After the commercial success of Crash Bandicoot: N. Sane Trilogy, Activision is bringing back another classic PlayStation-era character: Spyro the Dragon.
Spyro Reignited Trilogy is coming to PlayStation 4 and Xbox One on Sept. 21, Activision announced today. The collection will include the first three games in the series (Spyro the Dragon, Spyro 2: Ripto’s Rage, Spyro: Year of the Dragon) in remastered form. Those three games were original developed by Insomniac Games, which has since moved on to Ratchet and Clank and is developing this year’s Spider-Man for PS4.
Developer Toys for Bob, which created Activision’s Skylanders franchise, is handling remastering duties for the Spyro trilogy.
Spyro Reignited Trilogy has been “remade from the ground up,” Activision said in a press release, with “improved environments, updated controls, brand-new lighting and recreated cinematics.” The remaster will also feature a cast of characters that have been “creatively re-imagined with additional flair.” Activision promises “full analog stick support and smooth camera handling” and a reimagined version of composer Stewart Copeland’s soundtrack.
Spyro Reignited Trilogy will cost $39.99. Above are some images of the remastered trilogy.
Spyro the Dragon’s most recent stand-alone adventure was 2008’s The Legend of Spyro: Dawn of the Dragon, but Activision’s popular Skylanders series was built on the Spyro brand. The first game in the Skylanders franchise was Skylanders: Spyro’s Adventure.
For another look at how Spyro has changed, here are a few comparison shots that illustrate how Spyro Reignited Trilogy improves on the original PlayStation games.
Comments
HELL YES
By DigitalKitsune on 04.05.18 11:11am
This is probably the series from my childhood that I wanted to play the most but never got to. I had a demo disc with a Spyro game on it, and I still have good memories of it. It seems like a game that will have aged pretty well, so I will almost definitely pick this up! I’m excited.
By Lil Kut-Ku on 04.05.18 11:13am
I had that demo disc too! Or at least some kind of Spyro Demo. I think it was Crash 3? You had to enter some code on the main menu to unlock it, and the code was hidden in the manual.
By DownloadMoreRAM on 04.05.18 12:37pm
Good to see I’m not the only one who adored that demo disc! I played the absolute crap out of it but sadly never got to own the full game. I’m pretty excited about this.
By Esquire0399 on 04.05.18 3:34pm
I only got to play these games a little bit at friends’ houses when I was a kid, so I’m super excited to get a chance to own them for myself. Part of me wishes you could play with the original graphics. There was something magical about the Spyro loading screen that has stuck with me.
By dylanljmartin on 04.05.18 11:18am
True. They did that for Halo, and it was actually really cool to toggle between the graphics at the press of a button!
By Ry L on 04.05.18 11:32am
The Switch is getting the Crash trilogy soon, I really hope the same happens for Spyro!
By mxmgodin on 04.05.18 11:19am
So stoked for this! I haven’t been able to play Spyro since the Gamecube days. Gotta say I will miss the hideously green grass from the originals based on those comparison shots.
By PaeruginosaNerd on 04.05.18 11:20am
Man, I loved the original Spyro trilogy in the PS1 days — I think I hit 116% completion on at least one of those games. The remaster looks incredible, but I have a very specific image in my mind’s eye of what those games looked like… we’ll have to see. Not sure about the reworked color palette in particular.
By Samit Sarkar on 04.05.18 11:23am
I definitely did that for Year of the Dragon, not sure about the first two. Man these games were a blast, I’m stoked to get this.
By theshiny1 on 04.05.18 11:28am
I’m on board, but the lack of the original’s chill soundtrack will be a major loss
By miscu~ on 04.05.18 11:28am
It sounds updated from the trailer. I don’t think they will rewrite the whole thing. If they do, that will be a major let down.
By ROBObert on 04.05.18 4:47pm
Now that’s how you do a remaster! Looks great!
I never played any of them, so I’ll plan on picking this up for Xbox
By Ry L on 04.05.18 11:30am
Yea, it’s pretty much an entirely different game.
By Fandabidozi on 04.05.18 12:00pm
This is more like a Remake than a Remaster. However, if they haven’t changed too much gameplay wise, then yes, it’ll be a Remaster.
By Cobaltios on 04.05.18 12:05pm
yes ok Switch please
By Paul_M on 04.05.18 11:37am
I can see the editorials now:
Were the Spyro Games Always This Hard?!
[Tree Tops as the header image]
By Tekkactus on 04.05.18 11:41am
That depends, are they going to change the physics but keep the level structure the same which makes certain levels that were already hard in the original next to impossible in the remaster?
Wait, sorry, that was the Crash Bandicoot remaster.
By powerlord on 04.05.18 12:38pm
Was that the level that was all boost ramps? And getting to the farthest island/tree top/whatever it was required jumping off one ramp early onto another for extra speed?
By Tejj on 04.05.18 6:40pm
That’s the one, although iirc it required you to transfer something like four supercharge ramps to get to the last dragon.
By Tekkactus on 04.06.18 9:15am
Omg! But what about the Switch’s release date?
By Lamba on 04.05.18 11:45am
They did the near-impossible—they created a remake of a beloved series as our nostalgia goggles see it, as opposed to how it actually looked. One glance at the first comparison image and I thought "dear lord, the game looked far worse, and more sparse, than I remember!" The remake fills in what our imaginations had already been doing, allowing it to actually meet our inflated expectations.
Incredible work.
By JohnathanGlass on 04.05.18 12:26pm
Will this remaster have garbage hitboxes and the slipperiest terrain edges as well? I loved how Crash remastered looks, but in about 15 minutes I knew something was very off. I haven’t had the desire to play it again. What a waste. I’d rather fire up the original games on an emulator.
I am very interested in seeing stats of how many people that bought Crash remastered actually played more than an hour of it, let alone finish the games.
By Nastee on 04.05.18 12:41pm
Platinumed all three. Loved them all. Enjoyed most of the changes like adding time trials to the first two and making Crash 1’s gem requirements achievable.
Your one complaint is the curved hitbox which sucked, but was only a problem on a couple levels.
By Nathan_DTS on 04.05.18 1:43pm
"Spyro Reignited Trilogy has been "remade from the ground up," according to Activision"
Is it a remake or remaster? Lots of people use those terms interchangeably. I always thought of ‘remaster’ as keeping the original movie/game/song and sprucing it up for modern hardware, while a ‘remake’ is rebuilt from the ground up.
Think of it this way: Star Wars Original Trilogy was remastered with additional CGI, while King Kong was remade by Peter Jackson.
By Tendoboy84 on 04.05.18 12:48pm