(Script + Audio) Titans of Legend: Part 1 (Patreon)

Hey guys, it’s Miharu. The mid to late 2000s was an interesting time for gaming, and the same can be said for gamers in online spaces. Social media was still relatively new at the time and the concept of sharing fanworks of your favorite media was really starting to take off. Fanart, fanfics, fangames, you name it. And Spyro and Crash were about to join the party.

Let’s begin with a bit of personal history, starting with Spyro. If you’ve seen my “History with Spyro” video or been around my channel long enough you probably know that I’m not the biggest fan of anything that came after the original trilogy until the remakes. However, there’s a bit more to the story than just that. You see in between the releases of Enter the Dragonfly and A Hero’s Tail, there were points in my life where I didn’t really think about the purple dragon that much or at all. Not only because I didn’t have the same attachment to the games as I once did but for a teenager just starting high school the years felt like they went on forever and my mind was constantly preoccupied with other things. That all changed in 2006 when The Legend of Spyro hit the scene.

To give a bit of background, The Legend of Spyro trilogy served as a reboot to the original series. In this retelling of events, our beloved purple dragon is a rare breed born once every ten generations and as such is prophesized to shape the fate of the world. He’s taken in by a family of dragonflies and after learning of his origins goes on a quest to stop the Dark Master Malefor and his forces. As you can probably guess, its high fantasy-esque presentation often gets compared to Lord of the Rings, right down to Spyro being voiced by Frodo himself, Elijah Wood. The gameplay is also less platformer-oriented than previous titles and focuses more on the use of various breath abilities for combat and puzzle-solving. Although I see a lot more praise for it nowadays, the reception at the time was mixed, with the story and voice cast often being cited as positives but the repetitive gameplay as a major con. The general consensus for the other two games still seems to be that the second, The Eternal Night, is the worst one for its unnecessary difficulty and the third, Dawn of the Dragon, the best for its free flight and co-op mechanics.

Now I’m not gonna act like Legend completely uh… reignited my love for the series because that’s not really true but for a good 3-4 years my interest was piqued again. And the reason for that was… a certain character but we’ll get back to that later. To reiterate what I said in those other videos, this reboot just wasn’t my thing. It was a complete departure from the Spyro I had grown up with and the heavier emphasis on combat just didn’t appeal to me.

On the Crash side of things, it was a bit different. 2007 and 2008’s Crash of the Titans and Mind Over Mutant were and still are heavily criticized for their gameplay style, character redesigns, and the fact they made Crash say “pancakes”. Like, it would take years to even begin to undo the sheer amount of damage those last two things did to the fanbase.

For me, though… I was in awe. Remember how I said there was a point in my life when I didn’t think much about Spyro? The same is true for Crash, but even moreso. At the time Titans was announced, I had not played a Crash game for several years, the last one being CTR. So I’d been more or less entitrely unaware of everything from Bash up until Boom Bang aside from the very few ads I’d come across.

Basically, I felt the complete opposite about Titans and Mind Over Mutant than I did about the Legend series. Despite being more of a beat-em-up than a platformer, it was still really awesome to see Crash games presented in a similar fashion to Ratchet & Clank or Jak & Daxter with a more open and less arcade-like approach. Cool character and creature designs, colorful environments, and this trailer which lives in my head rent-free. Plus, in terms of story, it didn’t actually stray too far from what it already was. It was pure cartoony fun and it’s effectively what got me into the series. I remember wanting Titans so bad and being disappointed that I had to wait ‘til Christmas to get it. And when I finally did… I stopped playing because I got stuck somewhere. But I still had a good time, especially with Mutant which has since become my favorite Crash game next to Tag Team Racing.

As I said before, not everyone took too kindly to this rebooted treatment Crash and Spyro were receiving. From the aforementioned complaints about character redesigns, to repetitive gameplay, to voice-acting, it was very apparent these games were products of their time, and people were having trouble adjusting to the change.

It was a difficult and confusing time for those who grew up with the originals, and they needed a place to vent. So, they took to the internet.