Spyro: Enter the Dragonfly

“Hey! It’s Bubbles!”

“I heard a Riptoc talking about sausages!”
Spyro: Enter the Dragonfly
North American GameCube cover.

Let’s travel back to 1998: We stand on the verge of a new era, with all the change and advances the passage of time brings. In the world of video games, the ‘90s fad for introducing cartoonish mascot platformers was well upon us; with a trail of failed endeavors and characters having missed their marks, all for one reason or another. Where onlooker developers had seen the success of Sonic the Hedgehog in ‘93 and Crash Bandicoot in ‘96, they wanted desperately to have a piece of that pie — even if only just the crumbs. Furthermore, with the advent of 3D games, there was an added pressure to always be chasing the latest tech and genre trends. So was the state of the industry that inspired the likes of Spyro the Dragon; developed by relative newcomer Insomniac Games, and published by Universal Interactive. And where other mascot platformers flopped, Spyro would soar to reach his most popular contemporaries.

The original Spyro trilogy on Sony’s PlayStation was something of a technical marvel: On hardware where most games were subject to seemingly arbitrary render distance – past which things simply weren’t there – Spyro’s world presented technical trickery allowing players to peer deep into that distance — using a tool known as ‘Level of Detail’ to great effect. Aside from inspired design and programming, Spyro was simply an appealing character, who toured fantastical locations and jaw jacked with a whole cast of anthropomorphic pals — all set to solid soundtrack courtesy of former Police drummer Stewart Copeland, and featuring talented voice actors the likes of which included Carlos Alazraqui and Tom Kenny (two actors who would take to portraying Spyro). All three titles in this original trilogy would ultimately be labelled as ‘Greatest Hits,’ denoting their status as top-selling software. Surely, Spyro could only continue on his ascent toward video game stardom.

The year is now 2002. The new millennium is finally upon us, and brings with it a new generation of console hardware. Publisher Universal plans to carry their profitable purple dragon’s momentum with a new mainline installment intended for the leading platforms — boasting bigger worlds, more seamless models, and new powers for the daring young dragon. Enter Spyro: Enter the Dragonfly. And on the day of its eagerly awaited release, players could only be left largely aghast by the downgrades on display: Presented with sparsely-populated and over-large levels, wildly fluctuating framerate, and a litany of bugs so severe that you might inadvertently meet the game’s final boss – the only boss, at that – within a minute of starting a new save file. With Spyro’s wings having been so suddenly and noticeably clipped between installments, critics and consumers were left asking “What the hell happened?”

Short answer? The game was unreasonably rushed to pass, with a significant amount of planned content and much-needed polish left undone and / or scrapped entirely. The long answer, though, requires that we go back to those earlier games, and trace the flight path that brought us to this disastrous crash. The tale told will be a cautionary one, and contend as to why torturous publisher interference is generally poor practice. But readers be warned: “We enter the dragonfly alone, we leave the dragonfly alone.” Ancient dragon proverb, probably.

“Hey! It’s Socrates!”

“We practice divine compassion, so we really can’t get involved in anything violent.”
North American magazine advert.

Once upon a time, developer Insomniac Games were recruited by publisher Universal Interactive to develop a new mascot platformer for Sony’s PlayStation — as was all the Riptoc’s rage back then. Ultimately, the team settled on designs for Spyro the Dragon, as released in 1998: Starring the titular purple dragon, and allowing players control over his gliding, charging, and fire-breathing; as they work to collect treasures, rescue dragons [and their eggs], and fight enemy forces headed by Gnasty Gnorc. In aging Spyro as comparatively younger than his supporting cast of elder dragons, the marketing team had hoped to appeal to a younger target demographic (8 to 10 years old specifically) — banking on the time-tested fact that kids think dragons in general are pretty cool.^[1] Having a younger, lesser experienced protagonist would also justify his being unable to fly under normal circumstances; thus avoiding giving players too much freedom, and allowing for a tighter control over level designs and platforming puzzles. Needless to say, this approach would serve Insomniac well, and helped contribute to a smashing debut for their newly-established dragon platforming franchise.

This first installment was quickly followed by Ripto’s Rage! (known as ‘Gateway to Glimmer’ in Europe) in 1999; featuring numerous new characters including (the supporting Hunter, and perennial antagonist Ripto the Riptoc), a new setting christened ‘Avalar,’ the implementation of dedicated side missions and minigames, and new power ups such as temporary flight and ice breath. A third entry Year of the Dragon was released in 2000; with new antagonist ‘The Sorceress,’ a cast of briefly playable alternate characters, and an effort to produce discrete maps for the bulk of the side missions. If you’re thinking that an annual release schedule might not have provided a whole lot of time for Insomniac to churn out these games, you’d be right: All three games were in some capacity rushed to their completion, with some of the more obvious clues appearing in Year of the Dragon’s sound design — between its re-use of music tracks from previous titles, and a design oversight which saw the final boss’ unique theme music accidentally substituted by the game’s hub world tune. In spite of these trials, each title in this original trilogy received due critical acclaim, and proved financially successful for all parties involved. With all three titles eventually receiving ‘Platinum’ sales status (over one million copies sold) in North America alone,^[2] it seemed as though Sony had found themselves a fresh potential platform mascot.

Not long after the third game was released, however, changes were soon set in motion. Insomniac made the decision to willingly quit work on the series, citing having run out of ideas on what to do to keep things varied.** Not willing to put the franchise out to pasture, however, Universal opted to assign the task of creating new titles to two different sets of studios: The well-established Digital Eclipse (in operation since 1992) would develop a series of titles for the Game Boy Advance, and thereby enable Spyro to spread his wings beyond Sony hardware exclusivity. When it came to the next console installment, however, the duty curiously fell on a pair of newly-established developers: Check Six Studios and Equinoxe Digital Entertainment. To see the lucrative Spyro IP transfer from its relatively seasoned creators at Insomniac to a pair of near-absolute unknowns was certainly a surprising move on Universal’s part. But perhaps it’s worth examining the staff behind these fresh-faced studios, to see what pedigree it was (if any) they brought to the table?

While the studios themselves were both relatively new (Equinoxe had existed since at least since 1998, where Check Six was formed just prior to this new Spyro entry), most of their employees brought with them some years of prior industry experience. From what we can gather, Check Six were largely composed of former Disney Interactive staff, and would respectively handle the technical aspects of Enter the Dragonfly’s development [as well as handling conversion duties to the GameCube]. Equinoxe Digital, on the other hand, had served as a support studio providing full-motion video for other studios’ games — such as the opening video to Electronic Arts’ Need for Speed: Porsche Unleashed, as well as cutscenes for Neversoft’s infamous Bruce Willis vehicle Apocalypse. When it came time to work on Spyro, their role was expanded to larger graphical design (modelling, texturing, and general concept work), where they were surely concerned with matching the Insomniac style to an extent.

As 2001 saw the launch of the franchise’s first handheld title (Spyro: Season of Ice), Universal’s publicly-posted release schedule for 2002 would plan for two Spyro titles across both portable and console. While Digital Eclipse could be relied on to finish their iterative GBA cartridge Spyro 2: Season of Flame, Spyro: Enter the Dragonfly would be now additionally tasked with incorporating features to match the handheld companion, such as Spyro having different types of “elemental” breath (in addition to standard fire-breathing) and seeing players catching dragonflies as the primary driving collectible. As such; where Season of Flame served as a direct sequel to Season of Ice and Enter the Dragonfly was meant to follow Year of the Dragon, the two parallel timelines / product lines were still envisioned as sort of “companion” games to one another — serving similar design concepts as one another, and releasing as closely to simultaneously as possible.

“This is definitely Spyro’s hottest
adventure ever!”
North American promotional flyer.

Unfortunately, Enter the Dragonfly’s development faced a lot of issues. Aside from serving as a debut title for both studios involved (at least in terms of actual credited development / not just supplemental work), interference from Universal resulted in a litany of changes having to be made during the process. As an example: Before the decision was made to bring back the first two games’ villains – Gnasty Gnorc and Ripto the Riptoc (based on a bonus scene in Year of the Dragon showing them planning revenge) – there were initial plans and designs for an evil dragon to be slotted as the new villain. This was unceremoniously scrapped when the teams were informed by ‘Creative Director’ Ricci Rukavina (on loan from Universal) that there were “no evil dragons in the Spyro universe”^[3] — despite antagonistic dragons having existed in prior games.*** In terms of attempting to update / change up the feel of the game, there was a vision to have the game’s tone skew darker in order to cater to an envisioned older playerbase.^[4] Again, this would be scrapped in favour of closer mimicking the tone of the original trilogy, so as not to shake the boat any. The developers had even wanted to expand representation somewhat by introducing ‘Ember’ — a pink dragon who would be the first female of the species to make an appearance. Ultimately, she too would be cut by management, before her character was ultimately debuted in A Hero’s Tail two years later — long after anyone involved in her initial design would still be involved in the franchise.

