Games nowadays are out of this world when it comes to just how good they are and how much enjoyment you get from them. Despite this there will always be a part of everyone’s hearts that longs for the games of their childhood and will jump at the chance to replay them again either in their original state or through the medium of an HD remake. Spyro the Dragon is one of those series to me, and fortunately, I now get to relive my childhood with the new Spyro Reignited Trilogy…
First things first – like the title says this remake is in fact three remakes containing the first three, and arguably best, Spyro games. That means you get to replay Spyro the Dragon; Spyro 2: Riptos Rage! and Spyro: Year of the Dragon in glorious HD and you can do it at a lower price than one of the games would have cost you back in the day.
The cool thing about HD graphics in remade games is how they can take you back to the original. When you played these games back in the late 90s and early 2000s, you remember them in a much more positive light than they actually were. The aggressive pixellated lines seeming like the pinnacle of game design and the blocky baron backgrounds becoming painstakingly accurate whimsical locals the likes of which you couldn’t comprehend and now 20 years later the game takes what you thought you saw and gives it legs and allows it to walk straight into your living room reminding you of the world you once played with tiny hands on a 14 inch CRT TV.
Of course this is in no short part to the absolute beauty that is the Reignited Trilogy. Not only in the sense that it enhances the original, but also in that this is one of the most beautiful cartoon style games I’ve ever seen. In that sense I feel like this trilogy could stand next to any modern game in a similar style and absolutely blow it away.
For me the proof of a good remake is purely about whether it retains the charm of the original, but also gives me a more viable alternative to 
setting up an older game console and older TV. Spyro in this regard is a pretty weird game as all original code for the game has been forever lost in the ether meaning that the game developer “Toys For Bob” had to develop a program that would look at the original Spyros as they were being played and extract the game data so they could accurately design the game. This means that not only does it look like the games, but it feels pretty much identical to the originals. If you take the original Spyro and the remake and perform a series of jumps, glides and turns and then try it again in the Reignited Trilogy it has the same feel and flow that you remember and taps into decades old muscle memory, so you’re playing with power. Compare this with Crash Bandicoot’s change to ‘Coyote Physics’ and Spyro is an immensely better and truer remake.
Spyro Reignited Trilogy is in my opinion the best remake of an old classic and a game that somehow managed to pull me away from the newly released Red Dead Redemption 2 to transport me back to an absolute gem of a video game.
Author: Hal, Plymouth store
