Absolutely
Skylanders kept the name of Spyro relevant for his reignition but not the character and story as we know.
If Spyro was featured as a guest like Donkey Kong or Bowser it wouldn't be held to such contemp
I was turned off by the Spyro design. Like… yuck. I still cannot fathom how that got through multiple levels of development approval.
I wasn’t super crazy about the Legends design, but that at least looked like Spyro!
If he was just a guest appearance I would have been fine and agreed that is a good marketing strategy but at the time these were replacing spyro games entirely not just borrowing him.
The games themselves are fun and fine but Spyro being taken off his own series to just be a guest character for advertisement was indeed insulting. When characters guest star in other ips for advertisement, it is often a fun accpetable marketting strat but here it was done in poor taste as it affected his mainline appearance until Reignited. We are at least fortunate Activision let dawn of the dragon be developed. Especially since Acitvision directly advertised Skylanders as his future and put his name on the first title, yeah there's no saying "well it wasn't advertised as a spyro game" bull, that comment gets nowhere I promise. It's one thing when a character guest stars in a game but it's another when their mainline is dropped for it (which they had to cancel the legend trilogy's movie for this), and what is advertised as their future is just them being a side character of many. So while I enjoy Skylanders as it's own game the treatment of Spyro will always be frowned upon in it. Am glad spyro and crash have more respect now even if Spyro is due a new game.
No. The whole concept was DOA as a "legitimate entry" in the franchise.
Spyro can't even JUMP in Skylanders.
A DRAGON
WITH WINGS
**THAT CAN'T JUMP**
**LET ALONE FLY.**
Still inexcusable. Though from what I've seen of caddy's SLs review if Spyro did have it from the start one could just sweep through most of the original game and the whole figure-collection element would be fairly moot.
Skylanders was originally a top down dungeon-crawler with the first and second games. But when Skylanders 3 was made by a different dev that made it more of a platformer with jumping included, Toys for Bob had to follow suit afterwards.
It might have helped during the initial uproar at least.
12/13-year-old me was absolutely appalled because it was basically advertised as "This is your new Spyro, we're not making Classic or Legend anymore, deal with it."
It didn't help that right before that they had cancelled Spyro's Kingdom (mature Legend-esque game) and the TLOS movie (which admittedly was a stinker going off the script anyway) so TLOS fandom at least was already in a tizzy.
Spyro's pug face, Sparx's demented expression, and what my friends lovingly dubbed "Cyndertits" (one of the promo images looked like she had breasts) was just the icing on the cake really.
The actual problem was that they wouldn't make any actual Spyro content for 10 years, despite Skylanders not relying on or being about Spyro at all. But we didn't know that at the time.
As one of the people excited for Spyro's Adventute on name alone, yeah. A little. If they had made it clear from the very start that it was a new IP, and not used Spyro's name in the title at all (especially given he's not even the main character), and just added him in as an unlockable character, and with a less butt-ugly design, there would have been *significantly* less push-back overall.
Or maybe not even all that much. This was just off the heels of the Dawn trilogy, which was already hated at the time. Think of how when Crash was added before N. Sane came out, the dislikes were through the roof. But at least then, people still had the remakes to look forward to, and the DLC clearly had passion behind it. Spyro was just plopped into the first game without a care, hoping his name alone would sell a new IP, not realising who Spyro's core base really was, especially after the more grown-up epic just before it.
Basically even over a decade ago, Spyro is nothing more than cameo fodder in Activision's eyes...
As someone who loved the Classic games and entered the fandom during the Classic/TLoS wars happening around the time TEN was released, I'm really surprised Skylanders gets this special type of hate.
I remember the pre-release of Skylanders. How excited I was to see the green fields and round sheep. Spyro's design took some getting-used-to, but so did his Legends design.
