Welcome to the second edition of the Friday Flop Bin, where Kotaku takes a look at a game that falls hard on its face.
Spyro the Dragon was a hit series on the PlayStation. The gameplay was pretty straightforward platform action starring a little purple dragon. But the developer, Insomniac, consistently pushed the console's graphical capabilities to the limit, and the wow factor paid off big.
Then Insomniac sold off the franchise to Universal Interactive (now part of Vivendi Universal Games), and went on to hit again with Ratchet & Clank. Universal, however, didn't fare so well.
One of the perils of being a freelance writer for the gaming press is that you often get stuck with titles that the full-time staff simply don't want to review. So I was a little relieved when I got assigned Enter the Dragonfly, a 2002 holiday release and the first Spyro game for the current generation of consoles. Little did I know.
The technical and artistic chops that Insomniac brought and continues to bring to the table were replaced by a hacked-up job from Universal's in-house programmers and artists. The game was ugly, unforgivably slow for an action game, and full of glitches. Read my review for all the gory details.
The end result: a game in a franchise that has sold over 10 million games worldwide flopped hard. The lesson: a franchise is as much the developers behind making the games as it is the character they use.
