Proto:Spyro 2: Ripto's Rage!/August 11th, 1999 build

This is a sub-page of Proto:Spyro 2: Ripto's Rage!.

  This prototype is documented on Hidden Palace.

This article is a work in progress. ...Well, all the articles here are, in a way. But this one moreso, and the article may contain incomplete information and editor's notes.

The August 11th, 1999 Prototype of Spyro 2: Ripto's Rage! is a preview version of the game dated around a month and a half prior to the final PAL release version. It was released on April 17th, 2021.

Sub-Pages

Summer Forest Worlds The Summer Forest worlds, many of which are quite complete at this point.

Autumn Plains Worlds Autumn Plains worlds, containing some more obvious differences and areas of incompleteness.

Winter Tundra Worlds Winter Tundra worlds, complete with dev recordings and placeholder textures.

Soundtrack Differences A comparison of the level themes.

General Differences

Startup Differences

• The title screen is incredibly basic, featuring simple text and a black background.
  • There is neither music nor sound effects.
  • The text uses the usual dialogue / pause menu font, rather than a custom title screen font.
  • All of the company logos are instead presented in this manner, too. When starting the game up, before reaching the "Press Start" text, the following text appears, one line at a time:

-- Sony --
-- Universal --
-- Insomniac --

• The save file select lists the level the player was last in and the completion percentage, for each file.
• The completion percentage calculation used on the file select screen differs from the one used in the final.
  • In the final, 10000 gems and 64 orbs results in a completion percentage of 100%. In this version, this quantity of gems and orbs nets the player 121% completion.
  • The completion percentage very easily goes over 100% in this version, whereas it never does under normal means in the final game.
• Levels are referred to by their level ID on this menu, e.g. Glimmer is referred to as "Level 11". No levels are referred in this manner in-game, though.
  • This also matches how levels were referred to internally for the development of all three games.

Cutscene Differences

Only two of the story cutscenes are present in this version - the two shown to the player at the very beginning of the game. Additionally, none of the loading screen images shown before or after cutscenes are present in this version, and the game opts to use basic text on a black background instead.

Cutscene 1

• There is no "In the world of dragons" message before the cutscene starts.

Aug 11 Prototype	Sep 30 Final

• The most notable difference in this cutscene is the presence of a huge cliff behind where Spyro is stood. The cliff has a huge overhanging section, and presumably the idea was that Spyro and Sparx would take shelter from the rain beneath the cliff. In the final, they stand beneath a tree, instead, and the cliff is nowhere to be found.
  • Additionally, the wall is much longer in the final cutscene model, and several new trees are placed behind this wall.

Aug 11 Prototype	Sep 30 Final

• The Dragon Shores portal and its portal text do not appear in the cutscene, despite the fact the portal frame is present.
• Two of the trees completely changed shape later in development.
• There is no rain in the cutscene.
• Sparx is using a clearly unfinished model, similar in appearance to the one used in Spyro 1. He continues to use his Spyro 1 appearance throughout the rest of the game, too.
  • Additionally, he's a silver colour (likely implying that his usual vertex colouring isn't in use here) and uses some different animations to how he does in the final.
  • Sparx's eyes are also notably unusual-looking.
• The cutscene has no music.

Cutscene 2

• The cutscene begins with a line of text on a black background that says "Meanwhile in the world of Avalar...". This differs from the pre-cutscene image used in the final in that there's no comma present here.

Aug 11 Prototype	Sep 30 Final

• There's some slight differences in the cutscene's level model - part of the level which is completely unseen to the player is still present in this version but removed in the final, and there is a slightly elevated section using a different texture at the beginning of the level.
  • The elevated section intersects slightly with Spyro's model, during the cutscene.
  • The cutscene models frequently include leftovers from earlier versions of the game in the levels that the cutscenes represent, so this elevated section likely indicates some slight changes made to the start of Glimmer.
• The cutscene again has no music.
• For some reason there is a several second delay before the cutscene starts, where all that is visible is the skybox. The camera then pans towards the characters unusually fast when compared with the final speed the camera moves at.
• Like the first cutscene, the portal is not present, but the portal frame is.
• The orbs in this cutscene have a silver look to them with what appears to be unfinished shading, rather than the usual green orbs seen in the final.
• Sparx continues to use his unfinished appearance, but is also green here instead of silver.
• The textures used on the guidebook model are much less detailed than they appear in the final.
• The cutscene ends with a line of text on a black background that says "Entering Glimmer...". This differs from the post-cutscene image shown in the final, which instead reads "The adventure begins...".

