After a nearly 20-year hiatus, a brand-new Spyro game is set to be released in 2027. With it, a new audience will experience a beloved series.
Those who have followed the video game content on this website would have a pretty good idea of the titles that comprised my all-time favorites, having grown up on Super Mario before being introduced to the Crash Bandicoot series shortly thereafter.
As I wrote about just last week, my interest in Crash Bandicoot games indirectly introduced me to Spyro, the other de facto mascot for the Sony PlayStation at the turn of the century that also had a tantalizing series of platforming games to his name.
While my introduction to platforming games came with Mario and Crash, which both demand a relatively similar brand of playstyle that rewards speed and precise movements, Spyro took on a noticeably different direction.
Although the Spyro series included a litany of games throughout the 2000’s beyond the series’ original trilogy, it’s the playstyle of the latter that is remembered by most fans of the games, myself included.
Perhaps taking influence from Super Mario 64 and The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time, the Spyro games feature lush sandbox environments that greatly reward exploration thanks to the series’ feature of gem collecting. Each homeworld and level provides a unique environment that immerses Spyro into what is usually a slower-paced, more tranquil playing experience than the high-speed, higher-difficulty play seen in Crash Bandicoot titles.
Although a new Spyro title hasn’t been released since 2008, the original trilogy received its moment in the sun again in 2018 thanks to the release of Spyro Reignited Trilogy, a phenomenal remaster that brings the serene environments players fell in love with on the PlayStation to ultra-high definition resolutions on modern hardware.
Perhaps that’s what makes this announcement so tantalizing and exciting. It’s finally a novel Spyro experience that showcases what the character and story are capable of with the fantastic world building seen in many modern titles.
Serving as the first original Spyro title since the conclusion of The Legend of Spyro series in October 2008, Spyro: A Realm Beyond is officially slated for a release in the first half of 2027, with no specific date designated yet.
Similar to the Reignited trilogy, the newest installment will be published by Activision and developed by Toys for Bob, who received acclaim for the ground-up rebuild of the series’ three original games.
Exclusivity, which mostly feels like a relic of the past in gaming outside of first-party Nintendo titles, will be nothing to worry about. A Realm Beyond will see releases for the Nintendo Switch 2, PlayStation 5, PC and Xbox Series X/S, and will be built with Unreal Engine 5, the latest version of the widely used engine that was also utilized for the Reignited trilogy.
While a 70-second trailer doesn’t give fans a crazy amount of material to sink their teeth into, I can say for any millennial gamers who experienced it all the first time around – it’s enough to get me incredibly excited.
Although it’s tough to figure out a whole lot about what the story or gameplay might involve, the possibilities truly appear endless after seeing something like that.
There’s no telling if A Realm Beyond will continue the formula from the trilogy games, featuring homeworlds that include a selection of different levels that can be traveled to via portals. While I certainly wouldn’t complain if that were the case, I’m certainly dreaming of something bigger after watching that trailer.
Could this be a truly open-world Spyro game? The kind of game I’ve been dreaming about for years? While the original Spyro games felt proto-open-world in many senses, this feels like a definitive opportunity to create one cohesive world that Spyro could soar his way through – with the trailer certainly making it seem as if the title character will have expanded flying capabilities.
Beyond the nightmare of trying to find one last gem in a massive open-world, it does feel like it would serve as a natural progression of where the series would be heading at this point in time.
Slated to be released a whole 29 years after Spyro initially burst on the scene in September 1998 with Spyro the Dragon, the series has always made a conceited effort to include a wide variety of environments in previous games.
My favorite example of this is none other than the homeworld design for Spyro 2: Ripto’s Rage and Spyro: Year of the Dragon, both of which perfectly executed a theme throughout each homeworld level of the game. While Ripto’s Rage offered Summer Forest, Autumn Plains and Winter Tundra as homeworlds, Year of the Dragon countered with a time of day theme, featuring Sunrise Spring, Midday Gardens, Evening Lake and Midnight Mountain.
With countless open-world games of various genres having been released and showcasing a natural, gradual change in environment, one can at least see from the 70-second trailer that it could be a possibility in A Realm Beyond, which already showcased a wide range of environments that feel fresh but also familiar to the seasoned Spyro player.
The best part about this series finally getting a much-deserved revival is the ability to introduce a new generation to what is one of the most fun and relaxing video game series I have ever gotten the pleasure to play in my life.
I know it’s quite hard to find literally anything that you enjoy at 30 as much as you enjoyed at 7, but Spyro games may be among the few exceptions to that. To this day, these games still deliver incredible aesthetic beauty alongside the same feelings of exploration and restfulness I would feel when diving into these games as a kid.
While I’m sure a solid cohort of kids dove into the series in 2018 upon the release of the Reignited trilogy, it’s just totally different when it’s actually a new game that everyone will be experiencing the first time. It’s no longer going to be a game some kid’s uncle got him for Christmas because he liked it as a kid – it’s going to be a memory-making experience for countless kids, in the same way the original trilogy was for me back in the early 2000’s.
There’s no guarantee that I’ll like this game, or that it will live up to anyone’s lofty expectations that have been constantly building for the past 18 years and counting – it’s not as if Spyro fans haven’t seen a disappointing game before. But considering the precedent set by Toys for Bob in the Reignited trilogy and all of the tools to work with that simply didn’t exist before, my hopes are high that this will be an equally novel and nostalgic experience that will captivate me for hours on end.
But the game won’t be for old farts like myself – and it’s great to see that this iconic character can live on in the hearts and minds of a new generation for years to come.
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