Spyro (franchise)



The Spyro franchise is a series of platforming games starring Spyro the Dragon. The games were originally developed by Insomniac Games for the PlayStation, starting with the release of Spyro the Dragon in 1998, and published by Digital Eclipse. It is the sister franchise of the Crash Bandicoot series. The whole series has sold over 20 million copies worldwide, as of October 2007. In an interview, Ted Price said that Insomniac stopped developing Spyro games after Spyro: Year of the Dragon because Spyro could not hold anything in his hands, therefore limiting his actions.

For the first three games, Spyro became a mascot for the PlayStation alongside Crash Bandicoot, both of whom appeared in several games together. In the 2000s, the Spyro series has switched between various publishers and developers. Since 2008, when Activision acquired the rights to the franchise, the Spyro series has entered a long hiatus. In 2011, the Spyro series spawned a large spin-off series, the Skylanders franchise, which contributed to the Spyro series' abandonment. However, in 2018, Activision published the Spyro Reignited Trilogy on PlayStation 4 and Xbox One, a whole decade since a game has been released in the Spyro series.

Flash games
The Spyro franchise had several flash games in the 2000s.

The promotional websites for Spyro 2: Ripto's Rage! and Spyro: Year of the Dragon had flash minigames. The latter game had a downloadable flash game in executable format, Spark's Pond. The promotional website for Spyro: Season of Flame had a flash game called Super Spyro Speedway.

In 2004, held a promotion on  named Crash and Spyro Adventure World, which promoted the two games, Crash Bandicoot Purple: Ripto's Rampage and Spyro Orange: The Cortex Conspiracy. The promotion had seven flash games, and six of them were unlockable. To unlock them, consumers had to enter a special code found on trading cards that came with Nabisco Fruit Snacks and Jell-O Pudding Bites. Every trading card had one of six codes, each of which unlocked one of the minigames.

had several promotional flash games on their site. There were three known flash games, all of which could be played without a login: Spyro: Power Blast, Crash and Spyro, and Spyro Shadow Legacy: Magic Attack.