The humor is geared towards a young audience, but fans of the original franchise will still be delighted in re-experiencing the levels of their youth. The Reignited Trilogy has let me relive everything I loved about the Spyro games in updated graphics, joyously familiar but “reignited” music, and the 21st century. A nonverbal autistic boy found joy in a sassy purple dragon trying to save the future of his race, as his older sibling watched on. The longest sentence he has ever said-“I can’t believe you just did that!”-was because a family friend dove on-screen Spyro off a cliff and to his demise. We spent hundreds of dollars rebuying the trilogy, sometimes in a three-game case, sometimes separately. My brother and I would play the Spyro games together, me collecting all the gems, him killing all the monsters, and every time he was done with the games, he’d snap them in half.

Over the years, my attachment to the franchise-the first three games in particular, as the later ones I played were just… bad-has grown past nostalgia and into a symbol of my childhood. This may not be the moment I discovered Spyro for the first time, but I do remember holding this for-sale bundle in my hand and begging my mom to get it.

Spyro the dragon 4 2021