Gamespot Release

This is a sub-page of Prerelease:Spyro: Year of the Dragon.

Gamespot was one of the multiple websites that released screenshots, videos and previews of the game on the June 23rd, 2000 embargo date. The version seen here is much later than the preview version that was covered by other outlets on the same day, though, likely due to Gamespot receiving the game a bit later. It appears to be a similar version of the game to the earliest demo, and is likely to be slightly earlier than that one. Many of the screenshots are no longer present on the Gamespot website, and all but one of the videos they hosted have been removed. While the screenshots were later hosted on other websites and so were never lost, it does not appear as though the videos were archived internally, and the WayBack Machine does not host archived versions of these video files, so it is likely that they are now lost forever.

Gamespot Coverage (June 23rd, 2000)#

Title Screen#

An unusual screenshot showing an early title screen for the game, which is using leftover data from Spyro 2 as a placeholder. Unlike the earlier April 25th build, large amounts of Skelos Badlands in the background appear to have been stripped down by this point, for some reason. The title screen still appears this way in the later July 27th build.

Game Over Screen#

The game over screen is also shown to be a Spyro 2 leftover at this point in development, similar to many other prerelease builds.

Seashell Shore#

The gem placement changed a lot during development, so often the gem changes early in development really aren't very interesting. In these screenshots, however, absolutely no gems are seen underwater or on the shore. It's possible that there wasn't any gems present here at all, which would make quite a significant change from the final game (and even from the earliest demo of the game). On the other hand, it could be the case that the player has already collected the gems, but normally you can't do this until after Bluto has been defeated. It may also be the case that Bluto was defeated, the gems were collected and the player returned to Seashell Shore to defeat Bluto for a second time when the screenshots were taken.

Sheila's Alp#

In the first screenshot, we can see that the dragon previously named "Jake" in the April 25th build is now called "Gunther", still differing from its final name of "Jenny". However, unlike the previous build, it appears to have its final model, texture and animation. The second screenshot is significantly more interesting; the egg shell fragments suggest that eggs now have a hatching animation. Rather than matching any of the variety of egg appearances in the April 25th build, or being green like the egg shown in the HUD in this version, it seems that the eggs would have been gold with some intricate patterns on them which don't match the final look of a more natural egg - rather, it looks like some kind of ornament.
Interestingly enough, as mentioned on the main page, these gold shell fragment textures exist in the final game too, and every egg releases one fragment using this texture. However, looking across all known prerelease builds, this oddity was not present in the game until the second demo onwards. It's very unclear how or why one of these shell fragments started using this earlier texture again later in development, but due to the way that the fragments are released, it's usually unnoticeable to the player.
The hatched dragon is called "Faye" in this build, as opposed to its final name, "Nan".

Sgt. Byrd's Base#

Watch on YouTubeGamespot released five videos of this version of the game, but most of these videos have been deleted from their servers. The one that remains shows Sgt. Byrd's Base. The most noticeable differences are an apparent transparency glitch that turned all the windows completely black, Sgt. Byrd's early texture, and the early version of his theme.

• Pvt. Claire is called "Pvt. Ernie" in this version.
• When the "Free 4 other hummingbird soldiers" window comes up, the text box claims that the hummingbird is talking to Spyro, rather than Sgt. Byrd.
• Sgt. Byrd's written dialogue is formatted slightly differently:

Lost Fleet#

The egg HUD icon (specifically the green one seen in the earliest demo) is now present, and the sequence where Crazy Ed runs up to Spyro now matches the final one. It's strange that the player only has 12 eggs at this point as usually it would be impossible to reach this level with so few eggs. This could suggest that not only was a level select still present like in the April 25th build, but also that eggs, gems and the hits the player has taken are saved over from other levels the player has been to, a feature which was not present in the previous build. This means that this might have been a more fully playable version of the game, albeit still incomplete.

Like in the previous build, no counter is present showing the number of remaining subs.

Bentley's Outpost#

The gold egg shell fragments can be seen again. The dragon is named "Blair" as opposed to "Charlie".

Agent 9's Lab#

Once again transparency issues are seen despite earlier previews showing that the forcefields worked fine. In the second screenshot, the panic switch on the wall is grey instead of red, but it doesn't appear to be destroyed. Recall that the switches were red and textureless in the previous build, and the Professor mentions the panic switch as being red, so the choice of making it grey seems strange. Perhaps, that's why it was changed back to red some time before the July 27th build (only the working switch was changed back; the broken switch was changed back to red at some point after the second demo).