Spyro: Year of the Dragon is the follow up to the moderately successful Spyro 1 and 2. In case you haven’t played the other two games, you control Spyro, a purple dragon, but in this outing you can also control Sheila the kangaroo, Sgt. Byrd the flying penguin, Bentley the yeti (!), Agent 9 the monkey (he looks like something from Planet of the Apes) and even Spyro’s best buddy Sparx, all at different stages in the game. These extra characters certainly add a lot to the game, especially as Spyro, in my view, doesn’t really have enough moves. There are also tons of other non-playable characters that you can talk to, interact with, and even race against, throughout your adventure.

The aim of the game is to recover a brood of dragon eggs that have been stolen, and these eggs can be achieved in various ways. Some are easy to find, others are well hidden throughout the many, many levels, and others can be won by completing mini-games. These mini-games are brilliant and bring a lot of variety to the game – they include skateboarding (admittedly it’s quite simplistic), shooting galleries, boxing and the excellent speedway levels (races on land and in the air).

As I said before, there are loads of levels so getting all the eggs is a real challenge for any gamer. There are also thousands of crystals scattered about which you must collect to get play certain levels, and when you finally have all the eggs and crystals there is a super-secret bonus level to reward you – it’s well worth all the effort.

Spyro: Year of the Dragon succeeds where its predecessors failed, and in my view it is the best platform game available for the PlayStation. Admittedly, like all the PSX’s other platformers, it fails to match the amazing Mario 64 in terms of polish and invention, but is still a very worthwhile purchase. Heartily recommended!

(Sssshhhh! Don’t tell anyone, but if you do buy the game here’
s a tip: on the title screen hold L1 and R2, and then press  to access a secret playable demo of Crash Bash!)