Spyro: Year of the Dragon



The third Spyro the Dragon game, and the last to be developed by Insomniac Games for the PlayStation. Released in 2000, the actual Year of the Dragon.

In the Year of the Dragon, a rare event that happens every 12 years, mass numbers of new Dragon Eggs are brought to the Dragon Realms. But they're stolen en route by a white rabbit thief who disappears into a strange hole. Spyro follows her and ends up in the Forgotten Realms, where an evil sorceress rules. Now Spyro, with the help of his friends, has to recover all the dragon eggs and make sure the baby dragons get home safely.

"Bentley [to Moneybags]: Why, you brazenly avaricious, duplicitous, larcenous ursine!"
 * One Hundred Percent Completion: Awards you with a new level, Super Bonus Round, which is filled with treasure and ends with.
 * All Animals Are Dogs: Many of the baby dragons show this behavior, e.g. wagging their tails or scratching themselves with their paws. Ironically, they're not even mammals, though considering that Spyro can survive in cold environments they may very well be warm-blooded.
 * Big Bad: The Sorceress. If she hadn't given the order to steal all the dragon eggs, Spyro might not have gone to the forgotten realms in the first place...though he might have done so anyway if somebody told him that the realms had lost their magic.
 * Bubbly Clouds: Cloud Spires.
 * Bullfight Boss: Buzz.
 * Canada, Eh?: The residents of Icy Peak appear to exhibit this. To top it off, when you opt out of paying Moneybags for an optional side quest, the negative reply is "Take off, hoser!" In case you were wondering, the mission involves protecting a ice skater... from Rhynoc hockey players.
 * The only two residents of the area you meet are named Bob and Doug.
 * Also the ice skater in the side quest. All three of the native residents speak as if they are from the Great North.
 * Captain Ersatz: One of the characters in the Desert Ruins level is one of Lara Croft.
 * Copy Protection: Playing a cracked copy of Spyro: Year of the Dragon? Zoe the Fairy appears at the latter part of Sunrise Spring telling you that your copy is hacked and may be an illegal copy, which will lead you to experience "problems" you would not experience on a legal copy. And as a Shout-Out to EarthBound, the game recreates the " " thing from said game, although in a more subtle manner: instead of just, it just  . To sum it up, instead of  , the game  . It counts as a Shout-Out as both cases of Copy Protection interrupt the Final Boss Battle. You can even see it here.
 * Genius Programming: In a World where most games are pirated less than a week after release, it took hackers two months to find a workaround for Spyro's crack protection.
 * Darker and Edgier: The villain of this game is more evil than the previous two, though it's not darker outside of that.
 * Egg MacGuffin
 * Escort Mission
 * Even Evil Has Standards:, Cutscene 12.
 * Flunky Boss: Scorch, the monster to end all monsters.
 * Fractured Fairy Tale:
 * Year of the Dragon has a whole level devoted to this, Charmed Ridge.
 * The same game also has a mission which requires you to rescue Rapunzel from a tower..
 * Gotta Collect Them All: Gems and dragon eggs.
 * Green Hill Zone: Sunrise Spring.
 * Haiku
 * Once you enter Spooky Swamp, you will speak in it.
 * Everyone speaks in it. Even Sheila and Moneybags. Gets funny because Moneybags does not like speaking in Haiku (as specially noted when you talk to him after you've paid the fee to open the door to the next area).
 * Heel Face Turn: Bianca, once she realizes how insane the Sorceress is.
 * My God, What Have I Done?: Bianca's reaction when the Sorceress reveals her intention to kill the baby dragons for their wings.
 * Not So Well-Intentioned Extremist: Unlike Bianca, the Sorceress has a different motive for collecting the dragon eggs. It turns out she wishes to murder the dragon infants so that she can use their wings to perform a spell that would allow her to live forever.
 * Obvious Beta: The Non-Greatest Hits/Platinum versions of the game are very glitchy due to being rushed so that the game would be released on the Year of the Dragon.
 * Palmtree Panic: Seashell Shore.
 * Piranha Problem: One level has a lake full of piranhas that eat you if you don't get out fast enough.
 * Sesquipedalian Loquaciousness: Bentley the Yeti.


 * Shifting Sand Land: Desert Ruins.
 * Shout-Out: Say no to Moneybags when he tries to do the "Magical Extending Bridge Trick" in Crystal Islands, and he will threaten to turn you into "a blue hedgehog or something."
 * In Haunted Tomb, one of the possible answers to one of the riddles is a bandicoot.
 * Totally Radical: Hunter
 * ]]Well-Intentioned Extremist]]: Bianca wishes to steal dragon eggs...so that the Forgotten Realms can be magical again.
 * What Do You Mean Its Not Symbolic: In Evening Lake, there is a whale swimming in the deeper regions of the lake. You can let the whale eat you which leads you to an egg. The dragon inside the egg is called "Jonah." On the other hand, a lot of these dragons have joke names.