Proto:Spyro: Year of the Dragon/Crash Bash & Spyro Demo

Oh dear, I do believe I have the vapors. This page contains content that is not safe for work or other locations with the potential for personal embarrassment. Such as: Some strong language in a hidden text string.

The earliest known demo of Spyro 3, the Crash Bash and Spyro demo, contains many differences from the final game but much of the structure is still there. It features three levels from the start of the game.

Gameplay Differences

Some of the differences of the earliest demo from the retail version that have been spotted so far include:

• The demo includes only three levels (Sunny Villa Skateboarding, Molten Crater and Seashell Shore). Despite the fact that only the skateboarding area of Sunny Villa is playable by normal means, the rest of the level does exist in the data, but hacking is required to access it (detailed further below).
• In both the Skateboarding and Seashell Shore levels, the music that is used is the skateboarding music, and Molten Crater uses Fireworks Factory's music. In both the Seashell Shore and Molten Crater levels, the Sgt. Byrd and Sheila sections of the level do not change in music as they would in the retail version of the game.
• The text color appears to be more saturated.
• The resolution appears to be different, as there are small black indents on the top and bottom of the screen while playing.
• The start menu only contains the options 'Continue' and 'Quit Demo'. This is common for Demos. Other start menu options can be accessed through hacking.
  
• The small rotating egg in the egg counter display is green with a single white patch. It's unknown whether this was intended to be the final graphic for the display or whether it was just to easily tell whether the eggs was rotating correctly or not (hence the white patch). The eggs themselves, however, use the same texture as their final texture, but after opening some of the eggs appear to go a green-ish tinge.
• The name text that appears when an egg is found has no black window behind it. Similarly, the images which pop up to tell you that you've collected all the eggs or gems also lack this window.
• The egg hatching sound and animation is different. The sound is also completely different in the Seashell Shore level alone.
• Many of the dragon names are different, as are their animations (confirm which?).
• Many gems are placed in different locations, and some enemies give out different gems.
• In the skateboarding level, Hunter's shorts are red, as opposed to purple in the retail version. He also appears to have a purple patch on his right arm (which is also present in Spyro 2) and he is holding an invisible skateboard.

Demo	Retail

• There is no time trial in the skateboarding level, and so there is no skill point.
  • There is no skill point in either of the other two levels either, as the 'funky chicken' is not present in seashell shore, and the bottle in Molten Crater is replaced with the game safe that is normally in a different location. It could have been moved because supercharging the safe in that position would be particularly difficult, or perhaps it was moved only for the demo. The crack on the wall where this is hidden appears to not be present. It's unknown at this time if the skill point in the Sgt. Byrd section is present, but due to the other two being missing it is unlikely.
• In the Sgt. Byrd section of Molten Crater, Sgt. Byrd can be seen to use a different, much less detailed texture. While in the full game he sports a green hat and belt and has a white patch on his chest, in the demo his hat is less detailed and is silver in colour, he has no belt and the white patch on his chest has a small yellow region at the top. His shoulder cannons also appear to be a slightly different colour and the inside of his mouth is completely purple as opposed to a more realistic red colour that becomes darker further into his mouth. Strangely, in a cutscene where he briefly appears in the final game, he appears to have his beta texture. The texture which is used in this demo also seems to match official artwork of the character - he even keeps the silver helmet in the later game, Spyro: A Hero's Tail.
• The cracked wall hiding an egg in the Sgt. Byrd section uses a different (less visible) crack texture, and is for some reason significantly more difficult to break, requiring 5-6 hits of Sgt. Byrd's cannon. The crack which usually hides the Skill Point is also less visible.

Demo	Retail

• There is only one flower as opposed to multiple in Molten Crater, and the colour of the flower is slightly different

Demo	Retail

• The tunnel at the end of Molten Crater leads to a much higher point than in the retail version. This defeats the point of the tunnel as it means you can't return to the end of the level from the start, as you are able in most levels. Strangely, the texture at the bottom of the arch that makes it blend into its surroundings better was removed in the retail version.

