/vr/ - Retro Games

[Anonymous No.10623092]

Was anyone else's mind blown the first time you found out you can get up here in Stone Hill? Between this and the beach, this level felt incredible to explore as a kid.

[Anonymous No.10623125]

it's actually one of my favorite memories in gaming. all of a sudden it looked like the entire world was open.... and then I learned about invisible walls. I do like how the developers actually put in those stone pillars generating the invisible force field. Made it seem extra cool, as though I had reached the edge of the known of world. Made me think
>Well, of course I can't keep going forever, it's a game after all.
but still think it was a cool as hell moment. Stone hill has incredibly well designed early level.

[Anonymous No.10623173]

>>10623092
I had a similar feeling when you go outside in Aquaria Towers.

[Anonymous No.10623229]

>>10623092
>>10623125
It's cool to learn there are other people who felt this. There was especially something about the view from the top of that fort that made it feel vast to me.

>>10623173
This is the one that really sticks with me, though. I've felt a less powerful version of that even on subsequent play throughs. It always seems a little larger than I remember.

[Anonymous No.10623231]

I just like the fact the devs taught players early on to try and explore beyond what the limits appear to be. Doesn't make Tree Tops any easier to 100% for a new player, but it does encourage them to try to explore everywhere they can.

[Anonymous No.10623587]

>>10623092
l-looking g-good

[Anonymous No.10623613]

Yep. That glide from the tower to the grass hooked me on the game as a kid and it's still an all-time favorite for me.
Personal favorite realization in Spyro was going backwards at the beginning of Wizard's Peak

[Anonymous No.10623658]

>>10623231
>Tree Tops
this was an interesting one. did anyone else get to the dragon the first time by doing webm related? I didn't do it that smoothly with all the jump charging and it took me forever, but eventually I managed to glide on those little slivers of ground in front of the fence, then turn around to make the big glide. It was years later when I found out the intended method with the super charge when I was leafing through the guide in a book store.

[Anonymous No.10623794]

I played 2 first, so my "mind=blown" moment was getting on top of the castle in Autumn Plains and seeing there's so much more going on than the courtyard you start out in. Zephyr and its massive side areas was another one that just blew me away.
The game fully expected you to explore instead of beelining straight to an obvious goal, and I'd never experienced anything like that in a game before.

[Anonymous No.10623883]

>>10623794
same
the first two games were masters of this type of thing, where they would show you off something small in the distance, but then once you figured out how to get there, it turned out to be far more expansive than what you were expecting. another really memorable one was the secret route in dark passage from spyro 1. it was this small unassuming tunnel that lead to an area much larger than the level's main path, encompassing all the areas that you could see previously, but had no idea how to reach. I'm trying to think if the third game some moments like these, but I haven't been able to remember anything that special. Ill check the level list again.

[Anonymous No.10623949]

>>10623883
another really awesome one was the metalhead broken gate way down in the toxic sludge river. the area is the interior of a big pyramid from where you take a whirlwind that lets you reach all those chests far above the level. it was the perfect twist: in order to reach what is above, you needed to look down.

[Anonymous No.10624127]

What are you guys' thoughts on Spyro 2 and 3? I played 2 as a kid and remember it losing a lot of the charm and atmosphere of Spyro 1.

[Anonymous No.10624153]

Did anyone else figure out the double jump glitch the first time they played Spyro 2? Given the entire game is about exploring the levels, it felt so natural to do.

[Anonymous No.10624203]

>>10624127
>Spyro 2
I liked it a lot when I first played it
>Fantastic home worlds
>great level variety
>reward for 100% was awesome
but I did miss the style of Spyro 1's gameplay a lot more. I think one of the main reasons I liked the home worlds so much is because they felt a lot more like a typical Spyro 1 level.

>Spyro 3
Still good, but not as good as 2, and not even close to 1. It's been overly mentioned, but all the mini-games absolutely kill the pace, even moreso than in 2. I am sort of split on the new characters. Bentley and agent 9 I thought were fine, but Sheila and especially Byrd sections were a boring slog. Also, is it just me, but does it seem like the vast majority of the better levels are crammed into the second half of the game? Midnight Mountain and Evening Lake seem to have way better levels than Sunrise Spring and Midday Gardens (except for Lost Fleet). The fucking skateboard racing mini-game also straight up sucks. I can't believe they decided to put that shit again right at the end of the super bonus round. just to sour your impression of the game right before the end.