Gameplay Differences

• The gem placement is different throughout the game.
• A small handful of levels have a differing number of gems - or even orbs - from the final.
• While a cheat code found within this version gives the player 10000 gems and 64 orbs, suggesting that the intended gem and orb totals match that of the final game, in actuality, the real in-game gem and orb totals are 9991 gems and 65 orbs, in this version.
  • In particular, Autumn Plains has an additional orb, Zephyr has one extra gem and Robotica Farms is missing 10 gems.
  • Things get a bit more complicated should the player use the cheat code at any point, which is required in order to enter Dragon Shores - see the "Gem Totals" and "Orb Totals" sections below for more information.
• The orb collection sounds differ slightly from the final - the "collection" sound plays three times, rather than a different sound playing each time the orb bounces on the floor.
• When collecting all of the gems in a level, the "400 / 400" notification appears in the middle of the screen, rather than the upper-middle. Furthermore, it's missing its black background window.
• There is no "Level Complete!" notification and fanfare given to the player once all of the gems, orbs and the talisman have been collected in a level.
• When the gem count is shown in menus and on loading screens, the comma in the number is a lot lower on-screen than it is in the final. Furthermore, should the player have 10000 or more gems, the comma displays in the wrong place - the gem total will read as "1,0000" rather than "10,000".
• Sparx still uses his Spyro 1 model (or, at least, one very similar to his Spyro 1 model).
• Sparx's treasure finder ability is not yet implemented.

• The pause screen has a slightly unfinished appearance, and the level name shown on the pause menu is a different colour to its final appearance, being written in red instead of the game's usual font colour.
  • Furthermore, the level name is wrong for several levels - they are switched for Sunny Beach and Aquaria Towers, and the pause screen refers to Autumn Plains by an earlier name, "Autumn Castle".
  • When saving to a different file, you are not given the option to overwrite the save file, as you would in the final. Instead, it overwrites without warning.
  • Oddly, the Options menu shows that the screen is centered at Horizontal -16 and Vertical -16, where it should be zeroed.
  • In the "Quit Game" screen, you can use the up and down buttons to navigate the options, rather than just the left and right buttons as per the final. If the up and down buttons are used, however, there are 4 invisible selectable options on top of the usual "Yes" and "No", for some reason. All of these options function the same as selecting "No".
    • Oddly, it's possible to select the "Quit Game?" text via this method, in combination with pressing left and right.
    • Additionally, navigating this menu with the left and right buttons makes absolutely no sound effect, whereas the clearly unintentional up and down button movement does play a sound effect.
• The Guidebook has a more primitive appearance and a number of layout differences.
  • The orbs collected in each level rarely match what is listed as collected in the Guidebook - this is because the orb bitmasks don't seem to align properly with the visual indicators in the Guidebook of which orbs have been collected.
  • There is limited page movement functionality in the Guidebook in the sense that you cannot flip directly between different level pages with the Left and Right buttons. Furthermore, each level page has some greyed out options which cannot be selected, which would have been used to move between pages.
  • Dragon Shores has a Guidebook page which can be accessed under normal means - accessing this page appears to be unintentional, however, because the level's name in the list of Winter Tundra levels is invisible and can only be selected by accessing the Guidebook with the Select button whilst in Dragon Shores.
  • Like with the Inventory and Atlas in both Spyro 1 and 3 respectively, the Select button opens the Guidebook in this build. Pressing the Select button in-game on any level opens the Atlas page for the levels within the world Spyro is currently in, with the cursor hovering over the current level (or, in the case of Dragon Shores, hovering over an invisible entry for the level). This differs from the final in that the Select button simply displays the HUD in the final game.
    • Note that unlike Spyro 3, the Guidebook opens on the list of levels in the current world rather than on the page for the level itself.
  • See the Guidebook section for more details.
• When setting a record in a speedway for the first time, the previous best time is shown as 10 minutes by default, rather than being blanked out.
• Some of the music tracks are unfinished, and the Glimmer theme is used for many levels due to them not having their own themes yet. Additionally, there are a small handful of unused minigame themes.
• Plenty of text is changed throughout the game, especially in dialogue.
  • Zoe's audio dialogue was noticeably rerecorded or edited in a number of places.
• Many skyboxes used in the game - be it in-level skyboxes, portal skyboxes or loading screen skyboxes - differ from the ones used in the final game.
• The standard level transition animation - where Spyro is seen flying against a skybox - is missing a fadeout to black in the middle of the animation. Instead, the first panning shot immediately cuts to the second one.
• The images shown when moving between homeworlds, before and after cutscenes, and before and after boss battles are not present.
  • Instead, basic text strings like "Entering Autumn Plains..." are shown on-screen instead.