At a certain point, Universal had finally signed off on a reported 122-page design – the result of many meetings between the developers and publishers – and allowed Check Six and Equinoxe to begin proper production on this compromise of a vision… only for Universal to freeze production a month or so later, and scrap any semblance of the devs original visions for the project in favor of an entirely more traditional Spyro entry.^[4b] At the same time that Universal were making changes to keep this new entry closer in line with the original trilogy, they would apparently occasionally change their demands on a whim and ask questions along the lines of “This is good, but it’s just a standard Spyro game design. What’s special about it?” Further detail and testimony by interviewed developers point to this sort of constant pausing and meddling as a major factor in the game’s development dragging over-long, and likely missing an initially projected 2001 deadline — an original release date which mercifully seemed to escape coverage / scrutiny by any of the major game journalism outlets.

Beyond that sort of direct publisher interference, there was also the issue of their ever-imposing deadlines — leading to a sense of constant rush and mandatory crunch during development. Testimonies of having worked unpaid overnights and other such problematic practice have emerged from ex-developers, pointing to an incredibly stressful work environment and looming sense that they were constantly behind Universal’s timetable. This in turn lead to a non-insignificant amount of cut content; ditching plans to design upwards of 25 to 30 levels, with examples of several unfinished stages (such as an ‘Enchanted Forest,’ ‘Baked Alaska,’ and ‘Cutthroat’s Cove’) being scrapped late enough to still have references in the game’s code. Additional remnants of assets designed for said stages – namely, a series of themed treasure chests made to appear within them – would ultimately be recycled across the game’s surviving levels — despite how aesthetically ill-fitting / out of place several of them would ultimately appear to be. If you ever wondered why a treasure chest adorned with seashells was made to appear in the game’s iced-over ‘Monkey Monastery’ level, that’d be your reason!

What begins to emerge here as one of the biggest issues with the game is incredibly poor support by the publisher, leading to what reads like constant scrapping of already-completed work and frequent 180° turns in the directions the team were being made to pursue. At the same time that Universal was mandating all these sweeping changes though, they were providing little in the way of extended development time or additional backing to their tortured team. If you dig deep enough, you might even find that the team weren’t being provided some of the basic-most tools and resources in attempting to perform their craft. Effects of this can most apparently be seen in how unoptimized the final product is [in terms of framerate and load times], where Equinoxe were not given the hardware / specifications to properly render their graphical assets in a way which Check Six’s engine could efficiently handle.^[3b] When additionally considering that one of the biggest criticisms of Enter the Dragonfly was a “lack of polish” compared to the originals — seeing straight downgrades in game feel and presentation; we eventually discover that the team were made to work without the majority of assets from the originals to use. While the team would’ve needed to make a lot of the assets from scratch anyways in developing a game for a new hardware generation, not having those original models and designs for reference certainly didn’t help with things like getting the sizes of the levels right — to where the developers were ultimately left to “wing it” by just replaying some of the original games for anecdotal reference:

“Our first prototype space was clearly very off metric and failed to feel very ‘Spyro.’ So, to match the original metrics, we plugged in [Year of the Dragon], moved Spyro about, and measured level and character art in terms of ‘Spyro-lengths’ and ‘Spyro-heights.’ We figured the speed of his run with a stop-watch and measuring against texture repetition on walls. The original Monkey Monastery level was the first result of these measured metrics.

Eventually, well into production, we did manage to get ahold of the mesh for two Spyro YTD levels and measure them against our levels in production. We discovered that while we weren’t too far off, one of the surprises was that classic Spyro levels were flatter with less elevation than we had been making ours.” ~ Joel Goodsell^[4c]

Not helping matters were issues internal to the developers, clearly exacerbated by the demands and heat from on high. As Universal ignored the numerous technical issues as well as understaffing on the project, this in turn only lead to staff continuing to leave the development studios and furthering these issues. By testimony of one-time level designer Scott Smith: Past a certain point in development, employees were being made to work without pay, thereby leading several to seek employment elsewhere and effectively jump ship.^[3c] In a particularly shady move; staff who would leave the project mid-development would ultimately go uncredited in the game’s credits roll, marking a malice on the part of embittered employees (more likely on the executive end) who were left to continue and work that much harder in their stead. At the very least: Some of those names expunged from the final credits were still included in the game by means of an obscure cheat code — though one ultimately not discovered / documented until 17 years after the game’s release. One of the names on that list – the game’s original Creative Director, Joel Goodsell – would speak on numerous issues with relation to the publishers, which lead to Universal sending in the aforementioned Ricci Rukavina to replace him in his role, leading to much resentment on the part of company loyals.

The friction only continued to escalate as Check Six and Equinoxe were moved into a shared office space, in an attempt to hasten productivity and strengthen relations between the two studios. Naturally, this only served to exacerbate issues tenfold, to a point where the game’s continued development was brought into contention. Warren Davis, ultimately credited as the project coordinator for this game, would step in to quell this late-stage crisis:

“I don’t remember the details of what led to each company’s management distrusting each other, but it deteriorated to the point where one day I walked into the office and was told to go home because the project was dead. Everyone else had been sent home too. Instead, I insisted on putting the heads of both companies into the conference room and mediated between them all day until they agreed to continue. If I hadn’t done that, the project would have been dead on that day.” ~ Warren Davis^[5]

Considering all this drama and so much more, it’s honestly something of a miracle that the game was able to be finished in any way at all! Granted, the fact that roughly two-thirds of what was envisioned for the game would get the axe certainly simplified matters; but the culture of miscommunication and mistrust is still an incredibly frustrating factor to be considered. At the very least, Check Six and Equinoxe would have enough done in time for their delayed November 4th, 2002 release date — whether that constituted the bare minimum Universal were willing to accept, or as much as the studios could scrap together in time for said date. Of course, with no knowledge of (or possibly even interest in) any of this studio turmoil, consumers and critics could only judge the final product by how well it played and presented. It was time that the Spyro faithful be rewarded for their patience.

** I feel it worth noting Year of the Dragon tried throwing constantly changing gameplay styles around, including providing Spyro driveable vehicles and all the alternate characters having uniquely different playstyles. In example; the space monkey ‘Agent 9’ provides an excuse for shooting gameplay of all varieties; with over the shoulder, first-person, top down and rail shooter segments between his four areas. While Insomniac may well have felt creatively exhausted at this point, it was only on the back of one of the most varied entries in their software catalogue.

*** Year of the Dragon featured a pair of “evil” dragons as part of a boss battle in its ‘Fireworks Factory’ stage. Granted, these were a distinctly “Chinese” style of dragons, rather than the more western-inspired designs otherwise featured in the series. I suppose that strictly speaking – if these were to be considered as a separate species – there was some semblance of merit to Ricci’s claim here?

“Hey! It’s Neo!”

“You did it! The swirly thingy is working!”
GameCube release back of box.

Our story opens on a celebration, marking the day a class of young fireflies are to begin training as companions to the young dragons hatched in Year of the Dragon. This new lore, by the way, serves as the retroactive explanation as to why series mainstay Sparx accompanies Spyro / takes hits for his designated dragon. In any event: Spyro and several pals (including Hunter and Bianca) are in attendance of this shindig, featuring large balloon likenesses of other previous characters scrapped from the narrative unable to attend — including the curiously frightening choice for an oversized Sorceress. However, it’s not long before none other than a returning Ripto interrupts the ceremony; using his magic to scatter the dragonflies, and apparently deprive the dragons of their power by doing so? Even Spyro’s beloved Sparx seems to vanish suddenly into thin air, putting our young dragon’s very life at risk! Luckily though – with no explanation or smoothness of transition – it turns out that Sparx only got teleported into some nearby adjacent room, so as to tie that potential plot thread up in a matter of seconds. So sets the precedent for the small handful of story beats within Enter the Dragonfly, and for how infrequently the narrative is made to come into play over the course of our adventure.

