YMMV / Spyro the Dragon (1998)

• Accidental Innuendo: One of the bosses is named Blowhard. Though a blowhard is a term for a bore and a rambler, it can be a word lost on younger gamers unfamiliar with the term.
• Alternative Character Interpretation: The dragons can be released in any order and there is no clear hierarchy among the dragon realms in the games besides the different worlds. However, the first dragons you are likely to encounter — Nestor, Titan, Cosmos, Bruno, and Lateef — are referred to on fan wikis as possible "leaders" due to their Mr. Exposition roles. Toys For Bob seems to think so too, considering they're the adult dragons present on the "Everybody's Here" artwork for the Spyro Reignited Trilogy (check the "Characters" page to see it). Even with this, the dragons chosen to represent the Artisans in Gnasty's worlds are actually Delbin and Tomas, Magnus represents the Peace Keepers instead of Titan, and Cleetus represents the Beast Makers instead of Bruno.
• Anti-Climax Boss: Gnasty Gnorc. His attacks will only hit Spyro if he's standing still. After the key to lower his platform is grabbed from a thief, the rest of the fight is spent chasing him with almost no real resistance, and he goes down in just two hits.
• Awesome Music:
  • Fans of the first game agree almost unanimously that the soundtrack was EPIC, which makes a lot of sense because the composer was none-other than Stewart Copeland, the drummer of The Police!
  • Special mention goes to the theme for Jacques, titled "Rain"; it's on "The Stewart Copeland Anthology" CD and is the only track from Spyro on the whole album. (Unless you count "Bill is Dead", the main theme from the film The Pallbearer, which is based off the Lofty Castle theme.)
• Awesome Video Game Levels: Gnove Cove, being the only level with exploding barrels to knock into enemies and blow them up with. It's so awesome, the developers carried the gameplay mechanic on to the sequels.
• Broken Base: While everyone agrees that Tree Tops is That One Level, opinion is divided on whether it's a challenging but fair level that rewards good gameplay and gives you an opportunity to push the supercharge ability to its limits, or whether it's an unnecessary difficulty spike with the hardest routes being far too convoluted and impossible to figure out without looking them up.
• Catharsis Factor: Haunted Towers is full of Ghost Armors that cannot be destroyed without a Super Flame, which are temporarily granted to you throughout the level. Once you reach the secret area, you have to deal with a relatively hard area where you have to run past a bunch of them before they activate and block your path. If you get past all of them? You get granted a PERMANENT Super Flame (for the level) which you promptly use to get rid of them and other annoying Ghost Armors that gave you a hard time throughout the level.
• Demonic Spiders:
  • The High Caves Metalback Spiders are big, lightning fast and can't be handled normally, meaning Spyro can only beat them through a supercharge from a ramp or a superflame from a fairy.
  • The Attack Frogs in Misty Bog have deceptively long range thanks to their tongues and are also often found in groups, meaning they can easily catch Spyro off guard if he tries charging through them. It's necessary to be both fast and accurate with his flames in order to get out unscathed.
  • The Ghost Armors of the Haunted Towers are similar to the Metalback Spiders in the sense that they can only be beaten by supermoves. Their range is huge thanks to their size and getting caught near them without any supermove can be painful.
  • The penultimate level, Twilight Harbor, has some tough enemies, but the Survivalists take the cake due to some ridiculous Hitbox Dissonance coming from their grenades. The machine gun-wielding Commandos aren't much better due to their tendency to attack in groups and open fire on Spyro when he's well out of attack range.
  • God may help you if you try getting through the Demon Dogs and Armor Turtles of Dark Passage without taking care of the Lamp Fools first.
• Difficulty Spike: The Beast Makers world is considerably more difficult than any of the other worlds before it. It has a higher completion requirement (50 out of 58 dragons you're able find at that point) and it's the second world where you cannot skip without playing through at least one level (Artisans being the first). It also contains some rather hard levels in the game by that point, with notable mentions going to Misty Bog (tough enemies followed by healing butterflies being scarce), and Tree Tops (getting 100% Completion requires solving some tricky puzzles involving the supercharge ramps).
