10 Video Game Remakes & Remasters That Surpassed Expectations

Spyro the Dragon had a well received early career thanks to Insomniac Games, who would leave the purple fire breather behind in the PS2 era for fellow action platform heroes, Ratchet & Clank. Spyro would return in a number of sequels but most of them faltered in their attempts to rekindle the magic of his earliest adventures.

Enter Toys for Bob, the studio that had largely made a name for itself with the Skylanders series. There, they had originally used Spyro as a jumping off point for the rest of the toys to life franchise, but the spirit of the original platform games were largely left behind. By 2017, Activision officially put that series on hold, allowing Toys for Bob to focus on their Spyro remake instead.

What followed was a painstaking process, rebuilding every level of the three original PlayStation releases. Toys for Bob had to create their own technology called 'Spyro-scope' that allowed them to capture both geometry and enemy pathfinding directly from the original games instead of the unavailable source code.

Every artist then redesigned the various dragons, enemies and environments in a way that both paid homage and defined a new era for the purple fire breather.