Even almost solely in terms of writing, one finds that aside from no new individual characters of note being added (a major departure from previous installments), the cast of returning characters are only granted brief appearances themselves. The magician Bianca briefly appears to explain how the new breath powers work, before just as quickly disappearing from the game until an equally brief appearance in the game’s ending cutscene. Riptoc’s lackeys / former trilogy antagonists Crush and Gulp – appearing alongside their boss in a pair of cutscenes – are apparently unceremoniously incapacitated in the span of one cutscene, and never actually encountered over the course of gameplay. And if you happen to be a big fan of Moneybags, we regret to inform you that he appears only in the game’s first stage — thereby rendering the act of gem collecting past his single appearance almost entirely pointless. While Ripto returning was set up by the previous console game, it also showed Gnasty, who never appears here at all. One positive, at least, is that the game does show us more members of Ripto’s race, in addition to providing some of that long-questioned backstory to Sparx.

But altogether, you can tell that matters of story and character interaction take a distant backseat in this particular adventure, putting that much more focus on the gameplay. And so, in typical video game fashion, it falls on Spyro to run around and deal with the various problems his fellow Riptocs are causing across the game’s eight stages — as connected by a sparse, singular hub world. Why this task falls to a child when there’s no outside reason for it is never explained, nor is there a reason why the ‘Dragon Realms’ layout changed from the earlier games, but these are relatively minor issues. The series at that point was pretty much always about gameplay and fantastical environments, so as flimsy as this game’s plot is, the game could potentially be enjoyable the same way earlier games were.

On the subject of gameplay, it’s largely iterative on the precedents set by the original trilogy: You’ll partake in standard 3D platforming across the game’s variety of stages, with the additional gimmick of Spyro’s abilities for limited flight. You’ll see the dragon glide to cross gaps and otherwise deal with vertical stage design, hover to make slightly longer glides, and paddle him underwater. Also returning are trademark charging headbutt and dragon breath attacks, with certain enemies or objects being immune to one or both of these abilities. New to this game, however, is Spyro’s variety of breath abilities. Aside from the expected fire breath; he also gains bubble breath, which is as lame as it sounds and only used for catching dragonflies;** lightning breath, which can be used on certain machines and robotic enemies; and ice breath, which was previously used as a temporary power-up in Ripto’s Rage and a level gimmick in Year of the Dragon, as well as being his other main breath power in Season of Flame. Finally, Spyro also gains a new ability [theoretically] allowing him to reflect projectiles back at enemies (called ‘Wing Guard’), but which is bafflingly only useful against a single enemy type in a single one of the game’s stages?*** Needless to say, it makes for an uneven lot of largely unnecessary abilities in your arsenal, to where their additions simply end up feeling tacked on for the simple sake of it.

Moving away from Year of the Dragon’s emphasis on playing as a variety of other characters, the variety of minigames still present see Spyro taking on many of the roles those missing characters were initially made to play. Past the classic Speedway stages and their associated challenges (tasking players to complete objectives within a time limit, as well as the races introduced in the third entry), you’ll find a decent assortment of other alternate play modes and unique play scenarios. Between tank-piloting target ranges, drum-playing memory games, and sliding down treacherous obstacle courses; there’s certainly a concerted effort to differentiate each minigame from the standard platforming gameplay, to where each feels like a distinct diversion. As to whether or not these minigames are actually any fun or particularly well-implemented? Well, we’ll get to that in time.

The game is divided into eight levels total — not counting the Dragon Realms hub world or Ripto’s ‘Chateau Ripto’ (serving only as a final boss arena, though the next GBA game fleshed it out). On the subject of said hub world: The Dragon Realms expand on how Year of the Dragon made each portal in their hubs unique, by making it so each landing pad incorporates some aesthetic elements ripped from where you’re about to travel to. Unfortunately, the hub world here is otherwise the blandest location in the game; containing minimal scenery, no hidden areas or jumps, and no hazards of any sort. There’s only two buildings – neither of which have any apparent purpose – and no sense that anyone actually resides or lives in this location. It also lacks any feeling of there being much in the way of any civilization, as the only characters to appear within (outside of one-time tutorializing by Bianca and Hunter) are those meant to ferry you to the other stages. Of these characters, there is only one dragon — in an area literally designated as the Dragon Realms!

Travelling outside the hub brings us to the distinctly themed stages. Each attempts to take a broad idea for a given game setting, and proceeds to run with it to the absolute most exaggerated extremes imaginable. To briefly cover them all: There’s ‘Dragon Dojo,’ serving as a vaguely Asian-inspired temple where dragonflies are trained. ‘Crop Circle Country’ is a farm being invaded by aliens, otherwise populated by country bumpkin types. ‘Luau Island’ is your token tropical area, where you’re made to rescue tourists and dodge “tribal” types in Tiki masks. ‘Cloud 9’ takes you away to a floating dreamland, with a mix of fantastical architecture and heavy clouds. ‘Monkey Monastery’ provides a frozen mountain locale, where monkey monks and distinctly non-urban yeti live. ‘Honey Marsh’ is an area of oversized plants and sweet honey lakes, where a different variety of country bumpkins (alligators instead of humans this time) cultivate that golden harvest. From here it’s off to the ‘Thieves Den,’ plucked from the pages of Arabian legend and home to the recurring thief enemies in the series. Which finally brings you to ‘Jurassic Jungle,’ and an altogether confused combination of Jurassic Park style stage theming and influences from the Terminator film franchise.

Overall, the levels are based around fairly functional concepts, and commit to mechanics and gimmicks with a basis in their theming. Things like the Monkey Monastery having enemies who are themed after the Mongols (never mind the supporting characters with stereotypical Tibetan monk accents), the Thieves Den seeing the collectible gems and containers sometimes run away from you thanks to magic (never mind the stereotypical population of sultans and thieves), or a set piece where you stop surrounding storm clouds from electrifying a pool in Cloud 9; all serve as thematically appropriate, and provide a genuine variety of tasks. The level with the weakest theme is probably Crop Circle Country, and even then I largely say this because it simply doesn’t have any unique setpieces: Just flat terrain, a handful of barns, and some UFOs as platforms requiring your lightning breath to utilize. And at the very least, these stages all manage to represent fresh ideas outside of anything from the original trilogy — save for the Honey Marsh, which does share it’s theming with ‘Honey Speedway’ from Year of the Dragon.  But even that serves as a major expansion on said original, and feels acceptable. While the older games may have all had more levels than this game, the stages present in Enter the Dragonfly are all quite a bit larger, and have a degree more things to do within them. Oh, and in a major quality of life feature, you can warp directly to any level you’ve already visited at any time you like — as previously represented as an unlockable ability in Year of the Dragon.

Aside from their varied theming and surface-level differences between objectives, however, the underlying structures to these levels are all fairly similar. At their core, most goals still amount to “Hit [insert object here] whenever you see it”; and since only a few levels actually make these main objectives mandatory to progress, they are often easily missed. Checkpoints are also rare, which means more time has to be spent backtracking when you die. Non-fatal falls likewise cause their own backtracking pains — sometimes demanding upwards of two minutes to get back to where you previously failed a jump. For whatever it’s worth, this is also something of a persistent design choice from the original games, but it can certainly make for a frustrating one nonetheless. ‘Skill Points’ – optional tasks in Ripto’s Rage and Year of the Dragon which earned you extra lives and some small epilogue notes – are disappointingly  omitted entirely here. At least the levels make it so when you reach their end, shortcuts back to the beginning are opened, often creating circular loops of sorts and allowing for after traversal to points of interest within the stages. But of course, we’ve been dancing around what is perhaps the single most problematic element across the larger selection of levels, and we can’t go further without finally addressing it.

So, yeah: The game has a very noticeable and persistent issue with cultural stereotyping. Now, this is something the original trilogy also had issues with, as real world cultures were often used for the theming of levels and as the butt of some jokes.****  While it’s not too unexpected to see this game also falls prey to it, it’s still something of a disappointment — a missed opportunity for a new team of creatives to depart from a tiresome design element. On the other hand: Having the living Tiki who gives you the drum challenges literally yelling “Oonga!,” all while using broken English (with exactly the voice you’d probably expect) might honestly be several steps even further backward — never mind the less socially conscious landscape of 2002. Luau Island’s design doc in general feels especially off / uncomfortable; given the person who sends you there literally calls the natives “savages,” and that you’re made to rescue stereotypical tourists in floral shirts from enemies who include more Tikis. Likewise, Dragon’s Dojo and Monkey Monastery offer very questionable takes on Asian cultures; where dragons / dragonflies in the Dojo are all named after Asian film stars of various different ethnic groups (mixing Chinese and Japanese without any clue or concern), the monkey monks you meet talking about chi and pacifism, all accompanied to some of the most stereotypical background music imaginable — to where Monkey Monastery’s soundtrack literally incorporates a faux-Tibetan monk chant! As a white Canadian, it’s not really my place to make the final judgment on this, but it’s all definitely extremely questionable.

