What Could Have Been / Spyro the Dragon

The early "GREEN" Spyro design, with him being an adult hero named "Pete."

Each of the Spyro the Dragon games have an abundance of scrapped content, which are listed below. Skylanders is a separate spinoff franchise and thus isn't included.

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Classic

• Spyro the Dragon (1998):
  • Spyro started out as a green adult dragon named Pete. He was aged down into a Kid Hero for ease of animation and better appeal to the target audience, his name was changed to avoid potential conflicts with the Disney movie Pete's Dragon (1977), and finally gained his familiar purple color scheme for better contrast against the typically grassy stages.
  • The last page of the manual for Spyro the Dragon shows what seems to be either an adult version of Spyro or his father◊. It is unknown if he was supposed to appear as such in the game itself or a sequel but no other artworks featuring that concept seem to have been made.
  • Spyro was originally planned to be able to swim, but the dev team ran out of time to program it in, hence why Super Drowning Skills are in full effect in the game.
• Spyro 2: Ripto's Rage!:
  • Many of the levels had different names in development. For example, Sunny Beach was originally called "Aquaria Beach", Shady Oasis was "Scorch Oasis", and Mystic Marsh was "Mystic Savannah". This late change is why one NPC accidentally calls Cloud Temples "Mystic City". The names were in pairs where similar levels had similar names.
  • Instead of a question mark on it, the Mystery Bottle originally had an arrow pointing where to go.
  • The reason why the shield power-up is gray on the power gate yet is represented by an orange shield icon when you you're invincible is because it was supposed to be orange on the power gate too and they forgot to change the orange shield icon to be gray.
  • Moneybags was originally going to be a Rhinoc with a more intimidating "mobster"-like appearance. He was toned down for the final game, as the developers thought he looked too scary.
  • Inventor Droid has unused dialogue for when Spyro hasn't killed any enemies. This is impossible under normal circumstances as enemies self-destruct in that level. This is either Developer's Foresight or the amount of defeated enemies needed was changed in development.
  • Elora the faun was originally going to be a centaur.
  • According to a prototype of the game discovered on April 17, 2021, Elora was going to narrate the levels' intro and outro cutscenes, providing some backstory about the worlds and the problems the inhabitants are currently dealing with. This would also have indicated that Ripto was behind most of the problems of each level.
    • On Hurricos, it was Ripto who sent the Geargrinders to attack the Electrolls in order to seize control over their machines, which provide much of the power for Avalar.
    • The Waterworkers were sent to Sunny Beach to harvest turtles because turtles are Ripto's favorite food.
    • The Waterworkers took over Aquaria Towers and began building factories there because Ripto ordered them to do so.
    • It was Ripto who ordered the Ice Wizards to go to Crystal Glacier and kidnap Shaman Tuk.
    • The war between the Breezebuilders and Landblubbers was engineered by Ripto; Elora notes the two races got along fine before he arrived, and she hopes his defeat will lead to them patching things up again.
    • The Earthshapers in Fracture Hills and Magma Cone aren't natives, but were actually sent by Ripto as an invasion force.
    • The Warlocks in Cloud Temples were sent by Ripto.
• Spyro: Year of the Dragon:
  • The hummingbirds were originally male. For example, Cpl. Gabrielle was originally named "Eric".
  • The eggs had intentionally Outdated Names in earlier versions of the name, likely go with the interpretations that dragons are anachronistic.
  • Sunny Villa had a different layout earlier in development. There was a huge fountain in the middle of the main part of the level. There were also rooms on top of the building where the gate is.
  • Honey Speedway was originally called "Honeycomb Speedway", Dino Mines was called "Dry Gulch", and Haunted Tomb is called "Catacomb Caverns".
  • In Dino Mines, there is a Dummied Out arena that can be accessed with the "swimming in the air" glitch. It's speculated that Spyro was meant to do a shoot-out with the Bailey gang similar to Agent 9.
  • Prerelease footage shows that Bamboo Terrace's track had a section cut where a woman vocalizes. There were also originally tigers in the level but the final version only shows oxen.
  • The Professor has unused dialogue in the games' files that implies he was supposed to meet Agent 9 in an earlier homeworld. This is backed up by some of Greta's dialogue in Fireworks Factory talking about helping the Professor build a rocket, further implying that Spyro was originally intended to meet him in Evening Lake.
  • Agent 9 was originally a pig but was changed to a slimmer monkey because his body size would make it too hard to see enemies to shoot and aim at.
  • Sheila was originally a Half-Dressed Cartoon Animal in a T-shirt and boxing gloves and had horns on her head (?). She lost all these features by the time of the final game and fights by kicking (like a real kangaroo) instead of punching. Sheila would get a shirt again by the time of the Reignited Trilogy remake.
  • Lost Fleet was originally going to have a completely original theme, but for some reason, the developers decided to cut this song in favor of reusing the theme for Super Bonus Round (and Sheila's Alp in the Greatest Hits version). This theme was being revised all the way up until a September 4th, 2000 prototype at least, indicating it was cut very late in development.
