Spyro: A Hero's Tail is a 2004 platform game developed by Eurocom Entertainment Software and published by Vivendi Universal Games for the PlayStation 2, GameCube, and Xbox. It is the fifth console game in the original Spyro series and the ninth game in the series overall. Per usual, players act as the titular dragon collecting objects, platforming, flying, headbutting and breathing fire onto enemies to save the Dragon Realms. This time, he collects Dark Gems, which corrupt the land with maniacal creatures and deadly plants, planted by a banished Dragon Elder Red. Other characters, such as Sparx the Dragonfly, Hunter the Cheetah, Sgt. Byrd the Penguin, and newcomer Blink the Mole, are playable in minigame stages.
Development began in early November 2002 under the working title Spyro: The Dark Realms and was announced by Vivendi to be completed on 4 October 2004; the final title was decided by the publisher in early 2004. The game was produced by Suzanne Watson and Jon Williams, who explained that the goal was simply "to create a game that was in keeping with the franchise," with acknowledgement of the problems of the critically panned previous entry Spyro: Enter the Dragonfly. The earlier games, particularly their promotional renders, were referenced so that the art style was suitable with the series universe. Jak and Daxter also influenced the creation of the polygons and textures, choice of lighting methods, and style of cutscenes.
Spyro: A Hero's Tail garnered generally mixed reviews from professional critics. They agreed it was a significant improvement over Enter the Dragonfly, but argued its low difficulty meant only young gamers would enjoy it. They positively commented on the graphics, responsive controls, and incorporation of changing environments when Dark Gems are collected. However, they were disappointed in its lack of innovation and overemphasis on collecting, and had differing opinions on the minigame sections.
Gameplay
Spyro: A Hero's Tail is a 3D platform game where the player collects a variety of objects, destroys walls and rocks, solves puzzles, plays mini-games, and fight pattern-based bosses that take three hits to kill in three stages. Typical of the series, it involves the titular purple dragon saving the Dragon Realms from danger. This time, he collects Dark Gems, planted by the former Elder Dragon Red, who was banished from the Realms. They corrupt the land with maniacal creatures and deadly plants, draining life out of its environment to power Red. The gameplay is also largely the same, where Spyro jumps on platforms, flies, head-butts into enemies, and wanders around collecting gems. His Fire, Ice and Electricity breath attacks return, although must be purchased from Moneybags, and are used to solve puzzles. However, he has new several abilities, such as ledge grabbing, wall kicking, horn diving into enemies while flying, and swinging his tail like a lasso, and a new Water breath attack. Specific moves cannot be performed until an Elder Dragon teaches them.
The player traverses a variety of settings, such as colourful towns, dark lava-filled caves and snowy mountains. They have save points, represented by Zoe, who now can save both the player's current position in an area and overall game progress. Collecting the dark gems restores what the environments initially were. Transformations include flowers growing, frozen waterfalls warming and turning back into lakes, dilapidated bridges rebuilding, and gems being clean of purple goo. In addition to the Dark Gems, Spyro obtains Light Gems, colourful dragon eggs, and multi-coloured gems of varying value. Light Gems open locked doors to new areas and power-up the gadgets. The dragon eggs open entrances to minigame sections and unlock the game's concept art when returned to their owner Nanny Dragon. The coloured gems are currency for products from Moneybags' shop. Objects are obtained by killing enemies (such as Gnorcs), unlocking gates, opening wicker baskets, smashing treasure chests, completing minigames, and performing tasks such as breaking down hidden walls. The game's early enemies can be destroyed by breathing fire on them, but later ones must be killed in specific ways. Crabs, for example, can only be killed by using the Electricity breath.
In minigame sections, the player acts as other characters, such as three returns from previous games—Hunter the Cheetah, Sgt. Byrd the rocket-propelled Penguin, and Sparx the Dragonfly—and a newcomer, Blink the Mole. Hunter the Cheetah can shoot with his bow, which he can also turn into a shield by spinning it, stomp on enemies midair and pull off combos of punches and kicks. Two types of arrows can be shot from the bow: standard and fire, the latter being limited in supply. His long legs provide him more jumping height than Spyro, making him useful for platforms the purple dragon cannot jump or fly up to. He also can walk upright and double-jump. The penguin Sgt. Byrd is able to fly and shoot missiles and bombs, his sections requiring the player to shoot at a number of targets under a time limit. Blink the Mole is armed with lasers and explosives, as well as a helmet to duck in, and is for reaching areas inaccessible for Spyro, with climbing and burrowing abilities. Sparx flies in rail shooter race minigames.