Getting back to game design: While all the levels are significantly larger than before (or at least feel as such) – and while they offer more collectibles than the originals – they’re still extremely barren feeling overall, with many areas where there are no gems or dragonflies or anything else to speak of. The original trilogy typically avoided this, even in the separate maps Year of the Dragon used for its minigames. Only having eight regular levels also doesn’t nearly compete with the earlier games; and while the originals might have padded their stage counts some by counting the Speedway stages as their own individual levels, Enter the Dragonfly still clocks in shorter than the originals. There’s a distinct decrease in power-ups to pick up within the stages: There’s ‘Superflame,’ which no longer works underwater (despite doing so in previous games); temporary invincibility, used in exactly one level; and ‘Supercharge,’ which is automatically applied to Spyro in flying stages. For comparison, Ripto’s Rage and Year of the Dragon had six different power-up types apiece, and saw them placed more densely across the levels. Furthermore, while earlier games may have had issues with not comprehensively tutorializing players (the original in particular, since the tutorials were only given when rescuing dragons), this game has the opposite issue, where Sparx frequently butts in mid-level to explain stuff even when it’s entirely unnecessary / has already been explained to you previously in the game.

Despite said tutorializing, the game still manages to prove consistently poor at communicating information. For example: There are levels where the main objective is only told to you part-way through, leaving you to backtrack and hunt for objects in the scenery that you may have otherwise ignored. There’s no indication as to when new levels open up within the hub, forcing you to check manually and repeat conversations to inform yourself of necessary dragonfly gating. Even the final battle with Ripto doesn’t clue you in to when it opens up (at 65 dragonflies, for the record), where all the earlier games went out of their way to alert you through cutscenes. Challenge gates occasionally fail to activate as you run through them, and the things you are tasked with destroying within them are unintuitively arranged. You are frequently prompted by NPCs to replay minigames after first completion, but only a small handful actually give you a second challenge / the opportunity to earn a second dragonfly, and the game is almost never clear as to when that’s on the table. This results in having to suffer some particularly bland minigames a whole second time through, only to realize at the end it was effectively for nothing.

But wait, there’s more — especially when it comes to matters of context clues and visual telegraphs! The series convention of metal enemies needing the charge attack and big enemies needing fire is thrown out here, as a lot of enemies are close in size regardless of which attack is needed. The few times you get a power-up over the course of the game, there’s usually no one around to tell you what you’re meant to use them on, much less explain what it does; thereby leaving you to look around, try to see if anything new has appeared within the level, and figure out how to even use what ability you’ve been temporarily granted. The meter indicating your health within the minigames [where health is a factor] is just a horizontally-rotated version of the bar used to denote time limits — that is, when measures of time and health aren’t already being combined into a singular ticking meter.

There’s also a constant difficulty when it comes to activating positional interactions, where the specificity of where Spyro needs to be standing and facing is never made clear / where simpler button interactions could’ve served to alleviate much of the pain. For just one particularly frustrating example: The Honey Marsh stage brings back a mechanic from earlier games for swallowing and spitting out rocks as long-range projectiles. Aside from the wasteful inclusion of this mechanic being a one-off over the course of the whole game; you are made to walk into the pile of rocks from an incredibly specific angle, and made to wait an unclear number of seconds before Spyro decides on his own to ingest a rock from said pile. To top it all off, it’s less visually clear when Spyro even has a rock in his mouth when compared to the older games — where the animation for picking up the rock sometimes fails to play. It’s as if there’s an entire undisclosed multi-step process here for what should honestly be an incredibly basic, one-button interaction.

Matters such as these aren’t aided by a poor sense of camera control across the whole of gameplay. As an example during platforming: The camera automatically rotating and orienting itself to provide a side view during gameplay appears here as something like a “legacy” mechanic, given the originals provided little in the way of manual camera control [given the potential limitations of the original PlayStation controller]. But with the PS2’s DualShock and GameCube’s controller as standards, and less need for 3D platformers to constantly script control over your perspective; some of the automated camera moves come across as particularly impractical, especially when it winds up getting the camera caught inside surrounding terrain. The camera also has noticeable issues with elevating ‘Whirlwinds’ — the sparkling spirals that raise Spyro up into the air. Where in the earlier games they’d lock the camera to face whichever direction Spyro would be made to face / immediately begin gliding toward, Enter the Dragonfly fails to do so, and can often result in blind glides directly towards the camera as you’re left clueless of what’s in front of you. In what should be the specific moments where the game is actually better left dictating control over the camera, it bafflingly fails to do so.

In mentioning that the game doesn’t seem to account for the standardization of dual-analog controllers / additional inputs made available since 1998; this brings us to the matter of general control and game feel, which also feel stuck in the same past. Spyro’s wide running turn radius and stiffer jumps might have been acceptable in the earlier days of the 3D platformer, but they certainly start to show their age here in 2002. The constant inflexibility that comes with jumping between platforms – where jumps from the very pixel-edge are often necessary, as well as last-second flutters to carry you over the edge – strikes one as particularly brutal for a game ostensibly aimed at a younger age demographic. Or how about the lack of somersaults / quick turnarounds during flight — serving to severely stall you should you fly past an objective in the Speedway stages? This is even before you account for scenarios where you are sent immediately plummeting toward the ground if you so much as brush against an errant wall or surface, where a better platformer might still provide you opportunity to course-correct or grab hold of nearby edges. And don’t get us started on platforms beholden to physics; which scarily shake and tip as you land on them, and which are prone to inadvertently (?) sink beneath damaging surfaces and send damage through to Spyro where you’d wrongfully assume he’s safe. All this adds up to a game which feels largely archaic in its designs, where Enter the Dragonfly should have represented a leap into the modern age for the franchise.

Just about the most-forward thinking element present is the variety of unique minigames on display — where the original trilogy was something of a genre innovator in providing them, and their return here still places the franchise somewhat ahead of the curve. Initially, these diversions offer good variety; including distinctly controllable tanks, flying saucers and fighter planes, as well as momentum-building sliding sections and underwater manta ray-catching excursions. Frequently, they don’t play all that similarly to the main game — a conscious design philosophy lifted from Year of the Dragon, which enables the minigames to feel extra special. While the early game seems to promise that you’ll never play the same type of minigame twice – across the first ten or so you’ll encounter – this streak is eventually broken, and you do begin to see mechanical repeats across new stages. In a strange bit of pacing, once the game decides it’s time to start repeating minigame premises, it does so in rapid succession, presenting the slide challenge premise (lifted from Year of the Dragon) three times in a row across three stages. As such, it’s a far more noticeable repetition than if they had been spread wider apart across the game.

There’s also the matter of where these minigames are placed within the stages. Aside from the aforementioned issue of how there’s often little else to discover within the over-large stages other than the minigames, the portals intended to take you to them represent a regressive step backward. In earlier games, these portals are labelled with floating 3D text, indicating where and what you’ll be whisked away to — whether it be a minigame or travel to another realm. When Year of the Dragon added discrete maps for side missions, they were made additionally unique by using a different colour / portal effect than the standard. In Enter the Dragonfly, however, all portals go entirely unlabelled, with nothing in the way of 3D text to indicate their destination. You can’t rely on typical level design intuition either, as sometimes the portals leading back to the hub world will appear in the literal middle of a given stage — where you’d otherwise expect a minigame to be. You’ll have to learn to spot very subtle differences in gate design – with no clues provided by the game itself – in order to discern which gates will take you where. Make an easy mistake, and it’s off to an interminably long load screen with you.

And of course, the minigames themselves are all somewhat questionable in terms of design. Across the tank minigames, you can’t turn the cannon at the same time you’re moving. A pair of UFO-piloting missions has you tractor-beaming cows before aliens can abduct them, and aside from just handling very poorly; the first activity provides no real challenge or hazards, whereas the second is intensely frustrating due to a constant stream of newly-interrupting enemies and projectiles. There’s a contest with Hunter where you ride his pet manta ray underwater in a race to catch baby rays, where your ability to shoot nets suffers from incredibly poor collision detection. Fighter plane segments see you engage in aerial combat, where you’re provided an entirely useless machine gun, and instead are made to rely on barely-more effective missiles that still require dozens of consecutive shots in order to take down a single target. A pair of platforming challenges see you negotiate moving platforms otherwise devoid of hazards, complete with lots of action-packed sitting and waiting for platforms to move into place. And then there’s the wall-climbing challenge, wherein you are flanked by constant streams of hazards to dodge — ranging from “nearly impossible to negotiate” to “can be clipped through without taking damage.”