  • The Sparx levels were all meant to have unique themes, but the final game simply uses the Bugbot Factory theme, which doubles as the game's title theme, similar to the black label version using Harbor Speedway's theme for every Speedway. Why they were cut is unknown, even by several developers who were contacted, though Crawdad Farm and Starfish Reef's themes were released by Stewart Copeland under their codenames of "cherry" and "grape".
  • Several tracks, such as Frozen Altars and Sorceress' Lair, had substantially different mixes in certain prototypes.
• Elora was meant to appear in Attack of the Rhynocs and Season Of Ice but was scrapped due to time constraints. In Attack of the Rhynocs, she was also going to be playable.
• Prior to Enter the Dragonfly, there was at one point a Spyro game in the works for the Xbox.
• Spyro: Enter the Dragonfly:
  • The game was originally supposed to run at 60 FPS and had low loading times. Being Christmas Rushed, along with hardware issues, led to a laggy game with long load times. Several sound effects (including wings sounds for Spyro's hover and thump sounds when Spyro hits a wall) were also cut.
  • The original plans for the game were for the series to grow with the audience. Instead of being a cute platformer about a badbutt mascot, the plot was a Darker and Edgier game starring a teenage Spyro. Universal vetoed the idea. Years later, the Legend of Spyro reboot had a similar premise.
  • The original pitch for the plot was going to introduce an evil dragon who was stealing the essences of other dragons to become more powerful. Spyro would have to travel across the Dragon Worlds to restore those essences and defeat the evil dragon. Spyro: A Hero's Tail reused a similar plot.
  • Another plot idea was that both Gnasty Gnorc and Ripto would team up to take on Spyro together, though this could have still worked alongside the former idea as well.
  • Ember was originally created for Enter the Dragonfly. She didn't use her Hero's Tail design but she was still a young, pink dragon around Spyro's age. She was supposed to fly alongside Spyro and act as a turrent. But the constant changes during development caused the team to not find a place for her in the game, so she was scrapped. She would later make her official debut in Spyro: A Hero's Tail.
  • The game was supposed to have 25 linear levels and 120 dragonflies, but it was downsized to 8 circular levels and 90 dragonflies in order to fit the Christmas release.
  • Cut levels include: the desert level Baked Alaska, the pirate level Cutthroat Cove, and the forest level Emerald Forest (also known as "Enchanted Forest") featuring porcupines with Scottish accents. Early press releases talked about "unique environments including rainbows, tornadoes, and monsoons". The manual still contains an image of a portal in the Dragon Realms' castle that would have taken you to another hub world as well.
  • A rocket and surfboard were two vehicles that were meant to appear.
  • Moneybags only appears in the first level, before inexplicably disappearing throughout the rest of the game. There was originally a reason for this: he was going to be Put on the Bus, with Dummied Out dialogue showing that he was sick of gems and didn't want to deal with them anymore.
  • Sparx went through a few design overhauls in development, including a bigger eyed look, a look with transparent wings, and a look with larger wings.
  • Sparx's minigame from the third game was also meant to return.
  • The dragonflies originally bounced up and down. This was changed in order to make them easier to catch.
  • A Dummied Out line of Hunter's is a tongue-in-cheek line that references how hard it is to catch dragonflies:
    You gotta get close to them for Bubble Breath to work. Of course, that's easier said than done.
  • Coinciding with having to learn all his extra breath powers, Spyro would have started off depowered of even his fire breath. Bianca would have played a role helping him regain it, this is even referenced in the manual for the game.
• Spyro: A Hero's Tail
  • An interview with the game's director, Jon Williams, shows that there were several elements cut during development. Among other things:
  • The game's original title was Spyro: The Dark Realms.
  • There was a fifth hub world planned, known as the Secret Hideout. It was merged with Volcanic Isles about halfway through development.
  • There was also an unused boss called the Lava Serpent, which presumably would have been the boss of Volcanic Isles had it been split into multiple realms as planned.
  • There was a planned area in Frostbite Village with baby mammoths as enemies. It was cut from the game—partially because it was causing slowdown issues, but mostly because the mammoths were too cute to kill.
  • There were also sharks that would have eaten Spyro if he went too far outside the level's boundaries in aquatic levels, which were scrapped because they were difficult to implement.
  • Speaking of aquatic levels, Spyro was going to have an oxygen meter during underwater segments. A gadget called the Aqualung would have allowed Spyro to breathe underwater indefinitely.
  • The original ending of the game would have been longer, with an extra scene showing the Dragon Realms returning to normal, and Red trapped in a jar in the Professor's lab. An unfinished version of the ending can be found here.
  • Ember was considered as a fully-playable character at one point, complete with unique dialogue from NPCs, but it was too much extra work to implement.
  • Text in the music files suggests there was going to be a fifth hub world that was later cut.
• In the early 2000s, there were plans for an Agent 9 spinoff. One project was a complete reboot, where Agent 9 was called "Prime 8" and had a realistic redesign. The other unrelated project was more faithful to the original.

