Spyro: A Hero's Tail - A History

Spyro 1 history - Spyro the Dragon - A History Spyro 2 history - Spyro: Ripto's Rage!/Gateway to Glimmer - ... Spyro 3 history - Spyro: Year of the Dragon - A History Spyro: Enter the Dragonfly history - Spyro: Enter the Dragonfly - A History It’s time to look into the history of what I consider the oddball of the Spyro series, Spyro: A Hero’s Tail. Some people love it, some people hate it, and some people, like me, have mixed feelings about it. A Hero’s Tail had a different developer compared to previous games in the series. This time it was the turn of British developers Eurocom Entertainment Software, to come up with a fresh adventure for the plucky purple dragon. Eurocom had previously worked on titles such as Crash Bash, Disney’s Tarzan and 40 Winks to name a few, but they’ve developed so many games before and after A Hero’s Tail that I suggest you look them all up. Development of A Hero’s Tail began shortly after the release of its ill-fated predecessor, Enter the Dragonfly, and the game was ready to ship by November 2004, releasing on the 9th for the US and the 12th for Europe. This would be the first time a Spyro game would appear on the Xbox as well as the 2nd time on the PS2 and Gamecube. The developers were determined to make their own version of a Spyro game that would still fit into the series without being too farfetched, so while you will see old faces and mechanics from previous games, you’ll also see plenty of new characters and abilities. In terms of controlling Spyro, some commands are the same as previous games, others are new, and the rest will leave you scratching your head. Spyro starts off with some basic abilities and as he visits each Elder he’ll learn something new. Perhaps the biggest head scratcher most people talk about is the swapping of circle and square. Every game up to this point uses square to charge and circle to breath attack, but A Hero’s Tail wants to be different, and different apparently means mixing up the button commands. Needless to say I was caught out a few times at the beginning of the game, when I dashed off a platform instead of breathing fire on the nearby chests. Gliding’s been changed too but I kind of like it now; in previous games you’d press x to jump, x again to glide, then press triangle at the end of your jump to hover and gain more height. That was about the extent of your control while gliding, if you stopped midway you couldn’t start gliding again, and Spyro would fall to his death in most cases. In A Hero’s Tail Spyro learns the ability to double jump by pressing x and then x again but loses his hover ability, so you’re effectively gaining the height before you start gliding. Letting go of the x button will stop Spyro’s glide, but holding it down again will continue it. Spyro’s other mechanic is his various breath attacks – fire, electric, water and ice. Each breath can be selected by using the D Pad on the PS2 controller. I may as well mention the bomb ammo Spyro can pick up and spit as well. This ammo comes in 4 varieties just like Spyro’s breath attacks – fire bombs, ball lightnings, aqua bombs and ice missiles. They can be thrown by tapping R1, and thrown even further by holding down R1. Spyro isn’t the only character to play as in A Hero’s Tail; there’s Sparx the dragonfly, Hunter the Cheetah, Blink the Mole and Sgt Byrd the penguin. Everybody bar Hunter is involved in mini games and each mini game needs to be completed twice to collect all the available items, first for a dragon egg and then again for a Light Gem. A Hero’s Tail was the first Spyro game on main consoles that Stewart Copeland did not compose the music for. Instead that role went to British composers Steve Duckworth and Paul Lawler. The only two voice actors to return are Michael Gough reprising his role as Gnasty Gnorc as well as taking on the role of the Professor, and Andre Sogliuzzo returning to voice Sparx. A Hero’s Tail received mixed to positive reviews on release. One thing most critics unanimously agreed on was that it was definitely a step up from Enter the Dragonfly, and I concur. Whereas its predecessor felt rushed and sloppily made with glitches and bugs abound, A Hero’s Tail was an incredibly smooth game from start to finish. Movement and combat feels great, the voice acting isn’t bad, and the realms Spyro explores are gorgeous to look at. However some critics weren’t impressed with Eurocom’s lack of innovation, stating that nothing new had been brought to the game despite the developers trying to make their own unique mark on the series. To this day on gamerankings, the PS2 version of Spyro: A Hero’s Tail holds a 64.59% ranking based on 22 reviews.