His color was changed to purple so as to avoid blending in with any grassy areas. Spyro was originally named 'Pete' and colored green during development, but the name was dropped to avoid infringing on the trademark Pete's Dragon, which was owned by The Walt Disney Company. Zembillas had previously designed Crash for Naughty Dog, whose offices were just across the hall from Insomniac's at Universal Interactive Studios. Both characters were owned by Universal Studios, under the former video game division Universal Interactive and have since become an intellectual property of Activision, through the merger between Vivendi Universal Games and Activision to create Activision Blizzard.Īfter developing Disruptor, Insomniac president, Ted Price, contacted Zembillas to design a playable dragon character for a video game. The character has endured in popular culture as a mascot of the PlayStation video game console alongside Crash Bandicoot, having appeared in several games together with him. Spyro was designed and created by Charles Zembillas for Insomniac Games, the developers of the first three games in the series. Spyro is often accompanied by his best friend Sparx, who is a dragonfly. He is known for his ability to defeat enemies by breathing fire and charging at them, and his ability to glide to otherwise unreachable areas in the game world. Spyro is an energetic, young, male, purple dragon. Spyro is the titular main character and protagonist of the Spyro video game series, including The Legend of Spyro, and a guest character in the Skylanders series, first appearing in Spyro the Dragon in 1998.

Skylanders spyro