• Fan Nickname
  • The "Bog" in Misty Bog is often jokingly replaced with anything that rhymes with bog. Due to the enemies in the level, the most common one is "Misty Frog".
  • There's a cavern full of enemies in Misty Bog that speedrunners refer to as "Guantanamo".
• First Installment Wins: Even disregarding the varying opinions on what came after the original classic trilogy, there are those who greatly preferred the first game's platforming-focused gameplay over the more mini-game and Gameplay Roulette focus Spyro 2 and Spyro 3 would adopt, with the level designs of the latter two feeling more linear and less interesting to traverse as a byproduct.
• Goddamned Bats:
  • The Guard Dogs in Toasty's level can surprise beginner players who become too used with the One-Hit Kill nature of the enemies so far at that point.
  • Chances are that you'll be cursing the Green Druids of Magic Crafters and their annoying earth-moving magic halfway through the Hub Level.
  • The thieves are the bane of players going for 100% Completion. While they can't harm Spyro directly, trying to retrieve the Egg MacGuffin from them requires the player to chase them through difficult sections of the level, and they are fast.
• Goddamned Boss: While Gnasty is by no means hard, the fight is far longer than any other boss in the game, consisting of four separate chase sequences, two against thieves and two long ones against Gnasty. The only remotely difficult part of this is the last part, but since there aren't any dragons in the level, dying at all will take you back to the very start of the fight.
• Heartwarming Moments:
  • "Looks like I've got some things to do." For all his Bad Butt attitude in the first game, when Gnasty's turned the rest of the dragons to crystal, the first thing Spyro does is decide he's going to save them and get revenge on Gnasty.
    Spyro: Where's Gnasty Gnorc? I'll torch him!
  • Spyro can also be surprisingly attentive to the dragons he rescues and takes all the help he can get. By the later stages, he's actively asking for their advice in some cases.
  • Lateef is the first dragon you re-rescue in Gnorc Gnexus. He's also the single most appreciative AND the only one who has any faith in Spyro as the hero.
• Hilarious in Hindsight:
  • Some of the Dragons sound exactly like Hunter from Spyro 2: Ripto's Rage!. They even have stripes on their necks.
  • Mazi sounds exactly like Neo Cortex; they're both played by Clancy Brown and were released about the same time.
• Hype Backlash: While no one is going to say that the original game is bad, some fans and even critics in recent years are not at all convinced that the first Spyro has earned its reputation as one of the best 3D platformers ever made. While the soundtrack, atmosphere and general design are still praised, it is often pointed out that the game really suffers from a lack of variety, the combat can get very repetitive after a while, and it has many of the camera issues that are common to early 3D games, not to mention some rather unimpressive boss fights.
• It's Short, So It Sucks!: As impressive as the game was for its time, it will take only about five to six hours to complete.
• Memetic Mutation:
  • Thanks to Stewart Copeland's work in Wizard's Peak, you can expect everyone to point out that the level's song is almost identical to the theme of The Amanda Show.
  • Did you know Spyro used to be green, but they changed him to purple because he blended in with the grass? ^Explanation A relatively popular copypasta in Spyro speedrun streams.
• Memetic Psychopath: Lindar, the dragon who called Gnasty Gnorc "ugly" in the intro. A common joke is that none of the game's events would have happened if he hadn't insulted him on live television.
• Most Wonderful Sound:
  • The rattling sound the crystalized dragons make.
  • The gentle jingling of gems being collected is one of life's small pleasures.
  • The celebratory jingle that plays when an extra life-containing clam is cracked open.
• Once Original, Now Common: When it came out, this was the only game on the PS1 that offered an open 3D world with wraparound scenery; other games had to restrict the playing spaces or the camera. Making distant objects lose details allowed for much further draw distances than anything before. Today this approach is standard and new players are unlikely to notice the innovation.
