Spyro the Dragon: Приключения фиолетового дракона

1998 video game
the video game

Spyro the Dragon is a 1998 platform game developed by Insomniac Games and published by Sony Computer Entertainment for the PlayStation. The first game in the Spyro series, it 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 5 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. Spyro the Dragon started development following the release of Insomniac's debut game, Disruptor, which sold poorly but was generally praised by critics, impressing Universal Interactive enough to encourage them to make a second game. Artist Craig Stitt suggested a game about a dragon, and work began on a new game. Taking inspiration from the film Dragonheart, the game started out as a more mature title with a dark and realistic approach, but the direction was shifted to have a more whimsical and light hearted tone to appeal to a wider market of consumers. 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 voice acted by Carlos Alazraqui, alongside additional voices done by Clancy Brown, Michael Gough and Jamie Alcroft. Spyro the Dragon was released by Sony Computer Entertainment as part of a general effort to reach out to a younger age demographic and compete with the more popular kid's platform, the Nintendo 64. Although sales were initially sluggish, it found larger success following the advent of the 1998 holiday season and went on to sell nearly 5 million copies worldwide, making it one of the best selling PlayStation games. Critics praised the game's graphics and gameplay, while some noted its low difficulty level. The game established Spyro as a well known platforming mascot on the PlayStation alongside Crash Bandicoot, and two sequels, titled Spyro 2: Ripto's Rage! and Spyro: Year of the Dragon, were later released for the PlayStation in 1999 and 2000, respectively. Although Insomniac gave up the development rights to the Spyro series following the third game, the success of the PlayStation titles lent itself to a continued series of games across various platforms. The game, alongside its two successors, was later remade as part of Spyro Reignited Trilogy in 2018.

Spyro the Dragon is a 3D platform game; Worlds consist of six dragon "home worlds", and a hidden flight stage that involves flying throughout an environment and destroying a number of objects. The levels in Spyro the Dragon are open ended, and they revolve around exploring and obtaining various collectible items to progress in the game. Each stage contains a number of crystallized dragons, whom Spyro must turn back to normal by locating and stepping on their statue bases. These dragons give the player advice on how to progress through the game, as well as their respective locations acting as save points after the dragon has been freed. Spyro has two main offensive moves, which are used to attack enemies as well as destroy certain objects: charging, in which Spyro sprints forward and rams into things with his head, and breathing fire. These attacks must be used appropriately for certain enemies and situations; for instance, some enemies carry fireproof metal armor, meaning that they can only be defeated by charging, while larger enemies can only be hit using fire breath, as they will immediately crush Spyro otherwise. Throughout the game, Spyro is accompanied by Sparx, a yellow dragonfly who protects Spyro from taking damage and serves as the player's system of health. Sparx's current health is represented by the color of his body; if Spyro is hurt by an obstacle, such as an enemy or by touching water, Sparx changes colors, with yellow, blue and green representing different subsequent amounts of withheld damage. If the player is damaged too many times, Sparx disappears, leaving Spyro vulnerable to losing a life if he is hurt again. Sparx can be rejuvenated by consuming butterflies, which are found by killing passive creatures such as sheep that roam throughout most levels. Sparx also helps Spyro collect items by retrieving any gems that Spyro passes by. One day, a TV interview with a pair of dragons from the Artisan realm catches the attention of Gnasty Gnorc, a powerful gnorc (half gnome and half orc) who was banished from the kingdom due to his abrasive demeanor and sent to an abandoned junkyard, which he renames to "Gnasty's World". The idea of a game about a dragon was introduced by Insomniac artist Craig Stitt, who suggested the concept out of his own interest in the mythical creature. Mark Cerny, an executive at Universal Interactive Studios and the game's producer, advised that the team create a game with more mass market appeal, as the demographics of the PlayStation were decreasing and its selection of children's titles were greatly outnumbered by the Nintendo 64's. In game dialogue was written by Peter Kleiner, and Spyro's character was designed by Charles Zembillas, who had previously done design work on Crash Bandicoot. Spyro was originally going to be green, but the developers worried he would blend in with grass, so they eventually changed him to purple. During development of Spyro, Insomniac had a very close relationship with Crash Bandicoot creator and fellow PlayStation developer Naughty Dog, who had their office located directly across the hall from theirs. The two developers frequently worked together, playing early builds of each other's games and later sharing game technology. As a result, a demo of Crash Bandicoot: Warped was hidden in Spyro, and vice versa. The game made extensive use of vertex shading to colour objects and provide light and shade with the smooth skies entirely reliant on the technique to depict clouds and other distant details without the use of textures. Base textures were intentionally kept relatively desaturated so as to prevent them from becoming oversaturated with use of the technique.