• There is no warping animation when using the homeworld warp vortices - instead, it immediately fades out and cuts to the loading screen.
  • Additionally, the warp vortices look extremely different in appearance, and are placed in different (and rather clumsy) locations in each world.
  • There is also only one pair of these vortices per homeworld, rather than a pair near the start of the level and another pair near the entrance to the boss.

• Every intro and outro cutscene shown before and after each level differs from the final in that Elora provides some dialogue which is spoken over the cutscene to verbally explain what is happening in each world. This arguably kills a lot of the comedic timing of the cutscenes and is rarely particularly necessary due to the NPCs of that world providing an explanation themselves.
  • Many of the cutscenes are missing music and / or sound effects.
  • A few of the cutscenes use the incorrect dialogue - presumably as a placeholder. One such example - the intro sequence to Mystic Marsh - uses a dev recording of the Hurricos intro cutscene dialogue.
  • A small handful of these cutscenes are missing entirely.
• Moneybags does not return the player's gems after Ripto is defeated. Why, you brazenly avaricious, duplicitous, larcenous ursine!
• No skill points are implemented at this stage.
  • There is, however, a sort of precursor to the skill point in Skelos Badlands - flaming all of the cacti in the level will result in the final cactus releasing 10 extra life butterflies.
• Portals in homeworlds do not show the talisman and collected orbs as the player approaches them. Instead, only the level name appears, like in Spyro 1 and 3.
• While in boss levels, you cannot quit the game or exit the level. As such, if the player is in one of the boss levels and they save the game, they'll need to defeat the boss before they can go to any other level again on that save file.
• There is a rather frustrating oversight present in this version where charging shortly after flaming will entirely cancel the flame and make it disappear, greatly decreasing its range. This, in particular, makes catching thieves a bit trickier.
• When diving underwater, Spyro does not immediately begin charging once in the water. This has the effect of slowing the player down quite significantly.
• It's not possible to dive underwater with a headbash. Instead, Spyro will land on top of the water as if he jumped in normally.
• The diving sound effect replays whenever Spyro takes damage underwater, as if he was temporarily taken out of the "swimming" state.
• Powerup HUDs frequently use the wrong powerup icon, e.g. using the invincibility icon instead of the superfly icon in Glimmer.
• Due to a glitch, exiting to the main menu and reloading the game will appear to increase the player's gem, orb and talisman counts to quantities far higher than they're intended to be. This seems to be because the gem and orb totals are not reset to 0 when the game is exited, and so when recalculating the counts, the total gems and orbs collected are added to the existing stored amounts, effectively doubling the totals. As the actual orbs and gems collected per-level are not affected (only the total variables are) and the totals are reset to 0 after a console restart, these higher totals will not persist should the player save the game and restart the console.
  • However, as these values are what is checked when counting the number of Talismans the player has obtained, they can very easily skip entire worlds by simply collecting one talisman and exiting and re-entering the game until they have the correct Talisman total. When this total is reached, the player is automatically teleported to Elora standing outside of the boss arena entrance, which also allows for a very quick and effective means to skip paying Moneybags, too.
• The game seemingly does not check if the memory card has been changed for another one before autosaving, and will write to the memory card even if it means writing over another save file for the same build.

