Info For Spyro's Adventure

There are thirty-two standard characters and 8 different elements under which characters are classified. The 8 elements are Magic, Water, Tech, Fire, Earth, Life, Air and Undead. When the character figurines are placed on the "Portal of Power" peripheral, they appear in the game. The "Starter Pack" has three characters to start with – Spyro, Trigger Happy, and Gill Grunt. Each character has specialized statistics in areas such as health and speed. The player can also find hats for the characters, which further affect statistics.

In addition to the standard character figures that are available for purchase there are also limited edition Gold, Silver, Crystal, and Glow-in the Dark versions of certain characters.

3DS version

This version of Skylanders: Spyro's Adventure is more of an action platformer than its console counterparts. Players have to complete levels by gathering crystals, which lets them unlock more levels. Each level is littered with crystals, obtained by going towards the end of the level, or by completing a variety of tasks, such as defeating a certain number of enemies, or finding items. Whenever the player finds a crystal, an enemy awakens and a time limit starts. They have to defeat enemies, and get clocks in the level to get more time to ward off the chasing enemy. Unlike other versions, characters can make a jump, and a double jump. This version of the game is set in a different realm in Skylands called the Radiant Isles, and a different force of darkness is faced under the command of Hektore. Unlike the console versions, the starter pack for the 3Ds version comes with the Skylanders Ignitor, Stealth Elf, and Dark Spyro.

Development

Toys for Bob was given the opportunity to revive a Vivendi franchise, and they chose the Spyro the Dragon franchise. Paul Reiche III noted: "attempts to revive broad-audience mascot franchises haven't seen predictable success in the game industry. Just creating a new Spyro game after the traditional fashion was unlikely to work" and reinventing the character as a "really gritty, strange otherworldly Spyro" didn't seem like a promising idea. Reiche says he had considered integrating technology with toys and games for a while, and it was the kind of concept that was so outlandish that it was the most promising idea the team sketched out for the brand.

The game's original working title was Spyro's Kingdom from June 2009. The game was originally going to be a mature Spyro game with a much darker tone, that also included blood, but the developers of Toys for Bob lost their enthusiasm and felt that this direction did not feel like "Spyro". They spent six months on a variety of different directions with Spyro, and with the time and budget given by Activision. Executive producer Jeff Poffenbarger stated that the game is geared more towards younger gamers who have no prior knowledge of the Spyro character.

To enable the game to work with the toys, the base of each toy contains an RFID chip which communicates wirelessly with the portal when in near proximity to inform the game which toy is currently active. The RFID chip also retains several key stats including gold, level and upgrades purchased and won through gameplay. Due to the use of RFID, the toys are portable between supported platforms while retaining their stats, allowing players to use their characters in other player's games with all upgrades in place. Additionally, two figures can be placed on the portal simultaneously, for cooperative or versus play.

The game's music was composed by Hans Zimmer, who also composed music for such well-known movies such as the academy award-winning Disney animated film The Lion King, Inception and The Dark Knight trilogy.

The game's main story was penned by Alec Sokolow and Joel Cohen, both of whom worked on Pixar's original Toy Story film. The game was originally revealed to be exclusive for the Wii, but was eventually released on the Xbox 360, PlayStation 3, iPad, iPhone, the Web, Microsoft Windows and Macintosh computers.

According to the Sterne Agee analyst Arvind Bathia, Skylanders: Spyro's Adventure "is testing apparently very well with kids", who are the game's target audience. Nickelodeon of Europe and Activision had worked together to help sponsor a tour called Skylanders: Spyro's Adventure Live to help promote the game, ranging from September 10–11 at Liverpool, Williamson Square to September 17–18 at London, Westfield Stratford.