Welcome, Spyro fans, to Spyro World! We are the fastest growing Spyro the Dragon site on the internet, so you’ve come to the right place for all your Spyro news and reviews. Our network includes a news site, wiki, image gallery and a forum. In addition to news and reviews, we provide your Spyro fix with Spyro videos, artwork and more! Keep an eye out for special Spyro exclusives you won’t find anywhere else, coming your way! We hope to become not only one of the most comprehensive Spyro sites available, but also your favorite. Look no further to keep up-to-date on Spyro.
All this ruckus over pitching the Spyro games over again made me decide it was time for another old advertisement. This one is from Ritpo's Rage. It's a parody of the Blair Witch Project only with snowmen. If you haven't seen it, it's hilarious, and you should watch it right now!
Let's turn back the clock 11 days, 6 months, and 10 years. Where would we be? The day the first Spyro game was released. On that day a media convention was held at which Sony's marketing head Andrew House explained how Spyro would be a lucrative franchise and how it was marketable. Why does this matter? Well, if what Variety claimed is true, (see the post below), something along these lines will have to happen again due to the Vivendi/Activision merger. The benefits of Spyro will be brought back to the table and discussed in order to decide whether to keep him alive or sign off his death.
According to a report by Variety, the developers at Sierra are having to prove the worth of their franchises to Activision's heads in order to continue development or to have their franchises put to rest. As you may recall, Vivendi and Activision recently underwent a merger. At that time Spyro fans were hopeful that the merger would fuel more money into the Spyro development team at Sierra. Sierra is one of the labels at Vivendi. Now, however, it's being said that many properties and franchises have to be re-pitched - the way they were pitched years ago before even their first game was produced. This means pretty much two things - A ) marketability to the consumer and B ) lucrativeness (how much money can Activision make from the franchise).
Our dearest dragon is being put to the test, along with Crash Bandicoot and several other IPs at Sierra. Could this mean the death of Spyro? If Activision feels his time is over and/or he's not making enough moolah, then yes. Some Vivendi franchises like World of Warcraft, The Bourne Conspiracy, Prototype, etc. are safe from this re-pitching process. Spyro, unfortunately, is not. Will he finally be laid to rest once the merger is completed? Only time will tell.
Note, this will NOT affect the release of The Legend of Spyro: Darkest Hour. However, it will affect any Spyro games after that.
Keep in mind, this is only a rumor from a magazine. Variety broke word of the Spyro movie, though, so it may be accurate - just don't panic quite yet.
Dutch graphic/pixel artist Henk Nieborg has worked on many popular games including Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets for Gameboy Advance and Batman Begins for the PS2, Xbox and Gamecube. He helped work on Spyro: A Hero's Tail in 2004. His work included environment modeling, texturing & lighting and the frontend / HUD display. I contacted him about his work and here's what he had to say:
Quote:
At that point I worked for a company called Eurocom in Derby in the UK. I quit my job there at 2005 to start for myself again. Here's what I did on Spyro: A Hero's Tail.
- Concept work for backgrounds.
- Modeling, texturing and lighting of level 1B (Swamp level)
- Modeling, texturing and lighting of all the Sgt. Byrd and Sparx levels.
- Created the in-game HUD graphics.
Welcome back to Spyro Media Friday. No, we didn't forget last week, we skipped this feature in order to help keep the wonderful interview with the TLoS music composers at the top of our postings.
Talking about composers and music, that is precisely the topic of this week's Media Friday. Anyone who knows Spyro knows Stewart Copeland composed the soundtracks for the first four console Spyro games. Anyone who knows that also knows that the music is superb! To this day the music isn't readily available, not on iTunes or other music stores or by way of soundtrack. EtD had a soundtrack bundled with the PS2 version of the game, but that has become somewhat of a rare commodity. Indeed, therefore one of the many pleasures of replaying the old games is listening to - experiencing - this music again. It has been known about (to me at least) for quite some time that Copeland's website has an online radio with selections of Spyro music. The strange thing about it, though, is four tracks on this radio station are actually not in any of the four Spyro games he composed for.
There are many theories surrounding why this is. Oftentimes music is made for a level but that level doesn't make the final cut of the game. This can be due to poor peer review, glitchy beta-tests, or even just time constraints. That would seem the most likely explanation but we don't have any official word on the matter.
It recenetly came to my attention that one of the songs had been placed on youtube. Therefore it is the subject of today's feature.
Here is one of the unknown tracks from Spyro that Copeland had on his site:
For more, click here and then click on "The Copeland Vault".
Welcome back to Hind Site! Last week we skipped this feature in order to allow the wonderful interview with the TLoS music composers at the top of our news circuit.
For the next few editions we will explore what could have been, if you will, after Insomniac left Spyro at the end of YotD.
In 2000, IGN posted a news article that Universal was looking for a new partner to replace Sony and it appeared as if it would be Havas Interactive. Never heard of them? You might be surprised to learn you have. Havas was a subsidiary of Vivendi Publishing in France and changed its name to Vivendi Universal (VU) in 2001. VU Games is now just V Games but still controls Spyro.
