Proto:Spyro: Year of the Dragon/Demo 3
This is a sub-page of Proto:Spyro: Year of the Dragon.
The third demo of Spyro: Year of the Dragon is also the first demo of Spyro 3 released to European and Australian audiences. Like the earliest demo, it features three levels from the first homeworld.
The EXE date of the Euro Demo Ger 11-00 disc suggests that this demo was built earlier than August 24th, 2000 - it was likely built a bit earlier than this, given how close to the final game this would be.
Changed Egg Challenge Names
The Atlas text for a number of different egg challenges was changed between different versions of the game.
| Prototype Name | Final Name | Level | Comments |
|---|---|---|---|
| Race | Race the butterflies | Mushroom Speedway | Just a placeholder name. |
| I dunno, ask MJ | Hunter's dogfight | Mushroom Speedway | "MJ" is referred to twice in Hunter mission names, likely referring to former Cerny Games designer and producer Michael "MJ" John. Probably suggests that the egg was incomplete. |
| Missing string | Race the pigs | Country Speedway | The game probably reuses the "race" from the previous speedway, just as it does with "Time attack" in the final game. |
| Missing string | Hunter's rescue mission | Country Speedway | Once again, the Hunter missions were probably incomplete. Most likely just reuses the "I dunno, ask MJ" string. |
| Race | Race the bees | Honey Speedway | Yet another placeholder name. For some reason the string is a duplicate rather than re-using the other "Race" string. |
| Missing string | Hunter's narrow escape | Honey Speedway | Another Hunter mission. |
| Missing string | Egg for sale | Midnight Mountain Home | The egg obtained from Moneybags after defeating the Sorceress. It probably wasn't implemented yet, seeing as how this is the only instance of a homeworld containing 6 eggs. |
| Close your eyes and press X twice | Leap of faith | Dino Mines | Maybe the name was too long. |
| The Bailey gang's last stand | Take it to the bank | Dino Mines | This one is an oddity. In the final game, "Take it to the bank" is simply a hidden egg in Agent 9's section of the level. This doesn't seem to match up with its prototype name, and given that in the final game there is an unused sub-level of Dino Mines which was probably used in an early egg challenge, this text string could be referencing that removed egg challenge. It should be noted that this string actually switches positions with the string above in the final game, with "Leap of faith" coming before "Take it to the bank" in the final game, whereas in the prototype, "The Bailey gang's last stand" comes first. This is the only instance of egg names switching between versions, and so it further supports the idea that this egg was removed and the final egg was added afterwards. |
| Missing string | Race the blue footed boobies | Harbour Speedway | Once again, probably used the "Race" placeholder. |
| Ask MJ | Hunter's pursuit | Harbour Speedway | Another Hunter mission featuring MJ. |
Unused Text
The version text seen in the earlier demo makes an appearance once again - this time, though, it's identical to the previous demo.
SPYRO_3-v.7.27.a
This demo is clearly not the same version as the previous build. Notably, this string is only loaded into memory on the level select screen in this version, unlike previous builds. As this string seems to correspond to the identifier used for save files, and the save file information is not present in this demo, it's possible that the string just reuses the version from the previous demo instead of being updated to the correct version number.
Some evidence also points to this being a build date - July 27th, 2000. If this is the case, this demo was built some time between July 27th and August 24th.
