Why were PS1 Spyro games so soulful?
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Why were PS1 Spyro games so soulful?
Why were PS1 Spyro games so soulful?
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Gotta have a distinct art direction to mask all those polygons.
Putting color theory to use
Too bad the remakes forgot everything that made the originals feel so cozy.
wut? an interesting post on Ganker? thank you so much
This picture always comes up in the topics talking about Spyro's skyboxes so it's not surprising to see it again.
That's why.
>Duplicate file exists.
This is why
meanwhile shit like banjo kazooie was just pure ugly BRIGHT COLORS slop with no thought put into it whatsoever
Nice
When and why did game devs stop using saturated colors?
Brown and bloom era killed it for good.
Now everything has to look "realistic" which is usually more muted in color.
Its gotten to the point we have to cover shit in bright yellow paint because environments have gotten so muddy and noisy.
Hey always had nice skyboxes
these are not textures btw,
they are meshes and achieve the look just with vertex placement and color
love masterful shit like this
I only remember seeing them in Spyro and Homeworld, with Catalysm having some of its own feature lightning strikes in the backgrounds.
Crash 3 and CTR use them a bit IIRC.
show me
Very nice
2 and 3 just used the leftover soul from the first (It had a LOT to spare). Great game of course but lots of recycled skyboxes.
>Great game of course but lots of recycled skyboxes.
bad why?
Yeah, Insomniac peaked with Spyro. I read some crazy interview where the devs lamented the fact Spyro can't use guns - because he doesn't have hands. I got the impression they kind of detested core Spyro gameplay, and honestly it's already apparent in the sequels. All the minigames, alternate fire modes, other characters to play as, anything to get away from the "boring basic Spyro gameplay".
That makes sense considering they went on to make Ratchet & Clank shortly after
spyro was perfectly fine for a one off game, but there was no reason to turn it into a long ass franchise. it got repetitive very quickly
ratchet had a much higher long term potential as a franchise, and it showed
I do believe that the first game is the best, but I love the full PS1 trilogy nonetheless. Spyro 2 in particular has a metric boatload of soul.
Fell of like a brick the second the fourth game came out, though. Should have known when to stop.
Why? It's a business. Of course a fourth one would be made.
Agent 9 is basically just a beta version of ratchet.
What's weird is that they had strafing for Agent 9, got rid of it in Ratchet 1, and then brought it back for Ratchet 2 onwards.
There is strafing in Ratchet 1, it's bound to l2/r2
I'm pretty sure the l2/r2 strafing wasn't added until Ratchet 2.
I know about the Thruster Pack strafing, but that's so useless I never use it when I replay Ratchet 1.
I actually believe the Thruster Pack strafing is fine once you get used to it; but admittedly it still sucks despite that and I don't blame anyone for disregarding it entirely.
I think the main problem with it is that I don't think you can jump while using it.
Big thing is that Heli-pack jumps are just so much more satisfying to do. i only equip thruster when strictly necessary.
RC1 lets you chain a high jump into a long jump with the thruster pack, I loved doing that. I don't know why the sequels got rid of that, it doesn't seem that much more OP than the heli pack.
Also I liked how TOD let you equip the hydro pack and it let you do jumps as if it were a thrust pack, it looked cool.
>got rid of it in Ratchet 1
It's still in Ratchet 1, you just have to play through more than half of the fricking game to unlock it which is equally moronic and the strafe function feels clunky once you do get it.
Insomniac even had the choice to continue making Spyro but chose not to, unlike ND. They were sick of him at that point.
If you've ever seen the developer commentary youtube lets play of the Ratchet games they even mention there that they were getting fricking SICK of working on Ratchet by the time they started working on Deadlocked because Ratchet was all they were doing at that point.
What did you expect from a bunch of Doomgays who started their company with an FPS. But hey, at least they took some cool ideas from DOS shooters of the era like the decoy glove (DN3D's HoloDuke) and RYNO (DOOM's BFG).
i swear to God there's DNA in Spyro of levels the devs would have made for doom or quake, especially the latter
just the way they designed their big castles and hallways and stuff
>Great game of course but lots of recycled skyboxes.
I think there were way more recycled skyboxes in Spyro 3 than 2, if I remember right.
Forced art style
they knew they needed to hire a good art team to make up for the terrible gameplay and level design.