• If the memory card is removed during gameplay, the following text appears on-screen the next time the game attempts to autosave:

Save Error
-- Check Pause Menu --

• The text on the Game Over screen is visually quite different, as is the "Press Start" text that flashes at the bottom of the screen.
• Getting a Game Over in a fresh save file before completing Glimmer causes an unusual glitch where the player will respawn in Summer Forest without Summer Forest's overlay loaded. This causes some bizarre effects, such as the player's movement locking and the mobys (objects) around the level not functioning. In the final, getting a Game Over before finishing Glimmer will respawn the player in Glimmer.
• For some reason, there is an additional model of Ocean Speedway located after the story cutscene models. Its purpose is currently unknown.

Loading Skyboxes

Like other versions of Spyro 2 and 3, the skyboxes shown when on loading screens are stored separately from the individual level WADs. They don't always match the skyboxes used in the level portals or within the level, but for this build in particular it seems like most of the time they do match. There are a number of these skyboxes which differ from the final:

• Colossus uses darker greys instead of purples in its clouds.
• Metro Speedway is missing some of its light rays.
• Scorch has brown desert instead of yellow.
• Shady Oasis is totally different, using a blue-brown gradient rather than a cloudy blue-grey sky.
• Icy Speedway has lighter clouds, rather than the more darkly coloured ones used in the final.
• Canyon Speedway is missing a large section of the lower part of the skybox.
• Metropolis uses a completely different skybox, matching the one that was also used by Stone Hill in Spyro 1.

Guidebook Differences and Level Names

The Guidebook is perhaps one of the most noticeably incomplete parts of this version of the game. In addition to its clearly unfinished appearance, it features quite a number of quirks which make it unique.