At that time it was planned for the next Spyro game to be released on the Xbox, PlayStation 2, Game Boy Advance, and PC. Who knows if this game was Enter the Dragonly or if they even had a game when these plans were made. However... whatever came of it, three of those systems did not get the game and one unplanned system did. EtD came out for PS2 and the GameCube. Imagine, right now you could be playing EtD while reading this...with your mouse and keyboard! Some may find this a scary thought...others disappointing that it never came to be. Either way, read on:
Not so long ago, on the fifteenth of January, I wrote to Becky Kneubuhl, one of the composers from The Legend of Spyro series. I asked her if she and her composing partner, Gabriel, would be interested in answering some questions about her work on Spyro and herself in general. She wrote back the same night and happily agreed to an interview. I thought up some questions and gathered some from fans around the Spyro forums and pieced it all together into an interview.
A few weeks went by and on February sixth I returned an email to Becky with the completed list of questions. I hadn’t heard back from either Becky or her co-composer on Spyro, Gabriel Mann, so last evening I wrote to her to see how the answers were coming along. It turned out that they had sent the answers back about a week ago and wondered why I hadn’t notified them of receiving the answers. I never got the answers, so it was good I asked. They re-sent their responses and now here they’re for everyone to enjoy.
From here on out, any questions we asked will be labeled as “SW”. Becky’s answers will be marked as “B” and Gabriel’s as “G”. All questions answered together are marked as "B&G". Enjoy!
__________________________________________________________
SW: Sorry that nearly a month has gone past since I asked to do the interview with you. I gathered questions from fans, added some of my own and finally have a list of interview questions that's longer than expected but hopefully not too long. :)
I hope you both enjoy answering these questions, if you don't feel comfortable answering one that's fine. Anything you'd like to add about your processes or Spyro work you can throw in there. I look forward to hearing back.
B&G: No problem - if we run out of gas we'll just skip to the important ones. :)
SW: And now...the questions:
SW: Is this what you wanted to do/thought you'd do as a kid?
G: Sorta. I wanted to be a rock star and a doctor. So this is kinda close to being a rock star, but not very close to being a doctor.
B: Sorta. I didn't really know there was a career option called 'composer', so I didn't really write music until college. I thought I’d be teaching music or conducting choirs. I’m pretty sure I never wanted to be a doctor.
(View the rest of this post)
This week's Spyro Media Friday takes us back to a game many Spyro fans would like to forget - Enter the Dragonfly. One of the initial ads for the game was clearly meant to reference the UFO/Hick Country level (Crop Circle Country) in Enter the Dragonfly and had a small jingle about Spyro's powers. Maybe if they had fueled more of that money into the game, not the ad, we would have gotten a better product. Hm?
Here's the ad for all your farm hullabaloo fancies.
Here we are, back with another edition of Hind Site for your web surfing pleasure!
This week we present a wonderful article from Gamasutra that came out way back in 2000! It discusses how John Fiorito, an artist from Insomniac Games who worked on Spyro the Dragon , used technology and color in a unique way to create an original style for the games.
It's a fascinating read so if you haven't seen it, you should!
Velvet Octopus has cleared the main page of their site except for a blurb about upcoming projects that leads to a P.D.F. file with their in-production movies. At the top of the list is Spyro:
Here's what it says:
Quote:
THE LEGEND OF SPYRO is the new 3D stereoscope CGI animated feature based on the best-selling video game from Vivendi Universal.
SPYRO has sold over 20 million units worldwide earning US$525 million+.
It is a story of a young dragon whose destiny is to battle evil forces in Dragon World. Spyro must learn to fly, breath fire and battle aided by his friends and family.
Dir: TBC Prod: John Davis (Eragon, I Robot), Dan Chuba, Mark Dippe, Youngki Lee, Brian Manis, Ash Shah Writer: Altiere Brothers (Dr. Doolittle 4) Status: In Production
TEASER TRAILER and TREATMENT AVAILABLE
If you go to the page where the trailer supposedly is, there is currently nothing for Spyro (but rather scripts for their other films). They might update that soon. However, I doubt we'd get a trailer this early.
UPDATE: You may or may not have noticed that there is now some things censored and content has been deleted. I was asked to remove some information from my initial news post by Velvet Octopus as it was confidential information meant only for the film producers, financiers and distributors. I tell you this in case you read it and might have planned to re-post it elsewhere. To respect the wishes of Velvet Octopus please do not re-post the deleted information. You should be able to tell what was deleted. The remaining information seen above was acceptable for me to post.
Welcome, Spyro fans, to Spyro World! We are the fastest growing Spyro the Dragon site on the internet, so you’ve come to the right place for all your Spyro news and reviews. Our network includes a news site, wiki, image gallery and a forum. In addition to news and reviews, we provide your Spyro fix with Spyro videos, artwork and more! Keep an eye out for special Spyro exclusives you won’t find anywhere else, coming your way! We hope to become not only one of the most comprehensive Spyro sites available, but also your favorite. Look no further to keep up-to-date on Spyro.
