"A tired encore on GBA for the world's most beloved purple dragon"

The platform games genre is currently living a period of stasis. The most important thing for evolution - innovation - has apparently been forgotten by all but a very few developers. The trend started by Super Mario 64 back in 1996 still persists, and it seems impossible to find a decent 3D platform game not relying heavily on item collecting. Unfortunately, after the release of Donkey Kong 64 - a game containing more collectibles than anyone, even the most hardcore, could possibly want to look for -, the whole thing has become boring. The latest Mario incarnation apart, there's just not enough in such games to induce players to keep looking for those few missing gems/stars/fairies/bananas/(insert your own favorite here) but that curious need to wipe out any black spots from your total score, and your completion percentage. With three titles on PSX, two on GBA, and a so-called next-gen episode coming soon, the Spyro the Dragon saga has eked out everything it could from Miyamoto's ''Make Your Own 3D Platform Game'' manual, and sadly, it has nothing really new to offer.

Admittedly, Season of Flame does its best to improve upon its GBA predecessor. Spyro has now the ability to breath ice and lightning along with fire, and all of them will be necessary to get past the game's many obstacles. The icy breath, available from the beginning due to a spell that turned the dragons' fiery breath to ice, is required to freeze and catch the 100 fireflies scattered through the levels - fireflies that are required to warm up the breath of dragons. But apart from this, the game offers nothing really new. Yes, the levels are less dispersive than those seen in Season of Ice, and they won't require you to hit all the sensitive background decorations again when you lose a life - unless, of course, you hit game over. Moreover, the new map feature really helps navigate the small, yet convoluted, stages, and proves all the more indispensable given the screen's limited (sometimes really too limited) scope. And, to the joy of many, the Sparx levels are gone from the main game, taking the form of an unlockable mini-game. But the problems that plagued the original remain: the isometric perspective is deceiving, and the digital controls sometimes make moving Spyro around a chore. Making jumps from one platform to another is almost never safe, since more often than not, you'll think you can get to the top of that platform - only to helplessly fall to your doom when you realize, in the middle of nothing, that target ground was just too high for you to reach. Recycling of friends and baddies further contributes to the sacrifice of innovation on the altar of marketing-safe reiteration.

But the worst thing is, Season of Flame is ultimately boring. You always have to collect all the gems and fireflies, find all the targets, kill all the enemies, and help people who just sit around waiting for you to pass by - which often involves doing any of the aforementioned tasks. Lather, rinse, repeat. The levels featuring Agent 9 and Sheila the kangaroo, which are supposed to break up the action a little, only manage to bore you even more, thanks to sluggish controls and to an action so slow that it couldn't grate more when compared to the fast - and, for many people out there, just sickening - smoothness of Spyro's run. It doesn't matter, then, that visually the game is an example for many developers, or that the Spyro feeling from the PSX games has been faithfully reproduced. It's always the same game, over and over and over again. Nothing different from the original 1998 game. And this is shameful. Shameful, because Nintendo's rehashes of early- and mid-90's games still manage to be better than new, ''next-gen'' games. Because nothing has been done to hide the fact that the two biggest PSX platform game franchises - Spyro and Crash Bandicoot - have always been about the same game structures, in all of their iterations. Finally, because it contributes to saturate the market with products that can't be differentiated from one another. Pick up one, and you've seen them all. Season of Flame is no bad game, but as many games out there now, it's lazy, and as that, not worth of attention but from those who just can't stop playing this kind of games. All the others, stick to Mario - and be patient. Your patience today means more originality tomorrow.

Reviewer's Score: 6/10, Originally Posted: 09/28/02, Updated 09/28/02