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Spyro 3 - The GameSpot Build and Lost Media

I've been actively researching and documenting early builds of Spyro 3 for something like 7 or 8 years now, and while I feel like I've made a significant impact, there's always going to be people that have never seen any the content that I've helped to document - so, every now and then, I get the urge to infodump about one piece of my research to a new group of people, to help make sure that the documentation I've done isn't only known to a very small group of people... that'd defeat the purpose of documentation, to an extent, I think.

Sometimes, outreach ends up being extremely important to the research and preservation of prerelease content - and this is no better exemplified than with Spyro 3's "GameSpot build".

On June 23rd, 2000, several websites and publications revealed early previews of Spyro: Year of the Dragon - this date was probably some sort of online embargo date.

The "April preview", an early build which seems to match the one used at E3 2000, was used by most of these publications. A few of them, according to accounts from those that wrote the previews, received exclusive gameplay sessions from the likes of Mark Cerny - these previews apparently took place quite close to the embargo date and certainly would have used a later build than the April one. We know that IGN received one of these sessions (but, according to the author of the preview article, was allegedly unable to record gameplay during this session, which resulted in IGN having to use the same build everyone else did in their preview articles), and it's a pretty safe bet that GameSpot did, too. In GameSpot's case, we actually got to see what this build looked like:

As expected, it's a later build than the April prototype - this one seems to be from around the same point in development as the earliest demo disc version, though we're not sure if it's an earlier build or a later one. Three main characteristics stick out in these screenshots:

We don't ever see what the eggs looked like in this build, but the fragments use this bizarre ornate gold texture.

The HUD uses a green egg sprite similar to some of the eggs seen in the April build; the earliest demo disc version also uses this sprite.

For some reason, transparent polygons are a solid black colour, making some screenshots look sort of ominous and weird.

Perhaps the weirdest thing about this build is that the gold egg fragments it uses, which to most players would be completely unrecognisable and unlike anything they've ever seen before, actually do appear in the final game. And they hatch from every egg in the entire game. In most cases, the fragment flies off screen before the player can spot it.

The earliest demo build, which seems to be from around May 25th, 2000, does not include this texture at all, which has called into question the timeline placement of the GameSpot build. On one hand, they might've used the final egg texture momentarily, switched to the gold one, and switched back, accidentally leaving one of the textures intact. On the other hand, there have been cases in many Spyro builds of random early assets weeding their way back into the game via means that we don't really understand. Look no further than the August 27th, 1998 localisation prototype of Spyro the Dragon, a post-final build which inexplicably re-uses an early Gnasty Gnorc model, textures, and animations, from around 2 months earlier in development:

The info we have on this build doesn't just stop at screenshots, though! GameSpot kindly uploaded 5 videos of the build - labelled "Movie 2" through "Movie 6" (thanks GameSpot. that's not confusing at all) - to their website. Most of these videos were later temporarily put behind a paywall, and in 2014, 4 of these videos were deleted during a server move, with only Movie 2 (the one never put behind a paywall) remaining. The one movie that remained didn't even play properly in GameSpot's video player for years, so I had to download the video from the API to view it at all:

While the video is an important piece of history, and did reveal to us that the early Sgt. Byrd theme heard in some old IGN videos of the April preview had a previously unheard guitar section (this was prior to the public release of the April preview), it doesn't tell us very much new about the build. If we really wanted to more precisely date the build, we'd need to know what the eggs looked or sounded like - but the egg collection section was entirely cut from the video. As of yet, we just don't have this information.

As for Movies 3 - 6? These are now lost media. They were up on the site for 14 years, we know that people saw them, and I suspect there were people that downloaded them. However, since they were deleted nearly 10 years ago, nobody has come forward to say that they have one of the videos and to show what was in it. Anyone that does come forward with this info should be met with some scepticism, of course, but I think the only way we'll ever see more of this build is with a greater outreach and more widespread knowledge of the missing videos - the videos were readily downloadable from the website, and so someone still has the videos, I'm sure.

And before anyone asks, yes, the WayBack Machine has been very extensively searched for these videos - we can't find them, there's just no trace of them on there.

Judging by the video descriptions, Movie 3 would have focused on Bentley, Movie 4 on either Sheila or Agent 9, and Movies 5 and 6 on Spyro gameplay.

I've only ever encountered one person who claims to have seen these videos, and whether they're to be believed or not, they claimed that one of the videos showed Sunny Villa using Fireworks Factory's theme (levels using the wrong themes was very common in early builds of these games! Additionally, Fireworks Factory's theme is very likely to have been present around this point in development), and another showed Agent 9 gameplay using a track that didn't sound very Spyro-like, but more like "something from James Bond".