>Working under technical restrictions but still pushing the envelope to make it look good and stand out
>Simple platforming that just works
>Enemies interact with each other
>Stewart Copeland was playing the levels he was writing music for
>Inter-office competition/cooperation with another team working on another game if the the Crash tie-ins are anything to go by
The game may make me nauseated when I play it now, but shut up, it's great.
You forgot
>The devs made what would become an industry standard because fog obscuring the levels would be cancerous for what they wanted to accomplish and also didn't want obnoxious pop in
We aren't getting this level of genius anymore.
Spyro 1 unironically has great level design. 2 and 3 decides to streamline it in favor of shitty gimmicks, with 2 in particular having borderline braindead levels with barely any platforming.
I unironically think reason why WoW looks so cartoonifed after WC3 (which was cartoony but not to that extent) is Spyro inspiration.
holy fuggin kino take me home back hngnnnnnnnnnn
>replayed Spyro 2 recently
>get to Autumn Plains
Like a warm blanket of nostalgia. It's still my favourite hub world out of all the Spyro games with Winter Tundra behind it
It was all kino and soul
Andy Dick?
is his mother’s maiden name seetheland?
big daddy stew killed every single track on those fricking disks holy shit no one will ever beat him
David Wise also said he played the levels before writing the music and i think more devs need to consider it
surname checks out
Best composer
because you played them when you were six
the ost was made by cheap trick
If I ever want to sound musically literate/cultured, I start naming obscure Jojo bands. It's never failed me
Worked their asses off around the tech limitations of the time
The enemy of art is the absence of limitations
Maybe thats one of the reasons why so many modern games feel so soulless?
Modern games have plenty of limitations but it's undoubtedly true they're not so much technological as social.
imagine the point going so far over your head and being autistic enough to erm actually a legend
Because to pull off games of that caliber you needed a frickton of passion and skill.
I'd argue this was true for most the big 5th gen games, some of the tech pulled off was insane for the time.
I was looking for Spyro inspired games and i came across what was originally supposed to be a fan game called: Spyro Myth's Awaken but it got a cease a desist letter, so it turned into it's own original thing with Zera: Myths Awaken. You might enjoy it.
https://cyreides.itch.io/zerama
Just thought I'd mention it if you want to play something like Spyro again. I know some of you may hate indie developers trying to copy other IP's, but in their defense they originally wanted it to be Spyro.
I think its unfortunately vaporware at this point.
Dev put out a post last year basically saying they don't even want to work on it anymore, then privated all their socials.
>Dev put out a post last year basically saying they don't even want to work on it anymore,
Really? that sucks.
Yup, 361 days ago:
https://cyreides.itch.io/zerama/devlog/421648/important-announcement
Shortly after this they privated all of their social media and dropped off the face of the earth.
he said on his discord couple days ago that he will continue working on the game
While not aesthetically similar, Demon's Turf has the same sort of feeling in motion as the Spyros.
On the devs discord he has been actve here and there, even recently posting stuff about Zera, so it doesn't seem completely dead. But seems to be one of those mentally ill devs who at any moment might explode the project
>Discord
anon...I...
Yes i'm a Discord chad, Discord is the only way i could bring you these hot news about the game Anon, without my Discord use you would be left in the dust without this up to date knowledge. You're welcome bro
Didn't he private his discord? Are you just lurking in it and he somehow hasn't noticed you yet?
Did he? No idea, i just joined it a long time ago just to see progress updates on it. I never post in Discord servers though
Yeah, he went radio silent on everything. Probably because he didnt want people asking about the game.
Its always frustrating when somebody is sitting on a goldmine of potential and just throws a fit over the success and admiration they get from it.
I mean considering the game looked like it was only 10% done and he's now "taking it easy" I really don't see how it will ever be finished at this rate.
that pumpkin looks frickin sick
This isn't for zera actually, he started making some spooky halloween themed game on the side where the protag is a ghost.
So when he says "this again" he doesn't even mean zera, he means the ghost game.
Yeah i forgot he had multiple projects as well (sure way for nothing to get finished) but he did mention he would go back to Zera as well
is it just me or do objects not stick out as much compared to spyro? looks like the foreground/background blends together a bit more in these pics
looks cool otherwise, would probably play this
The demo is out, so you can at least play that:
https://cyreides.itch.io/zerama
I think a lot of it has to do with the resolutions being downscaled, where most images of spyro will be in an emulator.
