Now, I'm not a game programmer and I know that making games in 1985 was a lot harder, but I feels like if you're making a vertically-based platformer where most of the gameplay is jumping, you're going to really want to nail the feel of the jump mechanic. Never have I played a game where the controls are so terrible that they effectively take a crowbar to the game's kneecaps the way that Ice Climber's terrible jump mechanic ruins an otherwise solid game premise.

A lot more playable on the Nintendo Switch Online service where you can easily rewind the game so that you can keep trying to make certain jumps, but don't bother playing it on the original hardware. I own a physical cartridge of this game. Don't suffer from my mistake.

This is a showcase of baffling business decisions. I really want to know how the creators of this game landed on the final decision that was "Sparx the Dragonfly needs to be voiced by David Spade - and yes, we WILL spend the money in order to have a celebrity voice our dragonfly - and he needs to look like a creepy little human with weird bug abs". There are blogs dedicated to how Spyro Reignited ruined the Playstation games' aesthetics with their design changes (and honestly, not knocking the existence of said blogs since the PS1 Spyro games are visual works of art that carefully chose the most effective color palettes) but those are nothing compared to the lawless land of the early 2000's where a bunch of people in a board room gathered around and were like "what if the little bug from the old games is the one-liner spouting comic relief and he's voiced by an SNL cast member".

"Well surely the rest of the game makes up for it, right?" No, it's painfully mediocre. Like every other aging platformer star trying to release a game in the mid-2000's to show that they're still relevant damnit, this game has a combat-based fighting system! Hell yes, just like Crash of the Titans, Sonic Unleashed, Pac-Man World 3, and god knows who else, I have to sit there and watch Spyro repeatively smack an enemy like an idiot while enemy fights constantly interrupt level flow because Gameplay, I guess. The one saving grace is that it becomes extremely easy to cheese the combat system with certain breath abilities so that you can just breeze through this game and admire the two things that aren't embarrassing, which are the soundtrack and the environmental design.

Also, the fact that this game opens with Spyro's egg drifting down the river like the story of Moses from the Bible while DAVID SPADE, ELIJAH WOOD, AND GARY OLDMAN AS IGNITUS dramatically flash across the screen and as the orchestra swells is...incredible. There are many cutscenes in this game that almost feel like parody but no, they are taking this Chosen One Born Special Magically Purple shit 100% seriously. Kids on DeviantArt ate this melodramatic story up at its release but I can't help but look at it and go "you were so lazy in penning this Chosen One story that you tied Spyro's Heroic Specialness to his skin color".

At least the music's nice and it's a very purdy Gamecube game. I just wish it had actual substance.

Would you believe me if I said there was actually enough improvement in this sequel compared to the original game that the overall quality of this game has risen above "mediocre" and into the "kinda okay" territory?

It's still Pac-Man and the Ghostly Adventures and it's still a licensed 3D platformer based off of a TV show, but at least they fixed the level structure and tweaked the gameplay enough that I actually enjoyed this one rather than being bored by the monotony. It helps that the soundtrack actually has some good tracks this time around rather than whatever ambient mess was going on with the first one.

The best version of this game is the one with the NTSC dub where you have Veronica Taylor and Rachael Lillis just using their Ash Ketchum and Misty voices like this is an episode of Pokemon while Dan Green is both the Professor and Spike. Trust me, hearing Ash Ketchum's voice while you're finding the monkeys and, let's be real, catching 'em all really enhances the experience and there's no better reward for beating the game than seeing Spike appear in an ending cutscene and he just sounds like Yami Yugi. 5/5 best 4Kids dub ever.

This might be an unpopular opinion, but I think this is a worse game than the original Croc. They gave us analog stick controls and some fun overworlds with some cute characters to interact with (complete with their own bootleg Moneybags running the shops) but, in exchange, made a game that feels like a bunch of underbaked game mechanics all smashed together into a game that's trying to be like Banjo-Kazooie but doesn't understand that a game like Banjo-Kazooie needs tight level design and clear objectives to be good. The original Croc may have had tank controls but it at least felt like it knew what it wanted to be, unlike this game where it tries to be both Banjo and Spyro but fails at doing both.

I love the part of the game where Conker - the small bushy-tailed and big-eyed child of this game that collects presents and attacks by using a slingshot - walks into some dude's house and he's like "Hey Conker, some cuddly furry animal that looked like you took out a revolver and shot me to death, I'm dying right now" and then Conker is arrested and put in a jail cell for murder.

Did I mention this dude that gets murdered is a giant talking acorn? Probably should've mentioned that. Anyways, Conker watches one of those giant cartoon acorns bleed to death from a gunshot wound in this game. Shit, if that happened to me when I was a kid just trying to star in a run-of-the-mill Game Boy game, I'd start drinking heavily too.

This game fascinates me for two reasons.
1. This game came packaged with my Sega Genesis and is therefore the first video game I ever owned. They sold Sega Genesis consoles with a Garfield game packaged in.
2. There are lost levels for this game that are considered lost media because, while they were cut from the game, they were made available through the Sega Channel, so there are people with a memory of a Garfield viking level or a Robin Hood level that are just plain unavailable because the levels disappear off the console after the Sega Channel connection is lost. The only way these levels will be found is if a developer who worked on the game actually releases the ROM of these levels. There is Sega Genesis Garfield Lost Media. There is a dedicated effort to finding Garfield video game levels.

As for the actual game, it may be kinda jank and it may have took me too many years to figure out how to beat the Count Slobbula boss (which, to be fair on younger me, is a bullshit boss to start the game on and doesn't tell you about the sunlight thing at all), but I have a soft spot for this game that could either be the result of its two-hit combo of nostalgia and urban legend status or because I just really dig this game's general vibe. It helps that Garfield actually does the whole "trapped in a TV and fighting through different movie genres" plot pretty well, and did it a couple years before Gex even existed.

It's all fun and games for Altair until some shirtless man shoves you into a group of beggar women while some guy on the street is saying "I STAND BEFORE YOU TO DELIVER A MESSAGE!" for the 40th time.

Also, while the PS3 version has been well-documented as the version that doesn't play as smoothly, it's still the superior version because it lacks achievements/trophies. This sounds like a bad thing but I'm glad there's nothing to entice me into spending hours of my life finding every last Crusader flag. I don't have time for that. My time on this planet is finite.