When the April preview released later on, it was discovered that early Spyro 3 builds actually do have a number of entirely non-Spyro themes, all by µ-Ziq and Propellerheads, left unused in their soundtrack data. The tracks in these builds seem to line up with the levels present in an earlier build of the game, and by this metric, it seems that "Spybreak!", a theme from the Matrix soundtrack, would have (fittingly?) lined up with Agent 9's Lab, and possibly would have been used in that level in internal development builds. Sure enough, my contact agreed that this was the theme they heard, when I sent them the track - if this is indeed the case, then this build is very very weird indeed.

It remains to be seen whether we'll ever learn anything new about this build, but we can only hope. I've linked to an archived 7z file containing all the screenshots uploaded to GameSpot below, as well as a link to a TCRF article detailing some of the known differences spotted in this build:

Archive.org

TCRF

[hwd405]

Around a year and a half ago, one of the game's developers sent me a VHS transfer of some animation and colour tests, showing Spyro the Dragon in some of its earliest stages. We estimate that the version of the game showed here dates to early 1997, well over a year before the game was finalised.

You might've heard Spyro was originally intended to be green, but prior to his colour scheme being finalised, they tested out a handful of other colours, too - one of the clips on this VHS shows those colour tests. Sadly, despite a couple green dragons being depicted here, his original colour scheme was apparently totally overwritten by the first clip on the VHS, showcasing some animation tests of a more final-looking version of the dragon. At this point, Spyro's model was nearly complete, but the whites of his eyes are notably vertex coloured, rather than textured. The final section of the video shows off an enemy that was made during testing but never used in the final game. Apparently it would have featured in a test level created early on in development.

I figure it'd be worth sharing here, since a lot of people here might not have seen this before! I've also linked a Hidden Palace page below where I recently did a longer write-up on this video and its background.

Hidden Palace: Link

Internet Archive: Link

[hwd405]

Spyro's Press CDs

Much of the time journalists would write articles about the games in their early stages, this was done with the help of press materials handed to them through Sony's marketing departments. Not only does this include a lot of the screenshots used in early previews, but often renders, logos, and details about what the game will be like, too.

There were an awful lot of these discs, and all of them contain really cool stuff, so they're great tools for preserving early Spyro press materials and artwork. Only a very small handful of these discs have been preserved so far, and hopefully, we'll recover more of them in time.

Under the cut, I've included links to all of the press discs we have recovered so far. Enjoy!

Power Source E3 1998 Press Kit CD 1

This one's pretty great; despite being a broad press kit intended to hold press info on all of the PlayStation games shown at E3 that year, Spyro gets a hell of a lot of content all to itself. Press release documents, a tonne of screenshots of the earliest known build of Spyro 1, lots of artwork renders, and some unusual screenshots showing areas of the game that don't seem to exist in the final product, this disc is full of early Spyro content. It even contains some metadata showing the original filenames of a few of the included images, which is pretty interesting (to me, at least).

Spyro the Dragon Press Kit CD

The official press CD, included with Spyro 1's official press kit. Lots of artwork renders (many of them very high resolution), a few screenshots from multiple different points in development, and plenty of press release documents on here.

Sony Autumn / Winter Collection '99 Press CD 3

The only press disc we currently have for Spyro 2. More of the usual stuff, including a few nice high quality renders, and plenty of early screenshots.

Sony E3 2000 Press Disc 1 (PlayStation Update)

A SCEE press disc for E3 2000, coinciding with the reveal of Spyro 3 - this time, Spyro takes up much less space, with this disc only including a few press documents and some renders.

Sony E3 2000 Artwork Disc

This artwork disc is another E3 2000 disc containing only a small handful of Spyro 3 things - no press release documents this time, just a few of the Pre-E3 screenshots.

ECTS 2000 Press Disc

Another event-related disc - this time, for the European Computer Trade Show event in London, in September 2000. A few press documents, a nice render, and a bunch of screenshots of what looks to be one of the demo versions of Spyro 3, for some reason.

[hwd405]

Spyro 3 - The "Pre-E3" Screenshots

All three of the original trilogy games had sets of press screenshots which were sent out to journalists and the like for use in magazines and articles, and all three games also had at least one especially early build used amongst these press screenshots. For Spyro 3, it's a set of screenshots I've always called the "Pre-E3 screenshots", since they're from a build that's... earlier than the E3 build, obviously.

It's not hard to come across these screenshots by looking through magazines from the era, but one might wonder how many of these screenshots there are, and how much we know about them. So, let's have a quick refresher on the earliest known build of Spyro 3.

First thing: when is this build from, how does it compare to other builds, and where have all the screenshots come from? While all of them can be found in magazines if you look hard enough, a bunch can be found in old online articles, through internal Sony press sources, and on press asset CDs. The highest quality version we have of each image has been compiled into the collage above - five of the ones remaining have so far only been located in scanned-magazine quality. We also know that there's 28 of them, thanks to an old GameSpot UK page, which listed 28 (mostly lost) screenshots from that time, exactly matching the total number we've managed to find.

