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
thumb|left|Spyro near one of the game's Dark Gems, which corrupt the land to power a banished Elder Dragon Red. Collecting them frees a part of the land from its influence, altering the environment.|alt=Spyro collecting a dark gem in a level of Spyro: A Hero's Tail
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. Specific moves cannot be performed until an Elder Dragon teaches them. The coloured gems are currency for products from Mr. Moneybags' shop. Mr. 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. 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. 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. 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.
Development consisted of Vivendi setting milestones for when Eurocom needed to complete demos, which the Universal publisher provided input to.
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. The emphasis on performance also meant low polygons for several characters, and most of the polygon detail being on the lead characters. 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.
Graphics
Matt Dixon was lead artist and concept artist, Steve Bramford was the lead character artist. Finally, scripts were written by Ramford for character rigging and skinning, which took one-to-two hours for each character. Game Audio Ltd, specifically Keith Leary, David Marsden, Paul Lawler, and Craig Sharmat, were the outsourced composers, although Cockcroft and another Eurocom composer, Steve Duckworth, are credited as well. Vivendi sent Eurocom the music from the end of June to August, a few updates to tracks made afterwards. One of the non-player characters, Ember, was also planned to be a fully playable character at the same time, but the developers thought it was too much effort to create NPC interactions and alternate speech.
The level themes and the bosses associated with them, an early document labeling them "Electric / Water / Ice / Lava Serpent and Red," were decided early on. One of several ideas for a boss was the return of Ripto. Although most of the assets remained in the final product, the number of Realms was changed from five to four. The Fifth Realm, Secret Hideout, would have consisted of the Professor's Laboratory, Dark Mine, Red's Lair, and further minigames. Its assets were merged into the fourth Realm halfway through development. The name of Professor's Laboratory was changed to Red's Laboratory when Vivendi's localization department worked on translations, although the publisher has never publicly stated a rationale. The Gnasty Gnorc boss was much larger, split into three stages.
Frostbite Village initially had baby mammoths created by Phillip Bennett, as enemies, but these were removed for frame rate issues and Vivendi's disapproval of Spyro killing cute enemies. Another cut foe, seen in the demos and a test level on the disc, were sharks in Dragonfly Falls. In the demos, they chase after the player character, while in the test level, they pop out of the ground and instantly kill as a way to prevent players from going past certain points. Spyro, who can breathe underwater infinitely in the final game, initially needed a gadget, Aqualung, to do so, but issues with difficulty balancing resulted in it being scrapped in April 2004. Areas of toxic water were incorporated instead to make the underwater sections challenging, and the Professor's explanation for Aqualung became that for invincibility. The horn dive boulders, scrapped late in development, would have been filled with dragon eggs and Light Gems.
Release and promotion
On 27 April 2004, Spyro: A Hero's Tail received its first public announcement by Vivendi Universal Games; its premise, Spyro's new attacks, and the additional player characters were revealed, as well as its release date set sometime in last quarter of 2004 for the GameCube, PlayStation 2, and Xbox. Emmy Award-winning The Simpsons and Futurama veteran J. Stewart Burns was also announced as writer. SCE Worldwide Studios executive vice president Michael Pole stated it was the dragon's "greatest adventure to date--an adventure game that immerses players into a deep storyline, [with] more-diverse, lush environments, and [that also] introduces a strong lineup of engaging characters." Two weeks later, it was presented at E3 2004, and the date was set to be sometime in November. Douglas C. Perry of IGN reported the game's target audience to be very young, its size to be four times as large as Enter the Dragonfly, and taking potentially twice as long to beat, 18–20 hours. All console versions were then presented at the September 2004 Game Stars Live event in London, England.
Spyro: A Hero's Tails only officially-released demos, solely for the PS2, were the E3 giveaway bundle with Crash Twinsanity and those in magazines. Days before its release, Spyro: A Hero's Tail received preview coverage in Cube and IGN. The Australian edition of PlayStation 2 Official Magazine, in its November 2004 issue, provided its readers a demo of Spyro: A Hero's Tail, where the main hub area, an egg-collecting mission, and minigame levels for Hunter and St. Byrd were playable. The game was released in North America on 2 November 2004. In Europe, the PlayStation 2 version was released on 16 November, the Xbox version 19 November, and the GameCube version 26 November.
| MC_PS2 = 60/100
| MC_XBOX = 64/100
| 4P_PS2 = 78%
| 4P_XBOX = 78%
| GI_XBOX = 6.5/10
| GSpot_PS2 = 5.8/10
| GameZone_PS2 = 7/10
| GameZone_XBOX = 7/10
| Hyper_NGC = 77/100
| Hyper_PS2 = 77/100
| IGN_PS2 = 7/10
| NP_NGC = 3/5
| NWR_NGC = 7/10
| ONM_NGC = 65%
| OXM_XBOX = 6.7/10
| TX_XBOX = 6.4/10
| XPlay_NGC = 2/5
| XPlay_PS2 = 2/5
Spyro: A Hero's Tail received generally mixed reviews from professional critics, who deemed it vastly superior to Enter the Dragonfly. A common criticism, even among those that found Spyro: A Hero's Tail decent, was having too little innovations to the platform and collecting genres, as well as the series' formula. "George", a writer for GameRankings, called it superior to Enter the Dragonfly for its increased responsiveness, frame rate, and focus on simple platforming over repetitive fighting.
Following completion, Eurocom considered developing another Spyro game, but the studio ultimately chose to prioritise a Pirates of the Caribbean adaptation instead.