Demo	Retail

Sunny Villa's Unused Areas

The Skateboarding area of Sunny Villa is the only normally accessible area of the level, but the rest of the level also exists in the data. It can be accessed in multiple ways, for example hacking the pause menu to display the 'exit area' option, but perhaps the most interesting way is to fix the level value to 11 (which represents Sunny Villa) and attempt to access a level other than Sunny Villa. As a result, you're placed in the main area of the level as you would in the other levels, but you enter Sunny Villa instead. As you enter the level, Spyro is seen flying in from above, down to the area where the level starts, akin to the level entrances from the first game. It's a nice little cutscene and it's not currently known why they would remove it. This could supposedly show that most if not all levels had something like this.

As with the other levels, there are a multitude of differences from the final game.

• All of the portals in the level are inaccessible without more hacking, just as the portal in the Skateboarding area normally is in this demo.
• One common texture in the level is completely different - normally it appears as a white-ish pattern, but in the demo it appears as two large brown doors.
• The trees and flowers normally scattered throughout the level are almost all missing, with lone exceptions at the very start of the level. Any extra life jar normally found in the level (of which there are 3) is also missing.
• The bears all have bright red fur and purple mouths. It appears as though their textures are missing entirely - it's very likely that at no point this was considered to be their final texture.
• In one of the dialogue strings in Sheila's area, the word 'Alas' is missing. It is still heard in the spoken dialogue, however.
• There's a large circular pool of water in the middle of the water stream near the start of the level. In early screenshots of the game, a fountain appears to be visible in the same position, so it is likely that they had removed it by this point but not fixed the unnatural appearance of the stream.

Unused Sound

To do: There are more voice lines!

Moneybags

The gem loving bear does not exist in the demo, as all the areas where you'd normally need to pay him to enter are already open. However, sound files of his dialogue do exist.

Audio	Subtitle
	Thank you Spyro! And best of luck catching those dastardly egg thieves!

Sunny Villa Bears

Much of Sunny Villa goes unused in the demo as you are limited to the skateboarding area. As a result, multiple sound files go unused, too.

Audio	Subtitle
	Are you a dragon? I never believed you really existed!
Audio	Subtitle
	Let me catch my breath and I'll kick that other guy's butt!

Prototype Level Names

The string of text displaying the names and (reversed) order of the levels appears mostly as it would in the final game, with a few missing or changed level names:

Prototype Name	Corresponding Final Name
Cloud City	Cloud Spires
Level 27	Spike's Arena
Level 28	Spider Town
Honeycomb Speedway	Honey Speedway
Level 37	Scorch's Pit
Level 38	Starfish Reef
Catacomb Caverns	Haunted Tomb
Dry Gulch	Dino Mines
Level 47	Sorceress's Lair
Level 48	Bugbot Factory
Level 50	Super Bonus Round

In all versions of the game the level numbers represent the world the they are located in (i.e. Midnight Mountain levels are 4x, since Midnight Mountain is the 4th homeworld) and what type of level they are (that is, x0 are homeworlds; x1, x2, x3 and x4 are all 'normal' levels; x5 are alternate character levels; x6 are speedways; x7 are sparx levels; and x8 are boss levels). Notably, the only missing levels are Sparx levels and bosses.

A hidden pause menu screen titled "HUB2HUB" can be accessed through hacking. The menu lists all the homeworlds and bosses as the Balloon / Whirligig / Rocket would in the final game, with the exception of the last 3 bosses, replaced by "BOSS 2", "BOSS 3" and (surprise!) "BOSS 4".

Other Unused Text Strings

Several other unused strings have been found.

Guidebook

Since there's no Guidebook in the game - rather, it was replaced by the Atlas and is totally inaccessible in the demo, this goes unused. This appears to be absent from all later versions of the game.

Fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck - out of memory for book vram

This... explicit debug string appears shortly after the previous one. Again, this doesn't seem to appear in other versions of the game.

Egg along the wall

In all later versions of the game this was replaced with "Run along the wall". This egg is normally found in Cloud Spires.