• Like with the Inventory and Atlas in both Spyro 1 and 3 respectively, the Select button opens the Guidebook in this build. Pressing the Select button in-game on any level opens the Atlas page for the levels within the world Spyro is currently in, with the cursor hovering over the current level (or, in the case of Dragon Shores, hovering over an invisible entry for the level). This differs from the final in that the Select button simply displays the HUD in the final game.
  • Note that unlike Spyro 3, the Guidebook opens on the list of levels in the current world rather than on the page for the level itself.
• The Guidebook, generally speaking, has a more primitive and unfinished appearance, and a number of layout differences.
• The page flipping sound is different from the one used in the final.
• There are no skill point or epilogue pages implemented in the Guidebook yet. This is in part due to the fact that skill points themselves are yet to be implemented, at this point.
• The world pages take on a much different look, and level names and percentages stretch across both pages rather than just the page on the right.
• Pages for individual levels contain no graphics showing what the level looks like.
• Boss levels have no "defeated" graphic on their pages.
• The number of gems obtained in a level are placed in a different place on the page.
• Each Winter Tundra level has a space for a talisman on its page, which never gets filled due to the lack of talismans in these levels - all of these talismans are duplicates of the Bronze Flute talisman used in Fracture Hills.
  • For homeworlds, speedways and bosses, there is no "No Talisman" section - instead there's just a blank space.
• Every level, even bosses, have an "ORBS" section in the Guidebook. For levels with no orbs, this section is entirely blank.
• There is limited page movement functionality in the Guidebook in the sense that you cannot flip directly between different level pages with the Left and Right buttons. Furthermore, each level page has some greyed out options which cannot be selected, which would have been used to move between pages.
• The orbs collected in each level rarely match what is listed as collected in the Guidebook - this is because the orb bitmasks don't seem to align properly with the visual indicators in the Guidebook of which orbs have been collected.
• Additionally, there are several levels for which the orbs do not show up as expected in the Guidebook, for one reason or another:
  • Autumn Plains only lists two orbs. These correspond to the orb along the wall and another located on the top of the castle, which was cut later in development. The orb on the island is not visually respresented in the Guidebook, nor on the pause menu screen.
  • The speedways do not show any orbs whatsoever. As a result, the speedway pages are especially bare.
  • The "Clear tractor path" orb in Robotica Farms wrongly flips the fourth bit of the level's orb bitmask instead of the third bit. As a result, after collecting all three orbs in the level, it will appear as though there are only two collected orbs in both the Guidebook and on the pause screen.
    • The third orb image and text goes unused as a result - activating it reveals that it reads "Exterminate Crow Bugs". This name does not match the orb that the player actually collected, but this is a result of the collected orbs not correctly mapping to their names in this version.
    • The level's completion percentage never goes above 79% in this version as a result of this discrepancy, in addition to the 10 gems the level is missing.
• Dragon Shores has a Guidebook page which can be accessed under normal means - accessing this page appears to be unintentional, however, because the level's name in the list of Winter Tundra levels is invisible and can only be selected by accessing the Guidebook with the Select button whilst in Dragon Shores.
• In the list of level names in the Guidebook - as well as on the level name graphic shown on each of their respective pages - the hub world levels all feature different names from earlier in development. Elsewhere in the game (including at the bottom of the page on the level list pages in the Guidebook), these levels have their final names, however.
  • Summer Forest is called Summer Castle.
  • Autumn Plains is called Autumn Castle.
    • Autumn Plains is also an exception from the other levels in that it also uses the name "Autumn Castle" on the pause menu, whilst the player is in the level.
  • Winter Tundra is called Winter Castle.
• The "A" seen in the phrase "Autumn Plains" as it appears on the bottom of the page on the "Summer Castle" level list uses a lowercase "a", rather than the uppercase "A" it uses in the final. Additionally, on the "Autumn Castle" level page, the "a" is once again lowercase, rather than the uppercase "A" used later in development.
• The "Atop a ladder" and "Behind the door" orbs in the Summer Forest page are in switched positions.
• While Autumn Plains holds three orbs in this build, only two show up in the Guidebook.
  • The "The end of the wall" orb is instead called "At the aquaduct" - this is a remnant from an earlier version, where the wall was instead an aqueduct.
  • The "Long glide!" orb is instead referred to as "Bottom of the tower" here - this refers to the orb that's located at the top of the castle in this build, and as such this orb name is not present in the final.
  • Relatedly, the third orb (the one which would be called "Long glide!" in the final) is not referenced by the Guidebook at all, and as such collecting it does not have any impact on the Guidebook, nor on the pause menu orb counter.
• One of the orbs in Shady Oasis is called "Free Hippos I" instead of "Free Hippos" - this would be a leftover from the stage of development where the challenge had two phases, and the "Free Hippos II" graphic is still present in the final game, albeit unused.
• Aquaria Towers and Sunny Beach are notable for their content being confused between their two pages, as well as their pause menu content.
  • The names are switched in the pause menu, so that, for example, the name "Aquaria Towers" comes up when playing in Sunny Beach.
  • The only content that appears correctly on each of their Guidebook pages are the level names and the talisman names.
  • As such, the talisman image and orb names shown are for the opposite level - however, whether or not they're marked as collected still corresponds to whether the orbs and talismans in the level named on the page are collected. For example, collecting all the orbs in Sunny Beach will make the orbs appear as collected on the Sunny Beach Guidebook page, but the names they take on are the orbs from Aquaria Towers.

• 

  Summer Forest page.

• 

  Sunny Beach page.

• 

  Autumn Plains page.

• 

  Shady Oasis page.

• 

  Robotica Farms page.

• 

  Dragon Shores page.

Gem Totals

The gem total across the entire game differs quite a bit from the final game, but on top of these placement differences, there are some differing gem totals.