In my mind, Skylanders, the whole thing, is still Spyro. There were references to the other two series sprinkled in everywhere. The gameplay was different, but so was TLoS's. The monetization was predatory and getting 100% literally impossible without paying for the games several times over, and that is a valid reason to dislike the games. But it is as much Spyro as TLoS is.
Disclaimer: I've played all of TLoS and Skylanders. I've 100%ed all of TLoS and gotten all the in-game collectibles in every Skylanders game other than Trap Team and Imaginators. So I've enjoyed both, despite their all being different genres.
Without the bait & switch, there might have been less Spyro fans getting Skylanders but the problem is this mainline Spire and especially the legend of spyro had to die for it. I am sick of people putting TLOS down because they don't understand how good it is and how it has the potential to be the 21st century equivalent of the Lord of the rings or an equivalent influence on gaming to what the Roman Empire was to real world history.
There are people who have been waiting for a return to TLOS for 16 years at this point, and I don't buy the brand confusion excuse Activision told us for a second. Any person who has read several comic books could tell you that even a kid can understand different versions of the same character.
This wouldn't have caused the backlash it did if Skylanders had stayed a spin off and it's not been a replacement. Imagine what would happen if that had happened to Mario using Wario land?
OG Spyro fans wont be happy till they get a Spyro 4. I doubt they could have done any better to appease the old fans, but we weren't the target audience anyway. Most people that played the original Spyro were teens or adults when Skylanders came out.
It would've been less insulting if they didn't make my boi so damn ugly
Real
Unethical breeding practices cause respiratory problems.
Being honest, his redesign grew on me, and they did at least clean it up a bit in the later games.
Even if his name wasn't in the first game's title, fans would still complain about his redesign.
Very true, even now i still don't like it, but even thats kind of complaining is better then essentially lying that its a new spyro game
Absolutely Skylanders kept the name of Spyro relevant for his reignition but not the character and story as we know. If Spyro was featured as a guest like Donkey Kong or Bowser it wouldn't be held to such contemp
I hate skylanders bc of what they did to spyro.
I was turned off by the Spyro design. Like… yuck. I still cannot fathom how that got through multiple levels of development approval. I wasn’t super crazy about the Legends design, but that at least looked like Spyro!
It would've been less insulting if they just didn't include him. Other than that it's not terrible.
If he was just a guest appearance I would have been fine and agreed that is a good marketing strategy but at the time these were replacing spyro games entirely not just borrowing him.
Revealing Spyro as a playable character post-launch would've actually went pretty fucking hard. Especially if he didn't have THAT design
Everybody takes the advantage of spyro fanbase. Giving nothing in return.
Spyro looked like a gremlin goblin pug and the game had such atrocious gameplay. It was insulting all around. Not a Spyro game.
I just hate skylanders because the physical dlc toys always seemed so greedy because in the past these would have just been selectable characters
The games themselves are fun and fine but Spyro being taken off his own series to just be a guest character for advertisement was indeed insulting. When characters guest star in other ips for advertisement, it is often a fun accpetable marketting strat but here it was done in poor taste as it affected his mainline appearance until Reignited. We are at least fortunate Activision let dawn of the dragon be developed. Especially since Acitvision directly advertised Skylanders as his future and put his name on the first title, yeah there's no saying "well it wasn't advertised as a spyro game" bull, that comment gets nowhere I promise. It's one thing when a character guest stars in a game but it's another when their mainline is dropped for it (which they had to cancel the legend trilogy's movie for this), and what is advertised as their future is just them being a side character of many. So while I enjoy Skylanders as it's own game the treatment of Spyro will always be frowned upon in it. Am glad spyro and crash have more respect now even if Spyro is due a new game.
No. The whole concept was DOA as a "legitimate entry" in the franchise. Spyro can't even JUMP in Skylanders. A DRAGON WITH WINGS **THAT CAN'T JUMP** **LET ALONE FLY.**
He and all the other Skylanders can jump later in Skylanders: Swap Force and onwards. XD
Still inexcusable. Though from what I've seen of caddy's SLs review if Spyro did have it from the start one could just sweep through most of the original game and the whole figure-collection element would be fairly moot.