If you turn off the downscaling effect in game things pop a lot more.
Spyro has top tier atmosphere.
Higher res shot of Wizard Peak
I adore how often the skybox in 1 is designed to have elements of it (usually a big ol moon) line up above or between parts of the level as you traverse it. Must have taken a hell of a lot of work given the game dev process at the time.
what the frick, i JUST finished this level.
as usual, this whole board stalks the hell out of me and everything i do
i need one more egg for the final midday garden level
>Why were PS1 Spyro games so soulful?
i know exactly why, and i know everything surrounding the phenomena of soul versus soulless...but i won't tell anyone. because the realization itself is soulless and i do not want to ruin it for anyone...because for many of you, the only "soul" left in gaming is the feeling that some games have soul whereas other games are soulless..
i'm sorry fellas, but i just can't...i can't ruin it for you.
What's your favorite world aesthetically from the games? i love Dark Hollow a lot for some reason. Maybe it's just the music that carries it because it's not exactly the most crazy looking world compared to a lot of them. I believe every world in the game is quite consistent with the art direction.
Dark Hollow's music is god-tier for sure. I might agree that it's the most appealing atmosphere in the first game.
Second game is Autumn Plains homeworld for me. Very relaxing environment.
Third game is tough. I am drawn to Lost Fleet for some reason.
>Dark Hollow's music is god-tier for sure. I might agree that it's the most appealing atmosphere in the first game.
It's a shame that it's the shortest level in the entire trilogy.
Dark Hollow is great. Magic Crafters, High Caves, and Ice Cavern are also some major vibes. I need to go back and do another replay, it's been a minute.
And then I'll get back to work on learning game dev to make a game that has Spyro's gliding and exploration.
By "world" you mean actual world (as is hub level + all the levels connected to it) or just any level in general?
If I had to name one level per game from original trilogy:
>Dark Passage (even if I also enjoy Dark Hollow a lot)
>not a big fan of levels in 2, but the hubs are fantastic, so I'd say Winter Tundra
>Charmed Ridge (Fireworks Factory comes really close)
I was enticed with Toasty when I replayed Spyro back in 2003.
My family partially skipped the 4th gen, we only had an NES but our family/friends had either an SNES or Genesis.
Good taste, Toasty is great. Crossing the hill and seeing that flaming eclipse outlined by the level perfectly is 10/10.
Is spyro the best looking 5th gen game?
Silent Hill and MGS1 are.
NTA but Spyro looks much better than either of those. Now I do like them and they're impressive for their time, but Silent Hill relies heavily on fog and MGS characters' faces are much more fricked than anything in Spyro
MGS1 keeps the camera far away on purpose, once you get up close to the models they look like shit.
Characters don't even have eyes.
>Characters don't even have eyes.
They tried having characters with painted eyes and it looked even worse.
total synergy with all the concept art though, that's why it's the best one of the series. none of the other MGS games really try to capture that look except maybe 3 (the other best one)
>ps1
>5th gen
What
Whats not to get?
imagine not growing up during the 90s
you went from SNES to PS1 to PS2
Playing SMW then a few years later playing SM64 was wild. Zoomers will never experience tech leaps like that in their lives.
>Silent Hill 3 came out 4 years after Silent Hill 1
>games from 2019 look like they could have come out yesterday
>you went from SNES to PS1 to PS2
Assuming everyone here was born sometime around 1990-1992 of course. I'm 92 so that was the order for me. I even still got to experience the arcade era in my youth (which being closer to it's decline) so i think I've already experienced the best gaming has to offer and i feel almost bad for the younger people that never got my childhood. Of course people can still experience that now, but the experience will never be the same. Smart phones changed a lot of things about accessibility and the same kind of excitement isn't there.
Crash 2 and 3.
Although they kinda cheat a little bit due to the way the camera works.
I can't really choose between Spyro 3, Crash 3 and Gran Turismo 2.
Xenogears
And Tekken 3
I don't know how this game does it, but it finds some way to make generic fantasy themes very aesthetically pleasing. Sort of like a fever dream.
Hardware limitations may have very well factored into it.
Another shot of Terrace Village.
Limitation breeds innovation
Tree Tops
did you make these?
Look at how majestic this shit looks. It's amazing to me, the only game i think that comes close to matching Spyro's atmosphere was probably Unreal.