This plays into one of the game’s most apparent and notable issues, which we have thus far stopped short of mentioning: Enter the Dragonfly is absolutely littered with bugs, design oversights, and general technical issues. How about we start off with some of the less egregious points, and ramp up into the game-breaking stuff? Nearly every stage features at least several highly visible spots where there are gaps between wall / floor / surface textures, thus allowing you to see through them into the level’s skybox. You can sometimes complete objectives before the game provides you the intended means to do so; an example being in the Dragon Dojo, where you are tasked with retrieving kites stuck in raised trees, where you’re meant to use ice breath to freeze the quest-givers and use them as a platform up to said kites. Naturally, at least one of these kites is adjacent to a much higher platform which you’re simply able to glide from to reach it, which in turns triggers a delayed / improperly activated cutscene for completion of the task. Then there are examples of ill-advised checkpointing; such as Honey Marsh having an enemy carrying a hitscan weapon positioned directly next to your spawn point, and who can quickly stun-lock and kill you repeatedly (thanks to a lack of invincibility frames) in a frustrating loop. Then there’s the matter of gems that simply fail to load in where they should, or which can get stuck outside of bounds — especially with the magically-sentient ones that move around in Thieves Den, rendering some stages potentially impossible to fully complete without exiting / re-entering / crossing your fingers.

It’s also possible [if not very likely] to softlock the game; either by simply approaching NPCs from the wrong position (as the game attempts and can sometimes fail to automatically move Spyro in front of them, getting completely stuck in the process), or by completing one of the timed objectives at the moment that the timer runs out (leaving the game hanging as it decides whether or not to credit you for it). And then there are various bugs allowing you to clip / travel out of bounds… which I’m not gonna rag on too hard, since my personal favourite of the series, Ripto’s Rage, was also ripe with these sorts of issues. I suppose the issue here is that where you had to actively work to find many of the exploits in Ripto’s Rage, Enter the Dragonfly makes it difficult to play without accidentally tripping several. Of course, it’s impossible not to mention one particular oversight seen frequently in speedruns of the game, where you can immediately access the boss battle against Ripto within the first 10 seconds of gameplay by headbashing near the unopened portal to him — which is obviously meant to open up way later in the game after collecting the requisite number of dragonflies.

And all this is additionally impeded by a constantly dicey framerate, liable to dip well below the 20 frames per second line down into the 15’s and 10’s. Though the game was initially envisioned as targeting a full 60 FPS, failure to optimize / adapt Equinoxe’s graphical assets for Check Six’s engine ultimately ended with a compromised 30 FPS target — which even then, the final product absolutely struggles to keep up with. Even as the developers worked to strip effects from the game (including weather, light-reflective surfaces, and various particle effects) – resulting in a “less-than-impressive level for everyone involved”^[4d] – the game still fails to meet its target with much more than a single character on-screen. Not only this, but the game struggles to even load all these “less-than-impressive” assets into memory between gameplay, resulting in frequent and somewhat-frustratingly long load screens. For comparison: At this same point in history for 3D platformers, the likes of Super Mario Sunshine were managing mere seconds-long load times, while maintaining a near-perfect constant 30 FPS — despite far more complex (and subjectively far more pleasing) visuals. The degree of fluctuation and time spent waiting in Enter the Dragonfly, like much of the rest of the game, feels still rooted in PS1-era standards.

Expanding on the lacklustre visuals some: Character models are essentially smoother versions of what you could see on the PS1 – complete with highly angular features – which is either charming or underwhelming depending on your perspective. Animations are still generally Muppet-esque – flipping between over or under-exaggerated on a moment’s notice – but generally presenting as fairly archaic. If the game can get away with having a character remain entirely stationary, so as to not have to animate a walk cycle or otherwise have them express themselves with the whole of their bodies? It will absolutely take advantage of that, and root a character firmly in place. Evidently, there are a number of unused animations still remaining in the game’s code, but which are intentionally unused / not loaded as part of the failed effort to optimize the game. Oh, and to mention one more particularly egregious design oversight: There are stages in the game ripe with entirely untextured surfaces, allowing you to peer freely into the skybox. Cloud 9 seems to suffer some of the worst of this; including an easy-to-trigger bug where backtracking through the stage can result in a bulk of textures failing to reload in previously-visited areas, making traversal across invisible terrain an actual guessing game.

It’s a shame too, as there are genuinely neat design concepts that wind up overshadowed / heavily compromised in the final product. Cloud 9 having a giant hourglass you can see from most areas in the level is a very striking visual, but is also easily missed due to other elements of the level design. Stages take to heavily recycling assets, such as the multiple identical barns in Crop Circle Country, or all the noticeably small variety of repeated plants and honeycombs in Honey Marsh. You can also begin to notice quirks and bits of set-dressing from the original trilogy that are now sadly missing in action; such as enemies who engage in mock battles or other scripted interactions with each other prior to your entering their field of vision. It all serves to make the world feel that much less lived-in — where Spyro is the only actor of any note or presence in this otherwise boring existence. Even your main antagonist in Ripto is something of a non-presence, as he only appears a whole of three times across the entire game: In the intro cutscene, as the final boss, and – for some reason – a random cutscene which plays in the middle of the game, which feels completely out of place and time. It doesn’t help that this is, in fact, the only other cutscene to play out in the course of the entire game — bar the game’s ending.

Of course, when I say “ending,” I do mean the game’s “secret” 100% ending (🔊), as facing off against Ripto with anything less than 100% collection completion results in maybe one of the most underwhelming endings since the days of the NES. If you should play through all eight levels with anything less than everything, and you should know to enter Ripto’s arena (remember that the game never indicates when the portal is made available to you); you’ll proceed to have a one-phase fight against him, where the only abilities even required on your part are your stock headbutt and flame breath. If you should manage to survive his stream of unblockable / barely dodgeable homing projectiles, and burn him a sufficient number of times; he will eventually cede defeat, swear revenge, and… cut immediately to the credits roll. No celebration, no spectacle — not even so much as a quip by Spyro. It’s only if you should come into the battle with every last collectible in your stock that you’ll have to endure an additional phase in the fight; wherein Ripto bulks up, adds a new attack to his repertoire, and actually now requires the use of your electric breath. Surviving this slightly prolonged encounter adds new dialogue to Ripto’s surrender, before tacking on a new cutscene where Spyro and company return to their party from the beginning of the game. Still not entirely satisfying, but at least a passable wrap on the adventure. But bearing in mind how few players may bother to pursue this level of completion, the fact is that most would’ve been made to settle for the far more underwhelming conclusion.

Usually with a game like this, you could at least point to the soundtrack / sound design as something like the “shining light” or consistent bit of quality through otherwise middling gameplay. And it’s not as if the music – composed by a returning Stewart Copeland – is somehow unpleasant or anything. That said, some of the level themes just feel… “off,” in a sense? Like Luau Island’s track not really feeling like a Spyro song [in a way that’s hard to articulate], or the theme for Ripto’s fight just being an arrangement of Gulp’s theme from Ripto’s Rage — which itself was originally built heavily on stock music. As for sound design, a significant portion is reused from the earlier games (like collecting gems or charging), which is arguably appropriate for consistency’s sake. But other times you’ll find recycled sounds across multiple different instances or characters, such as different sounding voices coming from the same enemy or Luau Island’s tourists reusing voice clips from Ripto’s Rage’s / Year of the Dragon’s Professor — who was only one of the primary supporting characters in those games. There are also issues with audio in the 3D space, where volume doesn’t degrade or increase regardless of how near you are to the source in this game.

