things again. When Crash was completely dead, Spyro was in Skylanders. We'll see if Crash is successful enough to make Activision try to bring back non-Skylanders Spyro, the same way they have Skylanders Crash and non-Skylanders Crash.

Can't wait for MOBA Spyro
Take Spyro and friends on an adventure to save Skyland from the forces of evil trying to destroy the core. Evil attacks from 3 lanes and you must destroy their core to win.

People are probably getting used to seeing me shilling this when Spyro comes up in these topics. There's a fan project in progress for a fourth world in Spyro 2 to top off the season themed worlds. Progress is kicking up and a number of Spyro anons might find it worth looking at. youtube.com/watch?v=QKrf6FsGw6M

Skylanders gameplay has the angle and combat for a MOBA, so you're not too wrong.

Are they also going to make a fourth boss? The Ripto and Gulp were the best bosses in the Spyro Trilogy.

Yeah, but the details aren't released yet. Still keeping that stuff under wraps. I'm working on an April Fool's joke for it though.

everyone but manchildren was fucking sick and tired of childish platforming games, thats why garbage like jrpgs made so much sucess

I want to believe.

git gud

It will be a long while, but progress updates come out over time. I came back from a hiatus recently from school stuff to work on this and got a bunch of nice tools in. Another programmer is reworking the movement controls and while it's not yet pushed to our repository, the clips I've seen of it suggest it looks a lot more stable. I'm hoping it'll be done soon so we can start working on things that require Spyro's movement to be stable and his interactions (fire, charging damage, etc) to work architecturally fine.

I would so love to help with this project

The team's pretty big and I am but a mere programmer, but at the end it's planned to be released open source so anyone can screw around with it. So I end up having to try not using nasty hacks and Pajeet code.

Sounds great, I would love to make my own Spyro 2 levels

Looks good, but if you guys are going to be using actually new elements (not sure if you guys already are, or are mainly borrowing models from elsewhere in Spyro 2 thus far), keep the color usage in mind, as that was a big area where Spyro excelled. Just figured I'd mention it. I would love to see something actually come of it all, and perhaps it to help generate more common Spyro threads like that World Viewer program did a few years back.

Yeah. This article is one of many things we've had references from. They're doing pretty nicely on that front. Character models are modeled from scratch with strong reference to the originals. Original stuff like inhabitants are coming later and by the time they get to those, they're probably gonna be pretty keen after modeling lots of in-game stuff as to what fits the style.

That spawned topics for a while? Neat. I might make topics for progress updates if significant enough changes can be showcased every now and then. I won't be showing things the lead wants to keep hidden for now though.

Yeah, some years back on halfchan, the finding of that viewer, and an user taking screenshots of the environments with different camera angles, along with the skyboxes themselves, prompted daily Spyro threads for a good two or three weeks straight if memory served. To be fair, it's not as if anons didn't like discussing Spyro (the PS1 games anyhow) to begin with, but it provided good reason to have discussion with greater frequency for a while. I think that user also migrated over here too, and once he was able to get it set up to display in 4k, he dumped more screenshots in higher resolution than he could capture before in threads here for anons as well.

Really, sometimes I think that's the sort of thing an older game/series needs to prompt more discussion: news of a new game (be it good or ill), an interview being done/found, or in that case, an entire program dedicated to just looking at the levels themselves and allowing for screenshots. This time around it could be an entire modded in post game (or however your Spring Savannah is being set up as, given Ripto is already defeated in Winter Tundra), or open source level creator.

I am curious though, what are you guys planning to do about any voicing that needs to be done, or original music for new levels?

WHERE IS APE ESCAPE
WHERE IS APE ESCAPE
WHERE IS APE ESCAPE

This. The game is so weird and buggy. Really lacks the polish of 2 and 3 which are still some of my favorite games ever. Couldn't make myself play Crash 1 though.

how? Sounds like you're just using that as a buzzword. Crash 1 isn't at all buggy.

Fuck Ape Escape. That game scared the shit out of me as a kid and I still don't like swimming in video games because of it.

At least you know exactly where the fish is. Plenty of games just have it vague, until you venture too far and pass an invisible death barrier that makes it impossible to not get eaten.

That's not even the bad level for that. Wait until you get the one where you go inside of a dinosaur. That is real terror.

As far as I know, we're gonna see what we can get ahold of and work with that. Hasn't been a priority and we've not spent much time on looking for voices yet.

Yeah, I would assume that the actual design work and level building ought to come first. Hell, part of Copeland's process was starting out just playing the levels without any music to get a vibe for what the songs he composed ought to reflect. Might be wise to stick with that same process here.

When will you faggots learn?

I've messed with Godot a little, but not much and it doesn't have the widespread support yet. I wanna try Xenko, as it might ease the transition from Unity since it uses C# and seems similar in concept.