Spyro, my favorite little dragon, was the only one of his kind to survive a mass dragon-freezing by the Gnasty Gnorc (mostly because he was too short and the spell shot right over his head). To save all his buddies, Spyro has to travel between the five dragon worlds to un-freeze the dragons, collect the crystals that Gnasty Gnorc turned into minions, and protect clutches of dragon eggs. Fortunately, he was gifted with abilities like breathing fire, gliding (and sometimes flying!) and headbutting, as well as a tiny guiding dragonfly buddy named Sparx.
This game turned me from a somewhat normal 4th grader into a basement-dwelling, glassy-eyed, button-mashing maniac. Ignoring my scattered adventures with Mario on the Nintendo 64, Spryo’s quest was the first time I really sat down and played through a game’s story, start to finish. Granted, before Spyro there weren’t really any appealing 3D games of its kind, especially on the Playstation… but this was also a demonstration of my heretofore-unchallenged attention span.
Before Spyro, my gaming time came in spurts. I would load something up, play for an hour or two, and then get bored and walk away. It was through Spyro that I developed my patented sit-in-front-of-the-basement-TV-until-my-eyes-bled headache-inducing marathon gaming style that would go on to serve me greatly at weekend-long LAN events such as NVision 2008 (the ability to play Team Fortress 2 for days straight without sleep meant that when our 1am tourney was gradually pushed through the night to 8am, my team still rocked it).
I also think I earned a bit of respect from my 5-years-younger brother through Spyro. We would get home from school, race to the basement, and he would sit faithfully beside me as I fumbled through levels and painstakingly collected every little gem or treasure. Nick appreciated the entertainment and we both enjoyed the company.
The Seltzer Project 
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