Another shot. I'd need to stop posting because I'll just end up posting the whole game. It's really that hard for me to think of bad worlds.
i like the schizo mix of storybook fantasy architecture with rivets, metal, and pipes overlapping and replacing it, the smokestacks on the castle turrets in particular are genius
very quake-like
This looks to be the same skybox, just slightly different coloration i think. Also looks great here as well.
have you guys noticed that games, at least western AAA ones, have totally abandoned beautiful skies?
you never seem to see powerful sunsets or pink cirrus skies or anything like that anymore
what a shame
Hell the remakes abandoned the colorful skies.
The west has an obsession with "realism" to the point that even their fantasy games have to adhere to it. Even creative devs like the banjo creators slipped backed into this mindset for tooie and made everything muddy and dark.
MAD MAX has a strong blue looking sky, contrasting nice with the desert
Still laughing that Toys For Bob interpreted this gorgeous sunset lake as a massive field of lava initially.
And there are people who defend(ed) it. Never underestimate how low people's standards are.
As a kid I always wanted to swim in the water of Magic World.
finally a based spyro thread, the first one is a masterpiece and not just because of stewart copeland's soundtrack
how does the spyro sky compare with pic related sky?
Giants Citizen Kabuto does have good atmosphere, but i still prefer Unreal over it. That's more the game that could give Spyro a run for it's money in the whole dreamlike stuff.
Wow, the cover art on this is a fricking awful choice.
Doesn't do the game justice at all, I wonder how much that hurt sales.
PvZ GW2 has some surprisingly beautiful skyboxes
Got Spyro's skyboxes (mostly) working in Unity for a project of mine a few months ago, made a pack in case some other amateur dev / modder want them: https://files.catbox.moe/pqf4yp.unitypackage
I'm still surprised how hard it is to find good-looking cartoonish/fantastical skyboxes. You got fricking billions realistic ones that all look the same tho.
Unf.
Cool, would you be willing to put it up on github?
that's neat but now you've gotta figure out how to do actual vertex shaded skies instead of a projected texture
... not sure what you mean, Anon.
Those *are* vertex shaded meshes. Those domes where literally ripped from the game - just with some switcheroo on data channels to make them compatible with modern vertex color shaders.
That's actually a good idea. Will do.
Still need to find an elegant fix for stuff like some stars and moons apparently expecting inverted rendering order or something.
>That's actually a good idea. Will do.
>Still need to find an elegant fix for stuff like some stars and moons apparently expecting inverted rendering order or something.
Thanks, when you say inverted rendering order do you mean they are rendering behind the dome when they should be infront of it?
if so it just sounds like you have to manually go in and adjust the render order of your material.
Unity renders higher numbered stuff first, but spyro may have done it backwards.
Yeah. Some "objects" are placed just slightly away from the main mesh. It's still a single mesh & single material, so with z-ordering they end up hidden as the camera is expected to be somewhere near the center of the dome.
Not exactly an impossible problem but since I didn't needed those specific skyboxes I just never bothered. Will try to find something foolproof for when I make a Github version.
Sounds like you'll probably just need some way to slice them into their own mesh so they get their own material.
I guess if the bowls are perfect circles you can do some wizardry to find the radius, then anything not in the radius would be a star/moon/whatever.
But I think the easier way is to just disconnect them in blender manually or something.
Nevermind, turn out I should have tried just a bit harder the first time.
Fix involved setting the mesh as "always render" to basically disable it's internal z-culling, then manually force them earlier in the render queue so everything else can override them "as normal".
It's not as elegant as I would have liked, and will definitively cause weird interactions if your project has already put some fingers in the render order system, but that's probably going to be as foolproof as it get - bar completely revamping the original meshes.
Nice, I didn't know about the always render thing.
Idk if people have mucked up their rendering and break it then it's not really your fault, thats on them for changing things.
>Those *are* vertex shaded meshes. Those domes where literally ripped from the game
fuuuUUUCK, egg on my face
These are really good, they remind me of 90s cartoons and point and click games
They were aesthetically pleasing but the map design is honestly not that great. Like compare a spyro map to Mario 64, ape escape, or banjo kazooie. Honestly even Croc was more interesting.
Spyro maps peaked in 1. With the kit they gave him, it made more sense for Spyro games to be focused on exploration. Searching the map for treasure, using gliding to cross vast parts of the stage or get around tight corners.