Presumably due to the presence of a ? jar in Zephyr which awards a single gem to the player, the total number of gems for the level is 401 instead of 400. Evidently this is not intentional.

Additionally, the ? jar in Robotica Farms - which outputs purple (5) gems - seems to be missing two of the gems it's supposed to spit out, as the timing between each of the gems that are released is irregular. The level has a total of 390 gems in this version, and these missing gems are expected to be the result of this discrepancy.

On top of these quirks, Moneybags still charges the player 4100 gems over the course of the game, but does not return the gems to the player at the end of the game. As such, the player's gem count is permanently lowered by however many gems Moneybags has taken from the player.

The guidebook totals still indicate that each of the 25 levels with gems in them should contain 400 gems, matching the final game. Furthermore, using the cheat code which maxes out the collectable totals directly sets the total gem count to 10000, further pointing to the clearly intended total gem count.

However, the introduction of the cheat is also where things get sinister. Despite the cheat setting the total to 10000, this does not always reflect the actual number of gems marked as collected in each level. The cheat manually sets the total collected gems in each of the first 25 levels to 400, which would certainly total 10000, but the kicker is that two of those levels are levels without gems in them at all - Crush's Dungeon and Gulp's Overlook. Furthermore, the last two levels with gems in them - Robotica Farms and Metropolis - are untouched by the cheat, so the true number of gems in the player's total after using the cheat is 10000 plus however many gems are collected in those last two levels (minus how many gems Moneybags has taken from the player, if necessary).

Using the cheat will also bump the guidebook percentages for Crush's Dungeon and Gulp's Overlook from 0% to 80%, due to the additional gems. Without using the cheats, the levels can never go above 0% completion under normal means, in this version.

When the console is reset and the game is loaded, the total gem count is recalculated using the number of gems collected in each level. As such, the gem count will not stay at 10000 and will change once the game is reloaded. More precisely, the gems in each level are added up and the amount paid to Moneybags is removed.

Due to a glitch, exiting and reloading the game will appear to increase the player's gem, orb and talisman counts to quantities far higher than they're intended to be. This seems to be because the gem and orb totals are not reset to 0 when the game is exited, and so when recalculating the counts, the total gems and orbs collected are added to the existing stored amounts, effectively doubling the totals. As the actual orbs and gems collected per-level are not affected (only the total variables are) and the totals are reset to 0 after a console restart, these higher totals will not persist should the player save the game and restart the console.

As a result of these complicated dynamics, there are a number of different ways of interpreting the total gem count of this version.

Total description	Total amount	Notes
Total according to guidebook and cheats	10000	10000 gems are awarded to the player via the cheat, reflecting 25 levels of 400 gems.
Actual in-game total	9991	Players are capable of collecting 9991 gems without the use of cheats.
Actual in-game total, after Moneybags	5891	Moneybags requests a total of 4100 gems throughout the game, identically to the final.
Actual in-game total, with the max collectables cheat used afterwards	10790	The first 25 levels get overwritten as having 400 gems each, including the 401 gems in Zephyr. Additionally, there are 790 gems in Robotica Farms and Metropolis that are untouched by the cheat code.
Actual in-game total, after Moneybags, with the max collectables cheat used afterwards	6690	The first 25 levels get overwritten as having 400 gems each, including the 401 gems in Zephyr. Additionally, there are 790 gems in Robotica Farms and Metropolis that are untouched by the cheat code. Moneybags requests a total of 4100 gems throughout the game, identically to the final.

The entrance to Dragon Shores does not look at the total gem count, but rather totals up the number of gems collected across all levels. As 9991 gems are collectable under normal means, the player does not have enough gems to enter the level without using the cheat. Amusingly, this also means that hypothetically the player can collect as few gems as possible in Robotica Farms and Metropolis, assuming they have enough orbs across the two levels, and still enter Dragon Shores after using the cheat.