The Legend of Spyro

Due to the troubled production of history of the trilogy and the lack of budget for the games, a lot of material was conceived of, tossed around and partly developed but was not ultimately included in the final work, and Eternal Night also reused several assets from the first game, especially animations.

• The scenery gallery for Dawn of the Dragon shows far bigger and detailed levels, and several dozen scrapped ones.
• The producers revealed that the entire purpose of The Legend of Spyro was to re-establish the characters and the world in a way that would allow growth and expansion, and more potential games based on the trilogy were planned, but Activision wanted to take the franchise in a different direction.
• Jared Pullen, the lead artist of LoS, did a Q.A. on some of the stuff they never got around to implementing or building upon:
  • Dragon eggs take decades to hatch, and may remain dormant for a long time until conditions are right for hatching.
    • Krome Studios reasoned that perhaps Spyro's egg was laid a very long time ago while Malefor was still free and kicking, laying dormant druing the hard times "waiting for destiny" to find the time of hatching until Ignitus releases it down the river. However this was never fleshed out.
    • Plans for a subsequent plot about potential surviving dragon eggs and hatchling characters were thought about, but Krome Studios never got past the design phase to flesh them out.
  • The development team was considering revealing the identity of Spyro's biological father, and was halfway split between two candidates for this role — Ignitus or Malefor, with the latter being made possible by the long potential dormancy of dragon eggs. The original intent was for hints towards one parentage or the other to be dropped through the games, and for Malefor to use this knowledge to taunt Spyro during their final battle. In the finished game, this only remains in the form of Ignitus' design having been modeled to resemble Spyro's and in his role as a mentor figure for Spyro.
  • If adult female dragons had appeared in the series they would have been even more slender than adult Cynder was, as adult Cynder was apparently rough around the edges due to being artificially aged up. Female dragon designs would have been intended to convey "ferocity through speed and agility" instead of brute muscle, with elongated necks, lengthened whip-like tails, larger, more delicate wings, and higher hips.
  • There was intended to be another dragon around Spyro and Cynder's relative age named Pyra out there, who had been Ignitus' squire, was separated from him during the war against the Apes, and became stranded on a deserted island.
  • There would have been six natural elements in the world — the four present in gameplay, plus wind and water; Cynder's natural element was intended to be wind, and Cyril was originally intended to be the female Guardian of water. Pure shadow, fear, and poison dragons also exist, but they aren't natural, and are the result of a "dark entity" instead of the "light" one responsible for the pure ones.
  • Cynder was originally intended to have green fire as part of a Shout-Out to Maleficent (who she was partially inspired by), but it was cut when it was decided the Earth Element would be green.
• Jared later stated that in the intended story draft that something much more powerful than Malefor corrupted him.
• According to Jared, Cynder joining the temple after being saved by Spyro was supposed to be a point of contention among the Guardians, with Cyril being the most vocal dragon against it. It wasn't until Ignitus stood up for her did they finally accept her. Time constraints, however, kept this detail from being known until years later, with the Guardians never stating their opinions on Cynder's return to the temple in the games proper.
• The elemental wheel used to power up elements in the games was originally supposed to be an actual object Spyro would have encountered in-game, but time constraints forced them to axe that for the system in the games.
• The "Convexity" breath is actually called Aether and is the source of purple dragon's powers. It can exist in light and dark forms, and is the very fabric that makes of the reality of the TLoS universe. Aether is incredibly powerful, and when properly master, a dragon in control of it can do practically whatever the hell they want, and can even permanently De-power a dragon of their element, or bestow other elements onto dragons who already have one.
• A film based on The Legend of Spyro was in development intending to be the first of a franchise, but was eventually canned after the Activision-Blizzard merger.
• Similiarly, as detailed in this video, there was going to be a Darker and Edgier animated series entitled Spyro: Revolution pitched by the Tremblay Brothers of SWAT Kats fame and was seemingly loosely based on the Legend Of Spyro continuity along with Hunter the Cheetah getting his own spinoff series as well, however neither of these shows ended up materializing outside of artwork.
• Scrapped dialogue has Malefor boasting to Spyro and Cynder that he'll build his world on the ruins of theirs.

Pre-Skylanders

• Prior to Skylanders, Toys For Bob was developing Spyro's Kingdom. In it, Spyro was the full-grown king of said kingdom and a non-playable character who you would go to for quests. Spyro would tell you where to go and help you on your adventures.
• Before the concept of Skylanders: and before its predecessor Spyro's Kingdom, Toys For Bob looked into different early concepts for the Spyro series after The Legend of Spyro trilogy ended. These ideas included a "realistic, gritty" Spyro, a tiny Spyro that ran around the real world on book selves, and an origami Spyro that can take shape.
• An MMORPG version of Spyro's Kingdom based on The Legend of Spyro was proposed by Helios Interactive, but was rejected.

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