"spyro the dragon" was first unveiled at the 1998 e3 convention in atlanta, georgia. it was then later released in north america on september 10, 1998, and in europe in october of the same year. according to sony computer entertainment's american marketing vice president, andrew house, at a press party in las vegas, the game, along with other upcoming 4th quarter playstation releases such as "crash bandicoot: warped", "a bug's life", and "", was part of a general effort to appeal to a wider demographic of younger audiences and provide more games suited for younger players in order to compete with the nintendo 64, which had a far larger library of children's titles at the time compared to the playstation's largely adult-centric demographic. an advertisement campaign was pushed to promote the game, featuring a character from the game, toasty the sheep, protesting against the title character's actions against sheep. the campaign included tv commercials, featuring an actor in an animatronic costume of toasty, and a promotional website, "sheepagainstspyro.com". on august 16, 1999, scea announced that the game would be included as a part of their "greatest hits" lineup of budgeted releases alongside other games such as "", "gran turismo", "cool boarders 3", and "twisted metal iii", and alongside the announcement of a price drop for the playstation console to compete with the highly anticipated launch of the sega dreamcast. on december 12, 2012, the game was digitally re-released to the playstation store together with "" and "". a remaster of the game, alongside its two sequels, was included as a part of the "spyro reignited trilogy" compilation for the playstation 4 and xbox one in november 2018, follow by the nintendo switch and microsoft windows in september 2019.