• One-Scene Wonder: Some of the dragons, despite only appearing for a few seconds at most, are fondly remembered due to their designs, their advice, or some mildly memorable comedy.
• Strawman Has a Point: While it in no way justifies what he does, Gnasty is right to be angered when he sees one of the dragons calling him "simple" and "ugly" when he was mostly willing to leave the dragons alone (as evidenced by the fact that he had not used his crystal spell yet when he could have at any time). This is especially poignant considering he is clearly not "simple" at all, given his skills in magic.
• Suspiciously Similar Song: The music in the "Wizard's Peak" level sounds a lot like the opening theme of The Amanda Show. This is not a coincidence, as Stewart Copeland did both soundtracks.
• Sweet Dreams Fuel: There are two levels in the game with "Dark" in their name. Dark Passage in the second-to-last world is infamous for being Nightmare Fuel, but the first world gives us Dark Hollow, which is everything but what its name implies. The music alone feels like staying up late and slacking off during a summer night, and the rest of the level runs with that feeling.
• That One Level: Haunted Towers, where a supercharge through several metal doors leads to a room filled with more metal doors (you must run back up several times to re-Supercharge down into another door to open them all, or look up which door the fairy is behind and use the resulting superflame). One leads to a pool area with a ramp, implying there is some mythical way to Supercharge down the path, take a right, and somehow charge around the extremely narrow ramp and then jump to reach a hidden wall where a trapped Dragon and treasures are hidden. Said mythical way involves supercharging into the pool area, veering left (the ramp in that area is to fake you out!) and leaping off, landing on the next section which is an area you've already been in just getting to the supercharge, charging up that ramp, then leaping onto a hidden platform with a whirlwind. Guide Dang It! See it here. At least it's easier than Tree Tops.
  • As if that wasn't enough, once you're in the secret area, you must climb up the stairs to where the fairy is as quick as possible, or else the wizard will animate the armour in front of the door. Since the only way to destroy that armour is the fairy behind the door, you're left with not option but to kill Spyro to reset the armours.
• That One Puzzle: The final dragon in Tree Tops. The level itself is relatively short, if very easy to fall off of (being a Floating Continent-type level) with some mildly annoying enemies (the large ones have a somewhat wide-range kick, and the smaller ones throw banana bunch-like projectiles without any sound cues). To get everything though, you're gonna need to pull off some Guide Dang It!-y Super Charge maneuvers for this specific dragon, which involves going through several Super Charge ramps in a very incoherent manner and in a way that most players would never guess. Route is outlined here. Spyro even lampshades this by complaining to the dragon you find doing this route that he "could have found an easier spot to get stuck."
• That One Sidequest
  • Metalhead is probably the hardest level to achieve 100% completion for thanks to five hard-to-reach gems placed on a platform next to the level exit. What should be a simple glide from the platform adjacent to it is made unnecessarily hard by how far away the platforms are from each other — you must glide and land pinpoint at the edge of the platform or you will not make it. The European version fixes this by placing the gems on another platform, while the Reignited Trilogy slightly alters the architecture to make the jump a routine one.
  • The Flight levels either have no obvious optimal route to take, or have an incredibly tight time limit that leaves you with absolutely no room for error. Even with referring to video walkthroughs on YouTube, it's still no cakewalk. Night Flight is an exception as it is very straightforward and clearly intended to be the first Flight level to be encountered. Fortunately, the Flight levels in the two sequels (now referred to as 'Speedways') are slightly easier in comparison.
• Ugly Cute: Due to the graphical limitations of the time, many of the Gnorcs come across as this at times.
• Underused Game Mechanic: There are lots of spring chests and fan chests in the game. However, there's only one spring chest and one fan chest with a red gem in them, both found in Lofty Castle, while the only fan chest with a purple gem is found in Gnasty's Loot.

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