You can also take some inconsistencies in the voice acting to task. For one, Bianca doesn’t sound at all like she did in Year of the Dragon, despite retaining the same voice actress. At least Tom Kenny also returns and remains largely consistent in reprising his role as Spyro — as well as helping expand on what Spyro comments on / reacts to in-game. While it’s certainly an improvement to have voiced lines for things like getting hit, or calling out the names of almost all 90 dragonflies he catches, some of these clips may quickly grow tiresome; such as hearing Spyro exclaim “Yeowch!” every time he accidentally runs into a wall. If that’s still not enough Tom Kenny for you though, you can expect to hear him voice what feels like almost every other NPC in the game, to where you might actually be confused as to whether it’s Spyro talking or just another one of Tom’s dozen or so other characters. Then there’s the matter of voice lines that fail to trigger when they should / dialogue that goes without accompanying voice acting, likely representing some last-minute implemented conversations. Conversely, there are also voice lines that play when they shouldn’t (🔊) — as if two separate lines of dialogue are accidentally left stitched together, and left providing misinformation.

It’s a shame that every attempt at innovation or iteration in the game feels like it has to come with a caveat. Between the higher-poly graphics being hampered by other technical shortcomings, the larger levels having less to do within them, or the wider variety of distinct minigames resulting in almost none of them feeling particularly tight to control; it all feels very much like a situation of “one step forward, two steps back.” While we’ve found that the game certainly still has its fans – players calling for the game to receive the ‘Reignited’ treatment, or who otherwise cherish childhood memories for it – even those most ardent defenders all seem to admit at some point that the game isn’t actually very good. And while it’s totally fair and valid to enjoy a game in spite of itself – in the face of massive design oversights and numerous other flaws – it still represents an inability on the part of the developers to create the game they had initially envisioned, and which those fans of the franchise deserved. Enter the Dragonfly still represents, at the end of the day, a failure to live up to the reputation and potential of that original trilogy — regardless of whatever circumstances may have stopped it from reaching those high marks.

Which begs the question: Free of time constraints and corporate interference, what could the developers potentially have done to have made the game better — and what ideas might we suggest? Aside from the obvious allocation for more rigorous quality control: The first recommendation would probably be shrinking the levels to a size more comparable to the originals, or otherwise adding more things to them to better justify their larger scale. Reducing the scope of / time spent stretching out the handful of levels present may well have allowed more time to implement more of the originally-envisioned and distinct levels, the presence of which would ultimately do more to make the game world feel “larger” — even if the total cumulative real estate was ultimately reduced. Tightening up the controls some and re-focusing where / how your range of power-ups can be used would obviously serve to expand the depth of gameplay, as well as adding to your sense of development and progression in the case of your expanding arsenal. It’d have also been of benefit to the narrative to make the villains have more sense of presence: Re-adding boss fights against the likes of Crush and Gulp, or whoever else the developers saw fit to add. Anything to fill that time spent between Ripto’s scant few appearances — if not having him appear more often as well.

For some of my personal recommendations? I’d have like to have seen Gnasty Gnorc make some sort of return, possibly working in cahoots with Ripto. If the theme of the game seemed to have settled on the return of characters all seen previously in the original trilogy, why not bring back Spyro’s first major adversary? This would also open the door for additional Gnorc enemies to appear in levels, working and possibly squabbling with Ripto’s forces. On the other hand, the best thing for the game probably would’ve been to let the developers see to their original “darker” vision, before Universal shot down all their designs. At the very least, the developers should’ve been able to implement their original idea for Ember in some form or fashion — to expand the lore and character roster in at least some capacity.

Unfortunately – and in spite of their best efforts – the developers were effectively hampered and blocked in their every attempt to truly innovate on existing formula. With Ripto’s Rage adding its dedicated side missions and new moves, and Year of the Dragon left to add new characters and minigames for them, Enter the Dragonfly is only left with a half-hearted attempt at expanding Spyro’s abilities for breath — ultimately utilized to almost none of its potential. And while it struggles to reckon with this ill-implemented functionality, almost all of the existing flaws from the previous games are left to worsen and amplify here, in addition to the larger number of technical problems and lacklustre presentation. The version of Enter the Dragonfly that came to pass might’ve been acceptable as a late-era release for the PS1, but fails to hang with contemporaries in the sixth generation. And even if some fifth-gen version of this game somehow came to pass, it’d probably still be hard-pressed to recommend it over Insomniac’s efforts on the original trilogy — or even the string of GBA titles, for that matter. But hey: As long as Universal was happy with how it all turned out, who are the consumers to judge?

** Interestingly, there are 90 dragonflies total present in the game, but 151 baby dragons from Year of the Dragon who should ostensibly be in need of them (by measure of the new lore). Even if the game’s originally planned 120 dragonflies were all present and accounted for, there would still be 31 baby dragons left unaccompanied.

*** Not helping is that this Wing Guard is entirely useless against Ripto, despite his primary means of attack being projectiles flung towards you. Even in the case of the enemy type it’s actually intended to be used against, the best way to do so is to unintuitively face your back towards them (where your wings are visually at their least protective), since this somehow serves as the most reliable direction for bouncing their attacks back at them as intended. Adding one more hiccup to this botched implementation: On GameCube, initiating the guard requires pressing the same button that cycles your breath [in addition to a second button], and so you will likely wind up doing just that in the process of activating your guard.

**** The biggest examples probably come from the vaguely tribal enemies in the first game’s ‘Tree Tops’ and ‘Metalhead’ stages, as well as the character of ‘Bombo’ (a Middle Eastern person who tasks you with following him while avoiding his magic explosives) in Ripto’s Rage. These examples were all deemed egregious enough that come the release of the Reignited Trilogy, these old designs were all actively changed — replacing the caricatured enemies, and changing Bombo’s to Bob.

“Hey! It’s Tashistation!”

As one would probably expect, Enter the Dragonfly was met with overwhelmingly… middling critical reception. Between rare praise and a handful scathing reviews, most publications would wind up landing somewhere in the middle — pairing pointed criticisms with a general sense of acceptability. For one of the more generous takes: GamePro awarded the game a 4.5 [out of 5] after seemingly having been charmed by the graphics, of all things (“Spyro is a graphics bonanza with blasts of color and eye-catching nuances, such as rippling water, glowing flames, and shimmering portals”).^[6] The only “flies in the ointment” they deem fit to cite are minor gripes about the controls and camera, indicating an apparently otherwise issue-free playthrough of the game. Curiously – and as a recurring point across almost every review – there’s a claim that the game contains “25 levels?” I have to imagine this was a point fed to reviewers by the publishers, who seemed to count each of the minigames as their own individual levels in order to inflate that count. The alternative is that the game’s press kit somehow contained some otherwise outdated information on the game (based on some earlier projection, possibly), and that no outlet bothered to fact-check or correct the claim.

Downgrading to a more average review score: IGN saw fit to score Enter the Dragonfly a 6 [out of 10]; describing a “quite generic” story, comparisons of the dragonfly-catching mechanic to Pokémon (bit of a stretch, but sure), and more pointed criticisms of the framerate and general presentation.^[7] Ultimately, the conclusion they reach is that the game is “probably better suited for the younger audience,” on the merit that they likely “will not recognize how awful and horrible the framerate is.” What’s of more interest here is, again, a number of claims contrary to what’s present in the actual final product — handily provided in bullet point format (laughably listed as “The Facts”). Here, the claim is again made that there are “over 25 huge 3D levels for Spyro to explore,” an additional bit of misinformation citing “unique weather effects such as tornadoes, monsoons, snow, and rainbows” (of which only snow and rainbows actually appear), and a perhaps deliberately crafty lie counting “over 100 dragonflies and gems” — where there are actually only 90 dragonflies total in the game, but certainly more than 100 gems, so that this point is technically true by some measure of interpretation?

Which brings us to GameSpot’s take, and an altogether fiery takedown of the purple fire-breather’s then-latest effort. Here, one Matthew Gallant (currently a ‘Game Designer’ at Naughty Dog at the time of this writing) immediately opens their 3.2 [out of 10]-scoring review with a savagely-crafted salvo: “While it may have some great predecessors, this latest Spyro is an almost unplayable train wreck of a game that has no direction, no technical merit, and little appeal except as a game design house of horrors and a showcase for some good music by Stewart Copeland.”^[8] Following that, there’s a focus largely on perceived plot holes regarding the dragonflies (why they seem to choose to run away from Spyro, for one thing), followed by a short list of glitches encountered during gameplay (“Spyro is full of bugs in more ways than one”). All in all, Matthew does a fair [and slightly amusing] job of cataloguing several of the game’s shortcomings, and seems to touch on most of the contemporary criticisms of the game as well.