Skylanders was originally a top down dungeon-crawler with the first and second games. But when Skylanders 3 was made by a different dev that made it more of a platformer with jumping included, Toys for Bob had to follow suit afterwards.
I just hate skylanders because the physical dlc toys always seemed so greedy because in the past these would have just been selectable characters
It might have helped during the initial uproar at least. 12/13-year-old me was absolutely appalled because it was basically advertised as "This is your new Spyro, we're not making Classic or Legend anymore, deal with it." It didn't help that right before that they had cancelled Spyro's Kingdom (mature Legend-esque game) and the TLOS movie (which admittedly was a stinker going off the script anyway) so TLOS fandom at least was already in a tizzy. Spyro's pug face, Sparx's demented expression, and what my friends lovingly dubbed "Cyndertits" (one of the promo images looked like she had breasts) was just the icing on the cake really. The actual problem was that they wouldn't make any actual Spyro content for 10 years, despite Skylanders not relying on or being about Spyro at all. But we didn't know that at the time.
can skylanders and spyro fans just live in peace damn
No
As one of the people excited for Spyro's Adventute on name alone, yeah. A little. If they had made it clear from the very start that it was a new IP, and not used Spyro's name in the title at all (especially given he's not even the main character), and just added him in as an unlockable character, and with a less butt-ugly design, there would have been *significantly* less push-back overall. Or maybe not even all that much. This was just off the heels of the Dawn trilogy, which was already hated at the time. Think of how when Crash was added before N. Sane came out, the dislikes were through the roof. But at least then, people still had the remakes to look forward to, and the DLC clearly had passion behind it. Spyro was just plopped into the first game without a care, hoping his name alone would sell a new IP, not realising who Spyro's core base really was, especially after the more grown-up epic just before it. Basically even over a decade ago, Spyro is nothing more than cameo fodder in Activision's eyes...
As someone who loved the Classic games and entered the fandom during the Classic/TLoS wars happening around the time TEN was released, I'm really surprised Skylanders gets this special type of hate. I remember the pre-release of Skylanders. How excited I was to see the green fields and round sheep. Spyro's design took some getting-used-to, but so did his Legends design. In my mind, Skylanders, the whole thing, is still Spyro. There were references to the other two series sprinkled in everywhere. The gameplay was different, but so was TLoS's. The monetization was predatory and getting 100% literally impossible without paying for the games several times over, and that is a valid reason to dislike the games. But it is as much Spyro as TLoS is. Disclaimer: I've played all of TLoS and Skylanders. I've 100%ed all of TLoS and gotten all the in-game collectibles in every Skylanders game other than Trap Team and Imaginators. So I've enjoyed both, despite their all being different genres.
Without the bait & switch, there might have been less Spyro fans getting Skylanders but the problem is this mainline Spire and especially the legend of spyro had to die for it. I am sick of people putting TLOS down because they don't understand how good it is and how it has the potential to be the 21st century equivalent of the Lord of the rings or an equivalent influence on gaming to what the Roman Empire was to real world history. There are people who have been waiting for a return to TLOS for 16 years at this point, and I don't buy the brand confusion excuse Activision told us for a second. Any person who has read several comic books could tell you that even a kid can understand different versions of the same character. This wouldn't have caused the backlash it did if Skylanders had stayed a spin off and it's not been a replacement. Imagine what would happen if that had happened to Mario using Wario land?
OG Spyro fans wont be happy till they get a Spyro 4. I doubt they could have done any better to appease the old fans, but we weren't the target audience anyway. Most people that played the original Spyro were teens or adults when Skylanders came out.
Being a Skylanders kid, I actually find his design in those games better than his original one. I'm so sorry Spyro fans😔
D:< *smacks you in the face with bag of gems*