Spyro the Dragon
A cocky little purple dragon gliding and flame-breathing through bright pastel worlds with his dragonfly sidekick Sparx. Spyro was the PlayStation's other mascot platformer alongside Crash — collect gems, free trapped dragons, charge headfirst into everything.
Spyro the Dragon was developed by Insomniac Games and published by Sony Computer Entertainment for the PlayStation, launching in North America on September 9, 1998. The pitch was a colorful 3D platformer with a genuine sense of freedom — Spyro could glide across open, vividly colored worlds — and the game earned particular praise for its music, composed by Stewart Copeland, the drummer of The Police.
Sales started slow but built over the holidays, and Spyro became one of the PlayStation's signature mascots. The defining run was the original Insomniac trilogy — Spyro the Dragon (1998), Spyro 2: Ripto's Rage! (1999), and Spyro: Year of the Dragon (2000) — which together sold several million copies and made the smug little dragon a fixture of late-'90s gaming.
Insomniac finished its contract and moved on after 2000 (later creating Ratchet & Clank), and the franchise passed through a string of other studios with diminishing returns. Spyro was reinvented as the toys-to-life series Skylanders in 2011, and the beloved originals returned in the Spyro Reignited Trilogy remaster in 2018.
Similar items
Crash Bandicoot
The spinning, crate-smashing marsupial who became the PlayStation's unofficial mascot and Mario's cheeky rival. Naughty Dog's 1996 platformer sent Crash bouncing through jungle levels and dodging boulders — and defined a generation's PS1 afternoons.
![Video thumbnail — Playstation 9 - 2000 PS2 Commercial [High Quality]](https://i.ytimg.com/vi/NyvD_IC9QNw/maxresdefault.jpg)
PlayStation 2
The black rectangle that invaded living rooms worldwide as an affordable DVD player and happened to pack the best game library ever assembled. With over 155 million sold—the best-selling console of all time—the PlayStation 2 didn't just dominate gaming; it became the era's default home entertainment hub.
Donkey Kong Country
The SNES game whose pre-rendered graphics looked so impossibly '3D' that kids begged for a turn just to see it. Donkey Kong and Diddy rolled through mine carts and jungle levels in a technical showcase that felt like the future.
Gex
The wisecracking, TV-obsessed gecko who cracked one-liners while wall-crawling through the 'Media Dimension.' In the era of mascot wars — Mario, Sonic, Crash — Gex was the snarky one, voiced by an actual stand-up comedian. It's tail time.