[Anonymous No.10624215]

>>10624153
yeah, I think remember using it to get a few things early, like the third orb in glimmer and some gems in sunny beach without ladder climbing.

[Anonymous No.10624272]

>>10623092
That moment is the first instance of many where Spyro the Dragon shows its genius level design.

>>10624127
I agree, 2 and 3 are not as good as 1 (which I think is the best Spyro game).

[Anonymous No.10624279]

>>10623658
Pretty sure that only works in the US version. So no, I didn't and I couldn't.

[Anonymous No.10624281]

>>10623092
yeah. i was pretty impressed as a kid. i actually tried getting past the force field for a while too. replaying the games recently and spyro 1 has some unmatched atmosphere.
>>10624127
2 used to be my favorite one but my tastes shifted over the years and i like 1 the most now. 2 is still really great though. 3 is good too but as the other anon said, the mini-games became too much of a drag.
>>10624153
never heard about it until years later

[Anonymous No.10624286]

>>10624281
PS1 graphics look like DOGSHIT when upscaled to 720p.

[Anonymous No.10624306]

>>10624286
You look like dogshit regardless of scale.

[Anonymous No.10624320]

>>10624127
Good but worse than the original.

Spyro 1's major strength is that it's just pure platforming and exploration. No dumb minigames, no backtracking, just platforming. It had a lot of very large and open levels, mostly to emphasize the graphics engine letting you see things far away with no render fog, which was brand new at the time. It's simple and easy, but that's the beauty of it. It's just a fun and simple game where just exploring the levels and platforming is fun in its own right.

Spyro 2, they tried to change things up by making all the levels revolve around completing objectives. Almost all the levels are way more linear. Not to say that Spyro 1 didn't have any linear levels, but in Spyro 2, almost every single level is very linear, and the focus on platforming/gliding long distances is gone. They also added in a whole host of minigames, most of which are tedious or boring or both. Also introduced forced backtracking, making you wholly unable to complete a level on the first visit, forcing you to come back later when you've unlocked the required powerup.

Spyro 3 pretty much doubled down on the changes Spyro 2 made. The levels are now very VERY linear, and in addition to more minigames, we now have a cast of alternate playable characters that are all slowing/more boring to play than Spyro. At this point the devs admitted they were running out of ideas, hence why the minigames are blatantly ripped off from other popular PS1 games at the time.

Spyro 2 and 3 aren't bad at all, they're just noticeably worse than the first game.

[Anonymous No.10624341]

>>10624127
what did people here think of the skill points that they added in 2 and 3? they weren't necessary for completion, but I really didn't like how they locked a neat little bonus behind something so stupidly cryptic. I first remember them being mentioned very briefly in the Spyro 2 manual as some sort of "special challenge." The only one I got playing normally was all windmills in Hurricos. I remember looking at the Spyro 2 Official Strategy Guide at one point after finishing it and they had a very small section on the skill points, showing just one screenshot with about half of them, and telling the reader that "it was up to you to find the rest!" I couldn't believe that shit. The very strategy guide that you paid money for would not tell you the one damn thing people would actually try to look up. I have never seen the spyro 3 official guide, but now I'm really curious if they printed them all in that one. Most of them weren't too bad once you got used to the logic and what to look for in particular levels, but a few of them were horrendously obtuse with the levels leading you down the wrong path. The most offensive one by was the one in Molten Crater. The level had these little yellow flowers which you could destroy, which was the most common type of skill point. I endlessly scoured the level flaming them, but still wasn't getting anything, believing I had missed one. Then I tried supercharging around a few laps. Nothing. Then I thought maybe I had to shoot all the birds in Byrd's section. Still nothing. What you actually needed was to gather all the fucking tiki heads close together in one spot. What the fucking hell insomniac? Not to even mention that they don't even bother telling you which levels had them in Spyro 2. You're not even told how many you're still missing in the entire game, because it looked like you just needed enough to unlock the epilogue, but in fact there's a SECOND unlockable after that.

tl;dr Spyro 1 is the best

[Anonymous No.10624380]

>>10624341
they're a neat idea but pretty terribly implemented. i've replayed the games several times but i've never bothered with skill points ever.

[Anonymous No.10624397]

>>10624279
weird. would never expect different versions to have differences in collision like that, unless they intentionally tried to patch that out to force players to only use the super charge.
>>10624320
this is a good summary of how I also see it. I remember not really minding the backtracking in 2 and 3 at first, but it gets annoying on replays. Especially in 3 how they force to do it for each character. At least there are some tricks you can pull off to enter those places early.