But perhaps no voice has been quite so critical of Enter the Dragonfly as that of one Ted Price: Not a game reviewer, but no less than the founder and CEO of Insomniac Games himself. And at some point in / prior to 2007, he provided a testimonial that would forever be attached to the maligned title — a series of insights which have served to colour the entry’s perception by fans and historians for the years to come:

“Spyro has become an abused stepchild. While Digital Eclipse did a great job on the GBA titles, Spyro: Enter the Dragonfly on PS2 and GameCube was an absolute travesty. When it was released, I was polite about it when people asked, having not played the game. But then I played it. It seems to me at this point that consumers are going to think twice before they buy another Spyro game? What’s worse for us at Insomniac is that a lot of people assume we made Enter the Dragonfly.” ~ Ted Price^†

Pretty damning statements, to be sure! And while Ted has certainly provided similarly consistent takes over the course of the years (having more charitably referred to the game as simply “a little disappointing”^[9]), there’s still one slight issue with this particular quote: It has remained impossible to properly source over the course of the past 13 years. When folk copy / recirculate this particular block of text, they do so thanks only to a 2007 post on the Insomniac Games forums [by one ‘spyro4president’], who vaguely attributes the passage to an excerpt “taken from Official U.S. PlayStation Magazine” — paired with no particular issue or publication date. And as much of said publication currently remains unscanned / digitized as of the time of this writing (though certified saint of games preservation Frank Cifaldi plans to work on it), we can only take this forum poster at their word as to the legitimacy of said quotation. For as likely as it is that it is, in fact, a genuine quote; it’d still be nice to have the proper proof in order, before other post-mortems on the game have gone on to preach it as gospel.

Moving past matters of disappointed ex-devs and sourcing frustrations (As sure as I’m the only person who even cares — Cass), there’s still the question of how the general critical reception impacted the game’s sales? Evidently, not all that much: Enter the Dragonfly appears to have been well enough of a sales success, with its having attained ‘Greatest Hits’ status on PlayStation 2 (indicating at least 400,000 copies sold) and similar ‘Player’s Choice’ designation on GameCube (representing minimum million-sellers). The fact of the matter was that Spyro’s brand was still fire hot moving into the sixth console generation, and that the anticipation for his then-new outing trumped the need for most to “wait for reviews” or whatever else have you — never mind the number of consumers liable to buy games score-unseen as general practice (in example; children who ask for games based entirely on cover art / familiar characters). Of course, this in turn begs a follow-up question: Would consumers now having the game in their hands do anything to tarnish the Spyro legacy, and potentially impact its sequels?

2003 saw the release of Spyro: Attack of the Rhynocs, as the final instalment in Digital Eclipse’s GBA trilogy. As a further iteration on prior GBA titles – and additionally incorporating more of Enter the Dragonfly’s multiple breath types – it seemed to be critically received similarly to said portable predecessors (averaging out at 72 on Metacritic), but demonstrated a significant drop-off saleswise (estimated 300K cartridges sold per VGChartz — down from Season of Flame’s 1.58 million). Whether this could be directly attributed to Enter the Dragonfly or simply a matter of fatigue as far as the handheld installments were concerned is difficult to discern. Either way, this didn’t stop a further pair of connected portable installments the following year: Spyro Orange: The Cortex Conspiracy, as released in conjunction with Crash Bandicoot Purple: Ripto’s Rampage. Here, the freshly re-branded ‘Vivendi Universal Games’ were able to flex their ownership of both the Crash and Spyro licenses, and cross the characters over into each other’s respective universes. With developer Vicarious Visions at the helm, the former Sony poster boys would find… moderate success, across their pair of GBA titles. For whatever it’s worth, VGChartz pegs Spyro’s cartridge as selling 70K less than Crash’s — perhaps demonstrating which brand was stronger at that moment in time.

More importantly, 2004 saw the return of Spyro to console format as well, in the form of Spyro: A Hero’s Tail — released across all three major consoles of the time, thereby marking the dragon’s Microsoft Xbox debut. With development duties now passed to Eurocom Entertainment (we’ll get into the fates of Check Six and Equinoxe shortly), they took the opportunity to mix things up a bit more than their predecessors had been allowed; overhauling the graphical style to a far more significant [and stable] degree, introducing a new antagonist (the banished dragon elder ‘Red’), bringing back the concept of multiple playable characters, and generally expanding on the lore and mechanics of the established universe. For all this, the game was met with only slightly warmer critical reception: With a headline questioning whether or not “the franchise [is] back on track,” IGN’s review ultimately settles on a score of 7 — their conclusion reached being that “A Hero’s Tail is a definite improvement over Enter the Dragonfly. It’s a solid, albeit simple and slightly unimaginative platformer.”^[10] And for its efforts, A Hero’s Tail again managed “sales milestone label” re-release status across all three consoles — though the Xbox release only managed this feat in the PAL market, earning a ‘Classics’ designation.

2005 brought Spyro: Shadow Legacy for the Nintendo DS, providing a handheld hybrid of the series standard action gameplay with new RPG elements. With reins handed over to yet another fresh developer in Amaze Entertainment, they unfortunately seemed to turn in something of a mediocre offering, with a Metacritic average stuck dead center of scale at 50. Evidently, low production values and repetitious gameplay are the commonly-cited pain points on the part of critics. By measure of VGChartz, sales ultimately peaked at around the 160K cart mark, representing a new franchise low. At this point – facing dwindling sales and recurring middling reception – an again re-christened ‘Vivendi Games’ would make a bold decision regarding the franchise’s futures: It was time, by their estimation, to reboot the series — to re-envision it as a darker, more teen-oriented product (while still adhering to ESRB ‘E10+’ standards). So began the so-called ‘Legend of Spyro Trilogy,’ with its inaugural entry in The Legend of Spyro: A New Beginning.

Having entrusted Spyro’s care to yet another new developer in Krome Studios [of previous Ty the Tasmanian Tiger fame] – and having loaded the game with all the celebrity casting their budget could muster (the likes of Elijah Wood as Spyro, David Spade as Sparx, and Gary Oldman as new antagonist ‘Ignitus’) – the end results were acceptable. Minor bumps up in review scores represented at least moderate interest in / approval of the new combat-focused direction by critics — even as the likes of Eurogamer would pair their 6 [out of 10] score with comments calling the game “a long slog” and “too little too late.”^[11] But as far as consumers were concerned, the promise of a rebooted universe just didn’t seem all that compelling, and diminishing sales returns could not be curbed or abated: Only the PlayStation 2 release of A New Beginning managed to meet any of the established sales milestones / earn itself one last Greatest Hits label. Sequels in The Eternal Night and Dawn of the Dragon – even as they eventually began to release across new console hardware (across the Wii, PlayStation 3, and Xbox 360) – represented consistent decline in sales and consumer interest. And so, it was with the conclusion of this underwhelming new trilogy that Spyro, finally, was afforded some time to rest — after a decade-long period of annual product releases.

Now, something important to note here is that Vivendi had actually gone and passed off the publishing rights to the franchise prior to Dawn of the Dragon’s release — handing Spyro to their newly-established ‘Activision Blizzard’ division. From that point forward, Spyro games would release under the Activision label, including the dragon’s eventual return in 2011: Skylanders: Spyro’s Adventure. And without getting too much into the history of this new series, let’s just say that it proved hugely successful — like, hugely successful, to the tune of $500 million in retail sales / 30 million associated toy figures sold.^[12] Of course, those accompanying figures – which could be scanned into the game and used to activate new characters and content – were the gimmick which enabled the series to soar to unpredicted heights, and which would inspire an industry fad in attempting to produce competing ‘Toys-to-life’ product lines. And of course, the character who surprisingly seems to get lost in all this shuffle is no less than Spyro himself — ultimately relegated to a bit player role in what was ostensibly a continuation of his own franchise, and soon removed from the title branding altogether.

Come 2013, Activision Blizzard had finalized a split from Vivendi which saw them escaping with the rights to Skylanders still in their possession, and which they would continue to milk for all its worth until well into 2017. Resisting the urge to cover all this in further depth; the key takeaway is that Spyro himself would continue to fade further into the background during all this time, even as discussions were apparently taking place to potentially try their hand again at producing a new standalone series. After non-committal comments by Ted Price in 2014 regarding the potential for a Spyro comeback / a willingness to get involved again – literally leaving an interviewer with the ultimate non-committal comment of “Never say never”^[13] – what would ultimately inspire actual progress to start being made was the success of a former friend and rival mascot character, Crash Bandicoot. With studio ‘Toys for Bob’ (who had been churning out the Skylanders titles all this while) tasked with developing the Crash Bandicoot N. Sane Trilogy for release in 2017, they served up remastered takes on Crash’s first three PlayStation entries as envisioned for the eighth console generation. Following the success of this nostalgic experiment, Activision greenlit a similar treatment for Spyro, resulting in 2018’s release of the Spyro Reignited Trilogy. Here, players can experience spiffy-looking recreations of that original Spyro PS1 trilogy, and remember why it was we all fell in love with that purple dragon in the first place.