I've got something coming up in the future which will hold links to all such press material sources, but it's currently a work in progress. For now, here's a link to the PS2 E3 2000 Artwork Disc - not only does it contain high quality versions of several of these screenshots, but they also have creation dates of March 27th, 2000, over 5 and a half months before the game was finished. While we don't know for certain that this is when they were taken, it does suggest that the build shown in the screenshots is probably from this date or earlier. The build shown here is somewhat similar to the April prototype, a preview build used in many different publications and seemingly also the build used at E3 2000, but naturally this build has got a few additional differences from the April build on account of it being a few weeks earlier in development.

Perhaps the most well-known of these screenshots is the fabled "fountain screenshot" - Sunny Villa originally had a fountain, which we also saw in the later April build. Here, though, the building at the end of the level can also be seen to hold balconies, something that would be removed by the next build. The upstairs area of this building is actually where the skateboarding sublevel portal is located (which can be seen in the left balcony), so presumably they were removed to avoid major sequence breaking taking place.

Sheila's sublevel contained some completely unique Rhynocs not seen in the area in the final game. Their designs would be reused in the final, though - but only in a couple of the cutscenes.

Some of the Spooky Swamp Rhynocs had a totally different colour scheme, and the tigers in Bamboo Terrace that we saw in the later April build were first seen in these screenshots, too. Funnily enough, one of the dialogue lines referencing tigers remained in the game until only a week before the game was finalised, at which point it was changed to refer to the water buffalo instead.

This one's easy to miss - check out the wall surrounding the plunger Rhynoc on the floor. What was that used for? Who knows. In the April build, the walls were already gone and the Rhynocs would start wearing metal armour, which was removed again later in development.

Frozen Altars seems to have had some restructuring towards the end of the level - an ice wall wouldn't usually go there and access to the building wouldn't normally be in that exact location, either. Spyro's flame isn't ice coloured, here - I doubt flaming the snowman would help that much, regardless.

Agent 9 looks very very weird. As Pepper has already pointed out, the difference in his eyes just seems to be a case of the vertex colouring changing between this build and later ones, and his suit can be seen to change colours between builds too. Sgt Byrd also looks a little bit different here, having a slightly different model and different texture work, but his early model would persist for several months after this build and can even be seen in some locations in the finished game.

Expect more posts like this one - reviewing known early builds and key points in Spyro's development cycles - in the future, particularly as I gear up to releasing the first part of a project I've been working on for quite a while now.

[hwd405]

Game Informer issues 63 (July 1998) and 64 (August 1998) - Spyro the Dragon previews

Among the long list of publications that wrote up preview articles displaying early builds of Spyro the Dragon was Game Informer, a magazine prominent enough have access to versions of the game and press materials that were likely only shown to a very small handful of publications overall. These exclusive materials can be seen in issues 63 (images 1 - 2) and 64 (images 3 - 6), which I obtained copies of several months ago.

There aren’t any good scans of these magazines online, but I’d like to rectify that at some point - for now, I’ve got these photos of the Spyro articles. Not only do they include press screenshots that have never been seen elsewhere, but we also see how Beast Makers looked in a version of the game earlier than the released June 15th build, something that no other prerelease media source to date has achieved.

In issue 63, we see a collection of internal press screenshots - some of these have been seen before and are well known (depicting a version of the game from around April 1998, informally known as the “Gold Dragon Build”, due to the crystal dragons featuring an unfinished design. Additionally, there are screenshots showing a build with a red gem in the HUD, rather than the green gem seen in the Gold Dragon Build or the chest seen in later builds. This is aptly referred to as the “Red Gem Build”, and has previously only been seen on PlayStation Merchandising VHS tapes. It seems to be from some time around late April to early May, and is a little bit earlier than the build used at E3 1998.

Issue 64 contains interviews with Insomniac Games and Stewart Copeland, concept art and photos of internally used tools, and a very funny picture of Ted Price with an absolutely gigantic television.

If you look carefully at the screenshots used here, Misty Bog’s portal appears to be totally absent, as is the Balloonist. Attempts to replicate these images in the June 15th build have revealed that Misty Bog’s portal definitely isn’t supposed to look like that from a distance, and the Balloonist should be visible from where the player is standing, so these aren’t just visual artefacts from the portal or the fog.

We also get to see an earlier version of what appears to be Twilight Harbor, but with a very differently structured ending section. The moby placement at the end of the level in the June build seems to align with this version of the level’s geometry!

[hwd405]

Welcome to the observatory! If you’re seeing this, you’ve found a blog I plan to use in the future. Code analysis, concept art, press documents, magazine snippets - everything interesting that I find that wouldn’t really be enough for a video - will be going in here.

This is one of a few separate things I’m working on to help advance Spyro’s development documentation. I hope you’ll enjoy what I have to offer!