A great gem of a game. The original Spyro is a really good game which is well worth checking out
The story goes that a character known as Gnasty Gnorc is turning all of the dragons in the dragon world to stone and stealing all their treasure and dragon eggs. Spyro wasn't turned into stone and so runs off to save the day!
There are six main worlds in Spyro. Each of which contain three standard levels, a flight stage and a boss. Spyro uses his flame breath, charging and gliding abilities to get through the game.
You run around the home world freeing all of the trapped stone dragons you can and picking up as many gems as you can. The standard levels are quite small, but do offer branching pathways for you to explore and collect more gems and free more dragons. There are some sweet platform sections and interesting gimmicks in the levels too. Of particular interest is the "Super Charge" zones, which allow you to zoom through the level and use your super speed to reach new places. In some of the levels you can also recover dragon eggs by chasing little blue men around, if you can catch up to them and flame them you'll receive the egg.
In addition to standard stages there are also flight stages. In these Spyro has unlimited flight and must fly around an area destroying / flying through all eight of four objects in the are within the time limit. Objects include giant rings, arches, treasure chests and lanterns.
And finally we come to bosses. They don't really feel like bosses. More like shorter levels, but they are fun. You do all the standard stuff until you reach the boss. Bosses are really easy, they normally amount to just dodging for a little bit, then launching your attack. And then they will run off to a differant area and you have to hunt them down. Rinse and repeat.
Though very simple and lacking in challenge, overall Spyro's game play is very fun and works very well. It is one of the better games available for the PS1.
Graphically for the time the game looks great. The animations are cool and the environments are nice. The game is very bold and colourful. Musically, it has some pretty good tracks. All nice and upbeat and care free sounding.
The original Spyro is a classic gem of a game, which I highly recommend. It's short, sweet and simple. It's game play and charm make it one of the most recommendable titles on the PS1 and it is still highly entertaining today.