[Anonymous No.10624638]

>>10624341
I enjoyed the Skill Points as just a little extra bonus thing to do. The game did at least tell you their names after beating the game so you did get some kind of hint for it, although the Tiki head one in 3 is definitely obtuse enough to keep some people from figuring it out on their own.

The Skill Points in 3 were handled kind of weird, anyway. Missing a lot of obvious ones like the speedway times, perfect boss fights, or all the interactive stuff in levels that didn't actually do anything, like the flower you mention.

The Skill Points they added to 1 in the remakes were pretty shit, they're the only ones I actually don't like. The perfect bosses one is fine, but rest are either just "do something stupid you'd never actually do" or "find the easter egg we put in the level"

[Anonymous No.10624742]

>>10624638
does the tiki skill point have any sort of logic at all that would lead the player to try something like that, given that the actual tiki bodies are very spread out from one another? the only thing I could think is that it was a replayable challenge, but that's not particularly indicative. It lets you know you have to do something in the Byrd section, but to me there were much more logical things that would merit a skill point, like shooting every bird at least once, getting through the challenge without taking any hits or doing it really fast. I even tried shooting every crack in the wall out of desperation. This shit also happened to me while looking for the fireworks factory skill point. at first I thought I it was one of those reach a high place ones, but then I thought it might have to do with Agent 9, so the most logical thing was to beat his entire section (both ways) without damage. then I go do all that for nothing. I hate to admit it, but that shit absolutely got on my nerves once I found out what the actual skill point was much later.

[Anonymous No.10624807]

>>10623092
Yes.

It kind of reminds me of that Yoshi level where you can also go up the ceiling. Stuff that feels like you aren't supposed to do it, is the best.

[Anonymous No.10624813]

>>10624742
>tiki logic
this is probably a stretch, but it's the only thing that remotely comes to mind. When he says "help me put them back together," he doesn't specifically mention putting the heads and bodies back together, even though it's the obvious context and what the egg is given for. Once could alternatively interpret the line as just asking to put all the heads together with each (also maybe a reference to the common saying "putting our heads together"). I doubt anyone interpreted the line this way, and there's absolutely no way that I would have thought along these lines without knowing the answer in the first place. But it's the only explanation I can muster for whatever the fuck insomniac had in mind.

[Anonymous No.10624819]

>>10624813
Original trilogy is more soulless than reimagined

[Anonymous No.10624821]

>>10624819
soulful*

[Anonymous No.10624994]

>>10624153
I still can't do it. Im in north america too.

[Anonymous No.10625006]

>two e-liters on enemy team

[Anonymous No.10625014]

>>10624994
It was super confusing to me too, from what I remember you have to let go of jump or let go of forward...you have to let go of something, and THEN press square in midair, to do it properly, it was kinda awkward and un-intuitive but I could do it every time after I learned out

[Anonymous No.10625019]

>>10624153
Figure out? No.
Learn about and utilize afterward? Yeah, of course.

[Anonymous No.10625117]

woah

[Anonymous No.10625256]

>>10624397
>would never expect different versions to have differences in collision like that
The PAL version runs at 25 FPS instead of 30 like the US version, so the game engine updates positions of objects at different intervals and with different values (so that the game doesn't run too slow). Glitches like that require precise timing.

[Anonymous No.10625331]

>>10625256
That makes sense. Although it really didn't feel like a precision type of glitch. The webm makes it look a lot more precise than it needs to be. I never needed to charge, but did find it difficult to land on the sliver. However, if I did manage to reach, there were no problems staying on it for as long as I wanted.

[Anonymous No.10625938]

>>10624994
Try harder I guess lmao

All you do is jump without holding a direction and press charge on the ascent. The closer you are to the apex of the jump the higher you'll go. Takes practice, but I could do it to get up on the walls in Colossus when I was 5.

[Anonymous No.10627674]

What's your favorite level aesthetically?

(Good screens of all the levels)
imgur.com/a/W4uw7

[Anonymous No.10627730]

ahhhh

[Anonymous No.10627891]

>>10627674
not an easy choice at all. the game really a top-notch and coherent artistic direction. plus so many good memories of entering new level for the first time. maybe it's a boring choice, but if I had to pick one I'd go with Stone Hill. I just love those rolling green hills combined with that type of beige stone architecture. And it had some really majestic looking interiors. Runner-up would be Dark Hollow for the general atmosphere and music.

