What a world we live in, ladies and gentlemen. A few years ago, Crash Bandicoot and Spyro the Dragon were nothing more than faded mascots of a long lost era. Fast forward to today, and we now find ourselves facing the very real possibility of a remastered Spyro trilogy coming to PS4, hot off the heels of last year’s Crash Bandicoot N.Sane Trilogy, which sold like hot cakes and is probably the reason why the little purple dragon is making his comeback.
According to a new report on Kotaku, publisher Activision and developer Vicarious Visions (the same team behind the Crash Bandicoot remaster) are currently working on a Spyro the Dragon Trilogy remaster, which is apparently set to launch on PlayStation 4 this summer and will be officially announced as soon as next month. Considering that September of this year will be Spyro’s 20th anniversary, all current bets are on a release sometime during that month.
The report states that the remaster will feature the first three games in the franchise; Spyro the Dragon, Ripto's Rage!, and Year of the Dragon, and all will receive a complete visual overhaul with new assets, cinematics, lighting effects, and more.
Mechanical updates are also apparently being made for the games, which originally released for the PlayStation in 1998, 1999, and 2000 respectively, such as a new save feature to bring it more in line with contemporary gaming.
Once a proverbial PlayStation icon, Spyro’s recent gaming history hasn’t been a pretty one. After being acquired by Activision in 2008 (following a poorly received reboot trilogy), he quickly become a side-kick to his own show with Activision’s hugely popular Skylanders toys-to-life franchise. Since then, he’s been largely ignored despite an active community of fans who grew up with the original platformer series on PS1.
The same story went for Crash Bandicoot, but the fact that the N.Sane Trilogy sold over 2.5 million copies last year (as a PS4 exclusive, no less), has clearly not gone unnoticed by Activision which, if this report is to believed, is now resurrecting another 90’s icon for modern audiences.
If Vicarious Visions is able to bring the same level of respect and attention to detail to this as it did with the Bandicoot, then this could well be the return of Spyro that we’ve all been patiently waiting for. But one burning question remains.... Will Elijah Wood be back in the sound booth to lend his ingenuous tones to the purple dragon he first played all those years ago? We’ll apparently find out next month.
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