New media: Spyro: Season of Ice GBA

At its Gamers' Day held yesterday, Universal Interactive gave the press yet another chance to play Spyro: Season of Ice for the Game Boy Advance. Now 80 percent complete, the handheld version of Spyro is shaping up quite nicely in the hands of its developers, Digital Eclipse. The same control scheme found in the PlayStation versions of Spryo is present in its handheld cousin. You may jump by pressing the A button and glide by tapping and holding it again once in the air. Pressing B allows Spryo to breath fire and the R button triggers the blue dragon's signature head butt.

We were able to play several more of the game's 27 levels including one shooting level that's played from a top-down perspective and features Sparks the dragonfly from the PlayStation versions of Spyro. We were also shown new "speedway" levels as Digital Eclipse is calling them that allow you to fly from a pseudo 3D perspective. Similar to Sega's Space Harrier franchise, objects fly at you and you must shoot them and then pick up the resulting gems. Digital Eclipse also stated that if all 100 fairies are collected in the game and entirely new game will be unlocked with its own high score table and game engine. Likewise, if you torch all the flammable objects hidden in the game you will receive a special bonus that Digital Eclipse was unwilling to explain.

With reportedly 20-30 hours of gameplay and multiple endings, the lack of a multiplayer mode in Season of Ice isn't a big issue. As a near-perfect conversion of the popular PlayStation platforming game, Spryo: Season of Ice should be high on your list of wanted Game Boy Advance games. We'll have more information as it's November release date draws near.