Spyro 4 seemingly teased in Crash Bandicoot 4 artbook

The first official Spyro 4 teaser has seemingly been found in an artbook for Crash Bandicoot 4: It's About Time.

The teeny-tiny reference to the future of Spyro the Dragon was spotted by SpyroUniverse on Twitter, with pictures from the artbook courtesy of CrashyNews. In the images, you can see Spyro just hanging out underneath some flying cars in concept art from Crash Bandicoot 4. Now, that alone could be nothing more than an easter egg, but a quote from Crash 4 concept artist Brun Croes seemingly confirms that it's actually a subtle nod to Spyro 4. After describing the scene from the concept art in detail, Croes notes that there's "a little hint at Spyro."

The last time we saw the cute little purple dragon was in 2018 with the Spyro Reignited Trilogy, itself a collection of remasters of the first three Spyro games. It's been a pretty long time since we got a new, all-original Spyro game, longer still if you don't count the two Skylanders Spyro games, which, interestingly enough were originally planned and marketed as a grimdark reboot of the original series.

There's no telling what direction the series will go next, or even which studio will helm the project (Toys for Bob developed the recent remasters). Activision currently holds the rights to the series, so the only thing we can safely assume at this point is that Spyro 4 will more than likely be a multi-platform release like Spyro Reignited.

With the return of Spyro now on the horizon, here's how Ratchet and Clank: Rift Apart and Crash Bandicoot 4: It's About Time are ushering in a new era for old school cartoon platformers.