A 24-year-old prototype of Spyro: Year of the Dragon has been uncovered, featuring plenty of cut platforming content
Jan. 22, 2024Get a new look at the development of this platforming icon
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A prototype version of Spyro: Year of the Dragon has been discovered, and it shows how much the platformer changed right before release.
There’s a little confusion about when this build of the game was published. According to Hidden Palace, this review build of Spyro 3 was built on September 4, 2000 (taken from the save file information) but it isn’t the only build to have been created around this time, which can get a bit confusing. The main thing to remember here is that this version of the game would have been made a couple of months before Year of the Dragon’s actual release on October 10, 2000.
Another major change to Spyro: Year of the Dragon is its audio dialogue. Most notably, several lines of dialogue were changed for the final game or are missing completely. You’d have to be a Spyro superfan to notice some of these subtle changes, but to name a few; all of Sparx’s audio dialogue and all but one of Bianca’s lines are missing; one of Hunter’s audio messages appear to be a dev recording; and multiple characters refer to things that were later changed in the game.
As we said, there’s so much to uncover about this build of the game that we can’t fit it all into one story, so take a look at the Hidden Palace page to get a full rundown of the build.
This isn’t the only relic shared online recently, asa prototype for the unreleased and unannounced Crash vs Spyro Racinghas also been found.
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After studying Film Studies and Creative Writing at university, I was lucky enough to land a job as an intern at Player Two PR where I helped to release a number of indie titles. I then got even luckier when I became a Trainee News Writer at GamesRadar+ before being promoted to a fully-fledged News Writer after a year and a half of training. My expertise lies in Animal Crossing: New Horizons, cozy indies, and The Last of Us, but especially in the Kingdom Hearts series. I’m also known to write about the odd Korean drama for the Entertainment team every now and then.
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