Spyro at 25: Insomniac Games and Toys for Bob celebrate 25 years of Spyro the Dragon

13.09.2023 - 17:59 / blog.playstation.com / Ted Price / Toys For Bob / For Bob

On September 9 1998, Spyro the Dragon made his mischievous debut on the original PlayStation, capturing the hearts of gamers of all ages. To celebrate 25 years of Spyro, we sat down with both the original developers from Insomniac Games, as well as the team behind the remaster, Spyro Reignited Trilogyat Toys for Bob, to learn how the beloved dragon came to be.

Ted Price, President, Insomniac Games: We had just shipped our first game, Disruptor, and were brainstorming on what to do next. Our longtime partner and producer Mark Cerny pointed out that there was a notable vacuum in the family-friendly market on the PlayStation. Shortly afterward, Craig Stitt who had been creating environment art on Disruptor said, ‘I’ve always wanted to make a game featuring a dragon.’ And we were off to the races.

At the time, 3D platformers were still a relatively new genre, which led to a host of challenges Insomniac needed to tackle.

Brian Hastings, Head of Creative Strategy, Insomniac Games: From a gameplay perspective, our goals initially were just to figure out how to make 3D platforming gameplay work. It sounds straight-forward now, but back then we had never made one before and there were a lot of challenges to figure out. For instance, how to make fast movement work in 3D without giving players motion sickness, how to create intuitive controls in three-dimensional space without an analog stick, how to create platforming and combat challenges without the precise sense of distance you get from 2D, and just generally what kinds of metrics resulted in a fun level design space in 3D.

Many of the lessons learned from developing the original Spyro the Dragon trilogy would go on to influence future Insomniac titles, and aspects of the original level design tenets can be seen in Insomniac’s approach to exploration today.

Brian Hastings: Spyro has had a huge influence in our approach to exploration and discovery across all our games. In Spyro we learned the importance of creating a world where every part of it is memorable in some way and every secret nook is worth investigating. We’ve had that same attitude with all aspects of our games ever since. The best thing about this approach is that it empowers everyone at the company to find their own ways to add something special and meaningful to the parts of the game they’re working on.

While we look back at the original Spyro the Dragon title as a classic from the PlayStation 1 library, it was not an immediate success upon release. For a small developer working in an entirely new genre, Insomniac took risks in creating a new franchise, but it paid off as love of the Purple Dragon spread amongst PlayStation owners.

Ted Price: Frankly, we were surprised by Spyro’s success.