One final quirk of the gem count calculation comes as a result of the cheat code which unlocks all of Spyro's abilities. The cheat also marks each of the instances of Moneybags where he offers to teach Spyro a new ability as paid for, and as such, quitting the game and reloading will subtract the sum of those gem requirements from Spyro's actual total. Since this can be used regardless of how many gems Spyro has, this can result in the gem count becoming negative, which causes some interesting graphical glitches in the HUD. In the final game, the cheat code does not result in any gems being taken from Spyro's total, even though those instances of Moneybags still disappear.

Orb Totals

Similarly to the discrepancies in the gem totals, there's quite a number of ways in which the orb totals don't quite add up, like they do in the final.

First off, there's an additional orb in Autumn Plains that was entirely removed in the final game. This results in the final orb count being 65 rather than the final's 64. The orb in question is the one at the top of the castle, though both this orb and the one on the castle wall are registered in the Atlas. The orb on the island is not referenced at all by the guidebook text, and collecting the orb does not impact either the guidebook or the pause menu orb listings, due to both instances suggesting the level only has two orbs.

Additionally, there's a slight discrepancy in Robotica Farms - the orb obtained by clearing the tractor path incorrectly sets the 4th orb bit for the level, rather than the 3rd. As a result, despite the level being marked as having 3 orbs collected once they're all obtained, the guidebook does not recognise the third orb as being collected. This - along with the missing 10 gems - results in a maximum of 79% completion for the level. Furthermore, the guidebook text for that orb goes unused as a result - it reads "Exterminate Crow Bugs", due to the orb names being mismatched from the orbs themselves, in this version. The orb listing on the pause menu will also appear to show one orb as uncollected, due to this discrepancy. This does not adversely affect the total collected orbs calculation.

On top of this behaviour, there is an array listing the number of orbs present in each level, represented as a bitmask. The array is incorrect for a few levels and seems to reflect an earlier version of the game:

0F 07 03 07 07 07 07 00 00 03 07 03 03 0F 00 03 03 07 07 00 00 07 07 07 00 07 0F 00 00

There are a few notable features of the array:

• All speedways are listed as having 0 orbs instead of 1. This matches what is seen in the Guidebook.
• Autumn Plains is listed as having 2 orbs, like the final game, but unlike the three orbs in this build. This matches what is seen in the Guidebook.
• While less important, it's worth noting that the three bits of Robotica Farms' orbs are in the right places, rather than the fourth bit being erroneously set instead of the third.

There's also an array which directly lists how many orbs appear in each level - this agrees with the above array. The cheat code uses the array of orb totals rather than the bitmask array, which results in a few extra steps of calculation, but causes no fundamental change in the end result.

The arrays contain a total of 60 orbs across the game instead of 64. However, when the max collectables cheat is used, like with the gems array, only the orbs of the first 25 levels are set, and they're set according to the array above. Unlike gems, rather than overwriting the number of gems for each level, the cheat takes the output of a bitwise OR between the collected orbs and the orbs array - this essentially means that collected orbs are not accidentally erased.

As a result the 3 Robotica Farms orbs and 4 Metropolis orbs are not set by the calculation, whereas the speedways and Autumn Plains variables are set slightly lower than is expected. This means that despite the cheat setting the orb total to 64, should the player input the code at the very beginning of the game and then restart the console, they'll find the total orb count has dropped to 53.

Collecting the orbs in the speedways, Autumn Plains, Robotica Farms and Metropolis will bump the count up to 65. That said, even if all of these orbs are skipped and the "real" count remains at 53, as the Gnorc in Dragon Shores only checks the total orb count when letting the player into the level, using the max collectables cheat will always be enough to get into Dragon Shores.

Cheat Codes

The cheats present in this version - like other Spyro prototypes - seem to largely be there for the sake of testing and QA. All can be activated using button inputs in the pause menu.

Type 0 - Invincibility

This cheat gives the player permanent invincibility, until the cheat is disabled. The code is not present in the final game.

Circle, Circle, Circle, Circle, X

Type 1 - Unlock All Abilities

This cheat unlocks the swimming, climbing and headbash abilities, and matches the code used in the final game.