Gonna save this for later. Planning to do a 3D platformer in Unity way down the line.
Theres a program some guy made forever ago that lets you make your own skyboxes by the way. You can export them as obj files or just straight up cubemaps:
http://www.spyrofanworks.com/tools/skyboxeditor
Holy shit that's cool
Downloading that to play around with later, but thank you for bringing it to my attention
On further inspection the link on his youtube video is borked.
This is apparently it but uploaded on romhacking.net, be aware however that I haven't tested it myself:
https://www.romhacking.net/utilities/1520/
Thanks for the link, I'd found that one after seeing the busted Youtube one. Thank god someone else had the foresight to save it there.
It does seem to blend a bit, but not in a bad way. More like it just flows?
>Like compare a spyro map to Mario 64
Spyro wins every time, Mario 64 has atrocious maps, they make zero sense both gameplay and theme wise
All the mascot games from that era were
I'm not sure what kinda soul this one had, but clearly it got involved in unholy rituals performed by an intern before ending in the game.
Bubsy 3D came out in 1996, so I think the developers just had no idea how 3D games were actually supposed to look and play like.
maximum untextured soul kino
Heaven, unironically.
God damn that skybox missing is exactly why im iffy about playing the remakes
People had souls back then. Now they don't.
>Emulation
They were color genius
Insomniac Games >>>>>>>>>>>>>> Naughty Dog
>pressing all the shoulder buttons in riptos rage will point sparks in the direction of the nearest piece of treasure
was so fricking happy when I got told about thhat
That's also in Spyro 3, but you have to unlock it by beating the second Sparx level.
One of my favorites, it's so uncharacteristic for Spyro
Ah yes, Spooky Swamp
Fun level with good music
But bad escort bit
Least impressive world in Spyro out of all 3 games?
That arabian nights one in 2
There's nothing to it and the minigames suck
Shady Oasis?
Remembered the name, it was Scorch
To be honest I think Spyro 2 had the weakest levels overall
Yeah, the bomber chasing minigame in that level is annoying.
I don't dislike Winter Tundra, but it does need more levels.
Yeah 2 had some really bland levels. I dread doing Idol Springs every time.
Scorch was cool because it was one of the rare levels not surrounded by a giant hole
No, it was surrounded by sand
So much better
It felt unique
Mystic Marsh
Mystic Marsh is an oddity. Great level in concept, but man it may be the most forgettable one in the entire game.
I assume by "world" you mean level?
Actually, I have almost the same answer for both cases - Winter Tundra for world (not the hubworld itself, but all of its levels are meh and only Mystic Marsh's fetch quest is alright) and Metropolis for level.
Molten Crater is a pretty stand out boring level to me, it's just a loop with minigames around it.
Music is good at least.
did enter the dragonfly make anyone else cry
yeah it made me cry about how shit it was
Back when I was a kid, I brought Enter the Dragonfly and DMC2 at the same time. That was a mistake.
No but it certainly was awful.
Enter the Dragonfly was the game that taught me to research the developer of a game before buying it. I got it for Christmas when I was 10 and I was so crushed.
my christmas was ruined too, if thats of any comfort
You have no fricking idea how psyched I was to see a new Spyro game on the PS2 when I rented it.
Old games have "soul" because they look unique. With every game having peak graphics and taking heavy inspiration from each other and real life everything just ends up looking samey => no soul and wonder.
This is actually pretty true.
OOT and banjo look very different despite both being on a console that was way more restricting graphically than the ps1.
I think you're on to something here.
I love this vibe so much. Someone tell me, how did they do it? How does one replicate that look?
First, you have to be a classically trained artist.
i recently played Maximo which in some parts it gave me those soulful feelings
any decent spyro fangames/hacks?
SOVL
I just really like the sci-fi fantasy setting it has going on. Where technology meshes well with nature. It's a setting not really explored alot in games.
And is something I think the remakes failed to capture.
The levels in Gnasty's world are great for that, the big ships and gnorcs with automatic rifles and thermal energy harnessing and everything. Even the hub is sick, the dragon heads on an artificial platform in an ocean with the sun just starting to set (or rise?).
STOP RIGTH THERE and post your favorite songs
for me is
The ice one in spyro 3
the one with the creepy penguins
You don't like Tom Kenny ASMR?