The game's music was composed and produced by Stewart Copeland, formerly the drummer for the British band The Police. Copeland was given early builds of the game's levels, which he played through to get a feel for them and come up with a fitting composition. He was also given game cheats such as invincibility so that he could have an easier time clearing levels. Copeland wrote four songs per day, all of which he further developed and polished the next day. Alazraqui did not continue in this role after the first game, being replaced by Tom Kenny for the sequels.

Spyro the Dragon was first unveiled at the 1998 E3 convention in Atlanta, Georgia. According to Sony Computer Entertainment's American Marketing Vice President, Andrew House, at a press party in Las Vegas, the game, along with other upcoming 4th quarter PlayStation releases such as Crash Bandicoot: Warped, A Bug's Life, and Rugrats: Search for Reptar, was part of a general effort to appeal to a wider demographic of younger audiences and provide more games suited for younger players to compete with the Nintendo 64, which had a far larger library of children's titles at the time compared to the PlayStation's largely adult centric demographic. An advertisement campaign was pushed to promote the game, featuring a character from the game, Toasty the Sheep, protesting against the title character's actions against sheep. The campaign included TV commercials, featuring an actor in an animatronic costume of Toasty, and a promotional website, sheepagainstspyro. com. On August 16, 1999, SCEA announced that the game would be included as a part of their "Greatest Hits" lineup of budgeted releases alongside other games such as Crash Bandicoot: Warped, Gran Turismo, Cool Boarders 3, and Twisted Metal III, and alongside the announcement of a price drop for the PlayStation console to compete with the highly anticipated launch of the Sega Dreamcast. On December 12, 2012, the game was digitally re released to the PlayStation Store together with Spyro 2: Ripto's Rage! and Spyro: Year of the Dragon. A remake of the game, alongside its two sequels, was included as a part of the Spyro Reignited Trilogy compilation for the PlayStation 4 and Xbox One in November 2018, followed by the Nintendo Switch and Microsoft Windows in September 2019.

According to Spyros developers, sales were initially slow at the game's launch but quickly began picking up following the holiday season. At the 1999 Milia festival in Cannes, it took home a "Gold" prize for revenues above €20,000,000 in the European Union during the previous year. Spyro the Dragon received a "Gold" award from the Verband der Unterhaltungssoftware Deutschland (VUD) by the end of August 1999, for sales of at least 100,000 units across Germany, Austria and Switzerland. By December 1999, the game had sold 1,000,000 copies in North America. As of 2007, the title had gone on to sell a total of nearly 5,000,000 units.

Spyro the Dragon currently holds a score of 85% at GameRankings, based on an aggregate of 18 reviews. Fielder spoke positively of Copeland's compositional work, calling it "wonderfully atmospheric."

The popularity of Spyro the Dragon helped to push the character of Spyro as a popular platforming mascot for the PlayStation alongside Crash Bandicoot. It was the first game in what became an expansive video game series, spawning 2 more platforming sequels for the PlayStation – Ripto's Rage and Year of the Dragon – released in 1999 and 2000, respectively. As of the year 2000, the series had sold more than 3.2 million copies in the U. S. and over 4 million copies worldwide. Insomniac stopped developing the Spyro series after Year of the Dragon, as it finished off their 4 game contract with Universal Interactive. Despite this, the series was continued across various different developers, and shifted to several other platforms besides PlayStation. Spyro being their first considerable success, Insomniac went on to develop several other successful video game franchises, including the Ratchet & Clank series of platform games and the first person shooter series Resistance. The game's rendering system, new and unheard of at the time, has gone on to be used in several other 3D video games.