The Professor built four gadgets that Spyro uses: a glass ball a la Super Monkey Ball that he rolls in to move up slopes, a teleporter that warps to various areas of the Dragon Realms, one for temporary invincibility, and a Super Charge gadget that, for a limited amount of time, provides Spyro more strength and speed. Moneybags' shop, in addition to breath attacks, contains ammunition that increase their power, magazines that allow for more charges and blasts to be held, and a shock wave that increases the radius of the horn dive. The shop also sells lockpicks to open doors and gates, a chain that holds three lockpicks at a time, a multiplier that doubles the value of the coloured gems, a butterfly jar that restores Spyro's health, and an extra health unit.
Development Workflow Spyro: A Hero's Tail was developed by Eurocom, specifically the team of Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets. The project's producer Jon Williams was first informed by Vivendi about the possibility of working on a Spyro game in early October 2002, and Eurocom and Vivendi had their first conference on 11 November. He co-produced the game with Suzanne Watson. A skeleton team of the leads kickstarted development in early November, before it expanded with additional programmers and artists as was the case with other Eurocom projects. Some design proposals were sent to the publisher in late October, before "real" Design and Technical Design documents were provided in early 2003. The working title was Spyro: The Dark Realms, before Vivendi decided on Spyro: A Hero's Tail in early 2004. Williams explained that the goal was simply "to create a game that was in keeping with the franchise," with criticisms of the critically panned previous entry Spyro: Enter the Dragonfly acknowledged. On 4 October 2004, Vivendi Universal Games announced development was completed.
Development consisted of Vivendi setting milestones for when Eurocom needed to complete demos, which the Universal publisher provided input to. Most of the Eurocom projects, in Williams' time at the company which started in the 1990s, were film tie-ins or games of well-established franchises. This meant they had lots of commands and strict deadlines from publishers and film studios at once, resulting in what he called nightmarish development environments. He more positively reflects on Spyro: A Hero's Tail, which he considered one of Eurocom's better projects in terms of collaboration between developer and publisher. He described it as "very professional and we never had any major fall outs." Particular praise was given by Williams and lead artist and concept artist Matt Dixon towards the support from Vivendi Universal producer Caroline Trujillo.
Programming and design Spyro: A Hero's Tail was designed by Terry Lloyd and Phill Bennett, and programmed by Dave Pridmore, Andy Brown, Daniel Secker, John Stephens, Kristoffer Adock, Mark Topley, Matt Partridge, Narinder Singh Basran and Stuart Johnson. From the start, the developers were influenced by Jak and Daxter, attempting to emulate the series' detail in polygons and textures, lightning methods, and style of cutscenes. Spyro: A Hero's Tail was produced with EngineX, in what was the first time Eurocom had multiple in-progress projects using the same engine. It was programmed by Chris Jackson, Ian Denny, Tim Rogers, Andy Hutchings, Ashley Finney, Dave Looker, Green Jam Canal, Kevin Grantham, Kevin Stainwright, Mark Gornall, Peter Livingstone, Shane Clark, Steve Robinson, and Steven Walker. Andy Mitchell, Bob Smith, Diego Garcia Huerta, Jim Makin, Kev Marks, Kevin Thacker, and Mark Duffill programmed the development kit's other tools.
Although Williams explained any technical issues the developers faced were expected, production was complicated by the fact that the engine was still being written by its programmers, who at the same time also had to fix software bugs and glitches for another team. The technical issue primarily focused on was loading, particularly the game doing so on three consoles of different hardware. The development systems took very long to load, making predicating the load time on a console precarious. Flying sections that connected the Realms together, which ultimately paved the way for minigames, were scrapped due to loading issues. The emphasis on performance also meant low polygons for several characters, and most of the polygon detail being on the lead characters.
In order for multiple programmers to work on a level, test maps like Test_AB and Test_JP were created for them to produce assets and experiment with mechanics. These would be imported into the main level map once completed. Although these were not meant to be in the released product, they are accessible via cheat codes and file-swapping. Williams suggests the development environment was so hectic it was not caught being in the code. Two other maps, hogwarts.edb (a model of the Harry Potter location of the same name) and maptest.edb, are also on the disc. Williams does not remember the definite reason for their usage, but suspected it was so the team could start working on concepts before Eurocom's switch to EngineX. The Scanmode Enable feature, selectable in the debug menu, was used to bypass collision so that developers could see the full level.
Graphics Matt Dixon was lead artist and concept artist, Steve Bramford was the lead character artist. Amanda Barlow, Clive K. Stevenson, Gary Baker, Henk Nieborg, Jon Parr, Matt Farrell and Phil Dobson were also artists on the project. The animation team consisted of Almudean Soria Sancho, Antonio Palermo, Brian Riordan, Des Forde, Mark Jackson, Mark Povey, Jon Maine, Kenny Beard, Owen Flanagan, Phil Hanks, and Santiago Colomo Martinez. In addition to Bamford, Drew Kerins, Michael Lindsay, Oscar Fuertes Garcia, Phill Plunkett, and Steven Gratton modeled the characters.