Spyro the Dragon

Spyro the Dragon is a 1998 platform game originally developed by Insomniac Games and published by Sony Computer Entertainment for the PlayStation. The first game in the Spyro series stars the title character, a young purple dragon named Spyro, and his dragonfly friend, Sparx, who must journey across the Dragon Kingdom to defeat Gnasty Gnorc, who has overtaken the five dragon Homeworlds by trapping the other dragons in crystal and turning their hoard of gems into an army of minions. Spyro the Dragon is an open-ended 3D platformer, featuring large, sprawling levels in which the player must locate collectable items, among which are gemstones, crystallized dragons, and stolen dragon eggs. Spyro's abilities as a dragon include fire breath, a head-on charging attack, and a mid-air glide, which he can use to scale large distances, all of which must be used strategically to find items and defeat enemies.

Insomniac began developing Spyro the Dragon following the release of their debut title, Disruptor, which had sold poorly but was praised by critics and impressed Universal Interactive enough for them to encourage the studio to make another game. After artist Craig Stitt suggested a game about a dragon, the team initially drew inspiration from the film Dragonheart, intending the project to be a mature title with a dark, realistic tone. Direction was eventually shifted towards a whimsical and light-hearted tone to appeal to a wider audience. The game was one of the first on the PlayStation to utilize shifting levels of detail among rendered objects, thanks to a panoramic engine developed by Alex Hastings, which allowed the game's open-ended nature to be fully realized. Stewart Copeland, the former drummer for the Police, composed the game's music, and the titular character was voiced by Carlos Alazraqui, with additional voices being provided by Clancy Brown, Michael Gough, and Jamie Alcroft.