And that’s pretty much where we’re at right now: With nostalgic gamers now able to relive their Spyro memories inside a visually stunning new environment, and new players now experiencing that dragon magic for the first time, Spyro is seemingly back where he belongs as a beloved starring character. And it only took roughly sixteen years after the release of Enter the Dragonfly in order to do so! But is that to say that Enter the Dragonfly is directly, definitively responsible for setting the series down that gradual decline? Well, while it certainly marked a turning point for the franchise, and where it absolutely devalued the brand to an immediate measurable extent – not to mention scaring poor old Stewart Copeland off after he no longer felt “on the same page any more” with the new developers^[14] – you can’t go and put everything on just this one game. What hurt the series worse was the inability on the part of Universal to immediately course-correct, and to properly ensure that A Hero’s Tail represented a major iteration / return to glory; instead allowing an entry which continued to demonstrate some weaker qualities, and failing to inspire continued confidence in Spyro.

For as drawn-out as Spyro’s decline after Enter the Dragonfly may have been, its developers would face far swifter punishment: Their shared Spyro title marked the final industry contributions by both Check Six and Equinoxe, who would both be shuttered shortly thereafter its release. On Equinoxe’s end, the studio attempted to persist for at least another year or so – likely seeking contract work as cutscene creators again – before scattering into the wind and seeing former staff all pursuing independent paths from one another. Check Six, on the other hand, met a far messier demise: While originally contracted to produce two Spyro titles, Universal ultimately saw fit to pull the plug on their sequel after Enter the Dragonfly had been deemed as not meeting “contract expectations”. Difficulties in cooperation and relations between the two companies probably didn’t help matters any, either; and that certainly wouldn’t have improved when Check Six were subsequently made to pay a fee for “violation of contract” in not producing a second Spyro title. At this point, Check Six found evidently themselves unable to weather the financial toll of this fee, and were forced to close shortly thereafter — effectively killed by Universal Interactive, by means of the situation they forced.

There is one more interesting fact we’ve thus far failed to mention in regards to Check Six, and one which potentially affected Enter the Dragonfly’s development at that. See, while their Spyro title was in active development, Check Six were actually simultaneously at work on a second game as well — separate from Spyro, and concurrently consuming the time and efforts of a portion of their team. The name of that ultimately cancelled game was none other than ‘Aliens: Colonial Marines’: Originally slated for release in November 2002, and planned to be published by Electronic Arts. Said cancellation was announced in October of that year, though it is said that “the decision was taken a couple of months [prior]” to the statement made by an EA rep.^[15] Of course, this would not be the last time the games industry attempted to commit the ‘Colonial Marines’ concept to software, and the version of Aliens: Colonial Marines we would eventually get was subject to its own story of torturous development and mass disappointment. But let the records indicate that it was Check Six who tried and failed first, so that others could follow and fail in their footsteps.

As a final bit of legal history regarding Enter the Dragonfly: In 2007, it was the focus point of litigation raised by the New York law firm ‘Kenny & Kenny PPLC’; representing a woman seeking damages from Sony, Vivendi, Sierra, and the very store a copy of the game had been rented from (an already defunct ‘Hiawatha Video’). By the woman’s account, her four year old child had suffered a grand mal seizure in the process of watching an older brother playing the game — where it was felt that precautions against photosensitivity triggers in games were the point of blame. By one Michael P. Kenny’s claim: “The video game companies know there is a problem, and they choose not to fix it.”^[16] The firm would further seek out additional “parents who wish to sue video game manufacturers” on account of games-related seizures, in preparing for a larger class action suit — registering the [now-defunct] VideoGameSeizures.com domain in the process. While the rulings on these cases were seemingly never followed up / reported on – potentially on account of a quiet, out of court settlement – it can be argued that there was certainly some degree of merit to the initial lawsuit — regardless of how far-reaching the parties targeted may well have been. There’s also the possibility that the threat of similar cases is why game and console boot screens now come front-loaded with photosensitivity warnings; all potentially thanks to Spyro, and his altogether underwhelming 2002 release.

In the years since the game’s release, and as fans continued to speculate as to what went wrong, there have been some recent efforts made to find answers. Initial fruits of this labour began to bloom in 2018, as one ‘WumpaGem’ posted their transcripts of an interview with former developer Warren Davis — initially to a now-defunct Facebook page, and eventually on their own website. The degree of insight provided here seemed to inspire further efforts in tracking down / contacting other developers originally attached to the game, and ultimately resulted in the production of a full 2 hour documentary by one ‘Mr. FO1’ (@KyleYankovic). Containing multiple exclusive interviews (including lots of blame pointed at Universal), loads of prototype footage, and other rare insights into the development process; this video is what helped get a lot of the details of the game’s pained production out there, and consequently made much of this very article possible. It’s certainly well worth a watch if you’re interested in further details of the game’s history — with much more detail regarding the strenuous development conditions.

Ultimately, the story of Enter the Dragonfly is a parable on the problems which can arise from torturous publisher interference. Pretty much all the envisioned concepts which drove the game’s development – bigger worlds, new abilities for Spyro, expanding on the lore, and so forth – had the potential to be legitimately compelling. But between the constant corporate meddling, the scrapping of so many of the more novel ideas, and the corners forced to be cut as result of ever-looming deadlines; that potential was cut short, and “what could’ve been” becomes the common refrain in looking back on this otherwise unspectacular entry to the Spyro franchise. This, and a seemingly constant sense of conflict between Check Six, Equinoxe, and Universal – all pushing for their own contradictory visions of what the game should’ve been – left little room or time for more positive collaboration. When former developers and players both claim that “it’s a miracle the game even came out,” you can be sure they’re right; but you can also be just as sure that things didn’t have to turn out this way. Ultimately, everyone involved in the game’s production should be made to share in the accountability to at least some extent. And though Spyro may well have managed to bounce back from this bottom-barrel effort, he’s unlikely to forget who clipped his wings and allowed him to fall down there in the first place.

[1] “The Origin of Spyro.” The Animation Academy. 2002. Web.
[2] “US Platinum Videogame Chart.” The Magic Box. Last updated 2007. Web.
[3] ^{b c} Yankovic, Kyle. “‘Spyro: Enter the Dragonfly’ Documentary.” May 1, 2019. Video.
[4] ^{b c d} ‘WumpaGem.’ “The Enter the Dragonfly Investigation – Part II […]” TheWumpaGem. October 1, 2018. Web.
[5] ‘WumpaGem.’ “The Enter the Dragonfly Investigation – Part I […]” TheWumpaGem. May 4, 2018. Web.
[6] LaMancha, Manny. “Spyro: Enter the Dragonfly Review for PS2.” GamePro. January 14, 2003. Web. (Archive)
[7] Perry, Douglas C. “Spyro: Enter the Dragonfly.” IGN. November 18, 2002. Web.
[8] Gallant, Matthew. “Spyro: Enter the Dragonfly Review.” GameSpot. November 18, 2002. Web.
[9] Turner, Benjamin. “Ted Price on Going Commando.” GameSpy. May 8, 2003. Web. (Archive)
[10] Castro, Juan. “Spyro: A Hero’s Tail.” GameSpy. May 8, 2003. Web. (Archive)
[11] Smith, Lesley. “The Legend of Spyro: A New Beginning.” Eurogamer. November 5, 2006. Web.
[12] Reilly, Jim. “Skylanders Toy Sales Exceed 30 Million.” Eurogamer. May 9, 2012. Web.
[13] Karmali, Luke. “Insomniac Boss on the Future of Spyro the Dragon.” IGN. September 26, 2014. Web.
[14] “Talking Spyro with The Police’s Stewart Copeland.” gamesTM. October, 2016. Web. (Archive)
[15] Calvert, Justin. “Aliens: Colonial Marines canceled.” GameSpot. October 11, 2002. Web.
[16] “Syracuse Attorney Michael P. Kenny Prepares Suit Against Sony […].” PRWeb. November 3, 2009. Web. (Archive)

† Unable to independently unearth / validate source.