There was always that one game. That one game you would always play as a kid. That one game that would always make you insanely happy for any chance in the day to play. That one game that you felt so satisfied finally finishing after hours of hard work. Whether it was an adventure role-playing game such as Pokemon Red and Blue on the Gameboy color, or a simplistic Atari block placing game like Tetris. Or even a family game like The Game of Life. Kids alike would spend hours playing games every day after finishing their homework right after school, you could mention the game and watch another child’s eyes light up, meeting new companions along the way, and experiencing the worlds of the games in innocent childlike wonder. For me, this game was Spyro: Year of the Dragon for the Playstation 2.
I don’t quite remember when this trilogy came into my world, or when I began playing it at all. The only thing I vividly remember is in the early 2000s, maybe 2008 or so, I was introduced to Spyro. I distinctly remember dropping my monstrously heavy backpack, that was at least the size of myself at that time, right at the entrance of my home, and running to my brother’s room. The light blue carpet was soft and gentle on my legs as I sat down in front of the PlayStation 2, next to the window with the blazing hot sun outside. The controller was a matte black, and my small hands could barely wrap around the controller’s handles properly and press all the appropriate buttons, which led us to almost die in many levels. My mother always made my brother and I play video games together so we wouldn’t complain about a little gaming time. Although Spyro isn’t a two-person game, we’d still play it as a two-person-I’ll-watch-while-you-play game and take turns whilst we played.
While we would play Spyro, I recall my mother shouting at us to share game time, we would mostly take turns but, as I am the younger sibling, I was pretty bratty back in the day and insisted on getting more time to play my favorite purple dragon trilogy. My mother would strictly tell us to be nicer to one another while we play, a few things she’d say quite often during our Spyro sessions are as follows:
“Don’t take the controller from him, Kimberly! It’s his turn to play!”
“Don’t get so upset, it’s just a game”
“Stop screaming! There’s no need to be so loud you two are right next to each other!”
My brother and I would also quarrel. I distinctly remember yelling at him “Jarod!! Press the X button!! Don’t fall off the cliff, please!!”

“Kimberly you’re doing it wrong,”

“No, I’m not!”

“yes, you are.”

Turns out I was, in fact, doing it wrong.
The point of the game is to collect the dragon eggs that were stolen by this ugly, very visibly the “I’m-the-main-antagonist-of-this-series”, crocodile lady with makeup applied as thick as a bowl of oatmeal. You had to go through multiple levels with the friends you met along the way to complete the overall story. Of course as children, we didn’t plan to 100% complete the game, as that would mean we’d have to collect all the gems and all the dragon eggs from every single level, our small incompetent brains couldn't comprehend this.

Making it through almost the entire storyline was amazing, and we loved every second of it. Sadly, the PlayStation began to die, it would sputter and screech whenever we tried to play, and we tried very hard to save the console, but we never ended up being able to do so. We ended up having to get rid of the console. I remember crying, the tears ran down my cheeks like a waterfall, all the tears in my tiny body were lost that day. However, my mother and Step-Dad told me. “Don’t worry we’ll get a new one! You’ll be able to finish the game one day! Just wait a bit and be patient until we are able to get a new one!”
We never did get another PlayStation 2 to finish the game.
Years later, in 2016, I got a new PlayStation as a Christmas gift. It wasn’t a PlayStation 2, but rather the newer model, the PlayStation 4. All the years beforehand I’ve been wishing for the console to play a new game I desperately wanted. Then, in November of 2018, a new game for the PlayStation 4 came out. It was Spyro Reignited Trilogy. The trilogy gave me such a huge amount of nostalgia viewing it once more. I begged my mother for the disc for my birthday, as it came out just a week before my birthdate. A month later, Spyro arrived in my Christmas stocking. Seeing it arrive in my stocking made me remember how much fun I had playing it as a little kid.

My brother and I wouldn’t be as close as we are now if not for Spyro, whenever something consists of the purple dragon, we both get excited over it. We always had a bit of a gap, with him being older by three years, but gaming as a kid helped us bridge that gap. We don’t play the trilogy together now, but I can’t help calling my brother down to watch me play a level or laugh over some characters. Spyro, and the console it’s played on, really helped us.
Everyone has that game. That one game that makes them so joyful to play again. That one game that reawakens that childlike wonder they had the first time they played it. That one game that makes them sweeter, kinder, and more adventurous in little ways. For me, this game was, and still is, the little purple dragon, Spyro: Year of the Dragon.