[Anonymous No.10628108]

>>10627674
ice cavern is probably my favorite level from 1.

[Anonymous No.10628132]

>>10623092
Heard it was good stuff. Big if true.

[Anonymous No.10628163]

>>10627674
I don't know about my absolute favorite, but my top 3 are Ice Cavern, Cliff Town, and Haunted Towers.

[Anonymous No.10628797]

>>10627730
based ahhhhposter

[Anonymous No.10629121]

>>10623794
Same here. Gliding to that spot in Autumn Plains was mind-blowing to me to little old me.

[Anonymous No.10629139]

>>10627730
The dragonfly did this to him

[Anonymous No.10630478]

what were they

[Anonymous No.10630698]

>>10630478
humans

[Anonymous No.10630975]

>>10630478
>>10630698
what about this guy?

[Anonymous No.10630990]

>>10623125
I spent a lot of time trying to get past that forcefield. The feeling of it being the edge of the known world just made me want to get past it more.

[Anonymous No.10631000]

>>10623658
that's genius and reminds me a lot of secret areas in old quake maps that you find by noticing one little ledge sticking out far enough to hug a wall around over a pit/the void
a lot of stuff in spyro makes me think of old shooter map design, weirdly

[Anonymous No.10631148]

>>10630975
he's literally me

[Anonymous No.10631240]

>>10631000
>old shooter map design
might not be that strange after all, given that insomniac's previous game and only game before spyro was disruptor (doom clone for the ps1)

[Anonymous No.10631512]

well now i'm imagining the treetops map being used as an arena shooter with those super charge things active. might actually be sick.

[Anonymous No.10631845]

>>10623794
Autumn Plains is fucking amazing as a hub and as a visual piece.

[Anonymous No.10631862]

>>10631240
makes sense, just the way they landmark areas, show other parts of the level in advance, show secrets and leave it to you to figure out how to get there, etc all feel like old id rules, plus of course the castles and geometry itself

[Anonymous No.10632064]

>>10631240
I remember there being some stupid programmer trivia about this game, like they programmed it with spreadsheets or something insane.

[Chud Anon No.10632256]

I literally screamed the first time I ran into that boar behind the hut in beast masters

[Anonymous No.10632369]

>>10632256
lmao I remember that. those bastards.
the one enemy that disturbed me the most were those trees that eat in misty bog.

[Anonymous No.10632385]

>>10632369
Dogs that changed into hellspawns in Dark Passage always scared me too.

[Anonymous No.10632508]

>>10632385
I hated the armored cats even more, because you couldn't kill them when they got big. There was a really satisfying glitch in the home world where if you charged a small enemy at the exact moment when the ray from the cannon hit him, he would turn big, but still die from the charged. I also got it a few times on the armored ones, but found the timing on them much harder.

[Anonymous No.10633932]

>>10632369
Those fuckers gave me nightmares.

[Anonymous No.10634115]

>>10633932
that was these guys for me.

[Anonymous No.10634130]

>>10634115
Those guys reminded me of the Ferocious Beast, so they didn't do much to me. I thought they were kinda goofy.

[Anonymous No.10634172]

>>10632508
>armored cats
They were turtles anon

[Anonymous No.10634423]

>>10632256
I remember seeing that there was a boar behind that building from the other islands, and I still ended up getting hit by it because of how fast he turns that corner. fuck that pig.

[Anonymous No.10634426]

>>10634172
They identified as cats

[Anonymous No.10634478]

>>10623092
>>10623794
How did they make these levels so beautiful, bros? I think this aged very well.

[Anonymous No.10634524]

>>10631148
based

[Anonymous No.10634579]

>>10634478
part of it was the water color aesthetic.
overall, just good consideration what kind of art will best works given the system's limitations.

[Anonymous No.10635091]

>>10623794
Autumn Plains was something truly special. I remember spending quite a lot of time appreciating how beautiful and peaceful it was. The music was great too and very fitting.

Overall, the whole series is so beautiful. It's a fantastic experience, and I'm glad I was able to enjoy this in my childhood

[Anonymous No.10635094]

>>10634478
Levels were so simple a single dude could work on them. Nowadays they're so complicated you need a team of different dudes with different visions working on the same level on different parts. Cohesion and artistic vision are lost.

[Anonymous No.10635104]

>>10634478
Yes, it has. It's charming in a way not even the Reignited Trilogy is, and I'm damn sure I'm not blinded by nostalgia