Circle, Circle, Circle, Circle, Square

Type 2 - Max Collectable Totals

One of the cheats sets the orb and gem totals to their maximum of 64 and 10000 respectively, also allowing access to Dragon Shores.

Square, Square, Square, Square, Circle

The specific process by which this is achieved has some interesting quirks to it, however. Essentially, the cheat performs the following for the first 25 levels:

• Sets the value of gems collected in the level to 400.
• If the level has more than 0 orbs according to the array of orbs per level - let's say n orbs - the cheat then sets the first n orbs in that level as "collected". This does not reset or "un-collect" any orbs that have been already been collected that might not be represented in the array. More technically, the cheat:
  • Checks if the level has 0 orbs and ignores it and moves onto the next level if so,
  • Converts the total number of orbs in the level (according to an array of orbs per level, which is partially incorrect) to a bitmask,
  • Performs a bitwise OR on the orbs collected in the level with the total orbs bitmask for that level.

The cheat then sets the total gems and orb counts to 10000 and 64 respectively.

There's a few reasons why this cheat behaves in unusual ways:

• There aren't 25 levels, there's 29, with four of the levels containing no gems - however, since two of the levels with no gems are amongst the first 25 levels, using the cheat sets the number of gems in these levels to an impossible 400 while not touching the number of gems in Robotica Farms and Metropolis. As there's 790 gems in those levels, if the player uses the cheat after collecting all of the gems, their total will in actuality be 10790 (after accounting for Moneybags).
  • Additionally, should the player have collected the 401 gems in Zephyr, for example, their total for the level will be reset to 400 by this cheat.
• Only the first 25 levels have their orb values set - additionally, the number of orbs in the orbs array is one lower than what is obtainable in-game for each of the speedway levels and for Autumn Plains. This means that, instead of the total of 65 orbs that this game has, only 53 orbs are touched by this cheat code (with 5 of the orbs not appearing in the array and 7 orbs being confined to Robotica Farms and Metropolis). As such, the cheat code alone is not enough to get into Dragon Shores, and so at least 11 of the 12 remaining orbs require collection before entering.
  • Notably, no previously collected orbs in these levels will be reset by the cheat. This is irrelevant for the speedways as they are marked as having 0 orbs and as such are ignored by the cheat, but for Autumn Plains, the additional orb not accounted for by the arrays (the one on the island) certainly does not get reset by the cheat.

The total orb and gem values will re-calculate themselves after a console restart, and so performing this procedure will change the number of orbs and gems to match what is in the orb and gem arrays - e.g. if a player uses the cheat at the beginning of the game, saves, and restarts, they'll find that they have 10000 gems and 53 orbs.

See the "Gem Totals" and "Orb Totals" sections above for more information on gems and orbs and the effects of this cheat code.

Type 3 - Credits

A cheat code which appears to be intended for activating the credits is present, despite the credits not being present at this stage. This is presumably a leftover from Spyro 1. Using the code causes the game to crash.

The code also differs slightly from the one in the final:

Version	Code
Aug 11	Square, Circle, Square, Circle, Square, Circle
Final	Square, Circle, Square, Circle, Square, Circle, Left, Right, Left, Right, Left, Right

Missing Cheats

The big head mode, flat mode, alternate Spyro colours and extra hit point cheats are not present at this stage of development.

Save Information

Info	Aug 11	Sep 30 PAL Final	Oct 11 NTSC-U Final
Icon
Title	SPYRO THE DRAGON	SPYRO2	SPYRO2 RIPTO”S RAGE
Product Code	SCUS-99999	SCES-02104	SCUS-94425
Identifier	SPYRO2	SP2G	SP2RR
Region	America	Europe	America

The save file icon used in this version matches the one used in the final version of Spyro 1.

Dongle Protection

Dongle protection is present in this build, which can stop the game from running on real hardware and certain emulators. There's an unseen string which corresponds to what save data would be present in the dongle:

BASLUS-99999SPYRO2

The dongle protection can be bypassed using a patch, or by setting the int at address 0x80011AF0 to zero.