Spyro (2) - Rutabaga's Revenge

[KobaBeach]

night flight just makes me think of silhouette mirage, a game raocow should play...... the japanese version of :)

us version is like. on top of the working designs translation it also has a fucked up new gameplay loop that makes the game somewhat harder and like. just play the jp version. please. i did the saturn version with the english script by my side. come on



snn actually ported this song to smw but it was so jank and one of his first ones that it barely sounded like either night flight. if there is any midi or i happen to gain the abilities to transcribe songs by ear i might try to port it

[Grounder]

words

this exists for that, i guess?

you'd still need the base rom file

[KobaBeach]

this exists for that, i guess?

you'd still need the base rom file

i know where to get the isos don't worry, still have the saturn one actually. it's just that not all psx games are created equal, the effectiveness of vgmtrans varies, on some it works (sound driver is supported), on others it doesn't

[Zephyr_DragonLord]

So, flight levels. Lots to say about these. First of all, in terms of natural progression, the first one the game reasonably expects someone to go to is Crystal Flight, hence the dragon right in front of there telling Spyro about how dragons learned to fly there. I presume the infinite flight thing is just magic; it's definitely something that exists in spades in this world. Magic Crafters moreso, but... yeah, it's definitely magic.

Night Flight is pretty difficult, being out of the way, and is definitely a stage that one can go in first. My brother could never do any of these, so I was the only one who did any of these, and fly I did. The path here is hard to understand at first, but it definitely becomes more doable with more attempts, none of which invoke actual life loss... thank goodness for that. The lighthouses are definitely the hardest part of this one, given you have to weave in and out to have any sort of efficiency with flying through everything. As a note, you can reglide when you hit the ground, but it definitely loses you valuable time, so not hitting the ground in the first place is a pretty good way of going about these.

Crystal Flight is definitely the easier of the two, despite the fact that there are moving targets in the planes. There are two ways to deal with them; one is to go with their flight paths, which makes them easier to burn down, but is overall slower, since they're flying away from Spyro. The other is to intercept them, which is the much harder, but faster method of dealing with them. Other than that, the only really concerning thing is hitting the water from the arches, and missing the treasure chests. None of these levels are free, but they tend to be a good enough time.

[Catabo]

Don't worry about the world 1 thing. You'll find your way to it eventually.

Now, if you'll excuse me, I've got some on-camera hubris to immortalize...

[lands and re-flies]
"but that's dumb, once you land you can't re-fly again"

Musical element of the day: Crystal Flight's melody is actually just a super hyped-up Stone Hill. Yeah, it's just one of a handful of leitmotifs used all over the game, but I can't help but imagine some ethereal connection between the two levels that doesn't actually exist.

[ano0maly]

These flights are basically the bonus levels. Collecting all of a set gives you some gems (it shows a check if you already got the gems for that category) but there's the "all in one" category so basically you have to get everything in one run. That said, it might be a good idea to try handling each set individually to learn where they are, and then find a good routing to get them.

[Paragraph]

Yeah the flights demand of you to find your own speedrun-style optimal route. There's an "intended" one, but I'm sure for a lot of them they do realize that the "safe" path requires extreme precision to pull off and are practically begging you to find your own, cleverer route.

Good show anyway, really enjoyed watching you figure out what it wanted from you :)

[Crow]

obligatory

[Grounder]

raocow

they obviously wanted players to do more than like a third of the game before rushing to the last whatveritis

come on

[BobisOnlyBob]

they obviously wanted players to do more than like a third of the game before rushing to the last whatveritis

but they definitely let you come here with only this much for a reason too!

[Ditocoaf]

It looks like, at this point, he's only "skipping" two levels? And each world basically has three normal levels you can choose between freely, just with some of them easier to get to from the world entrance. I don't know, I don't think it's that ridiculous for him to be playing this level right now.

And yeah, as a kid if you get stuck on this level you go to the other ones where you'll find a tutorial. It all works out.

[Paragraph]

I don't think there is a tutorial anywhere ingame for the double layer supercharge, though? All things considered, this went remarkably well - Wizard Peaks is a super difficult level! Even the exploration is no slouch - there's the secret area right at the start featuring some scary platforming along the top ledges, and from that you get ANOTHER secret offshoot to the last gems raocow (and probably everybody else) found.

[Crow]

I don't think there is a tutorial anywhere ingame for the double layer supercharge, though?

iirc there's one in tree tops, of all places

[Leet]

It's also still raocow's usual habits coming up ("i must do everything in this level before proceeding to the next") that makes him look up hints before exploring the rest of the game. Figuring things out through experience before being ready to 100% everything is pretty sensible design to me, even if Spyro isn't really that obtuse a game other than a few things like this.

[Zephyr_DragonLord]

Ah, Wizard Peaks. It definitely gave me trouble, still kind of does now, and it's not for the reason you'd think; while I did fail the supercharges quite a bit, I also failed to fully comprehend the outdoor section, namely the platform raocow didn't find until the end. Makes me a tad envious he found it so fast, and also pretty impressed.

Oh, and supercharges. There are multiple speeds of it, from white, to yellow, to red, each faster speed than the other. Even young me picked up on this fast, but it does not change that nailing supercharge jumps requires some significant practice, since you sometimes need to transition from the charge to a glide, and nailing the timing for the jumps in the first place is difficult, in no small part due to how fast Spyro's moving when in this motion. The easiest one is in the Magic Crafters hub, and it's definitely something to keep in mind. The physics of them are slightly different in Reignited, too, but not enough to make an absolutely serious impact; it just feels different.

And this is indeed where you learn about the Artisan world secret, and it's lucky you came here pretty early on....

[Catabo]

Similarly to Lucas telling you about something in world 1 in world 3, you don't get outright told there are multiple layers of supercharge until later either. A little less innocent than Lucas in terms of "tell the player about thing to encourage them to go back for stuff they missed" design, but the ethos is there.

... Anyway, shout-out to my boy The Last Wizard: Protector of the Gems for being the true enigma of Wizard(s') Peak(s).

Musical element of the day: the organ delivers a leitmotif that's well-known to our ears by now. Also some kind of click-click-click percussion thing in the background vibin'!

"I'm missing ten rings... I mean dragons" makes me want a mod called Sonic the Dragon, which would do nothing but recolour Spyro blue and make him always supercharge instead of regular charge.

[ano0maly]

Wizard Peak was really satisfying of a level to watch. There's a lot of differently designed places you can explore to keep collecting treasures.

I remember when playing the game that although it was very fun, at the time I felt that its main weakness was its lack of replay value for its levels: as soon as you get a gem it's gone forever and save for starting a new game, you can never re-experience the level the same way again. You may wonder why you would replay a level you've beaten but back then I liked playing levels just for fun, or even if I didn't actually replay something, I appreciated that you're able to do so. I was used to games where you could take that for granted (and particularly those like Crash games you have explicit reasons to go back), so it was a bit different playing a game where the levels permanently deplete content so easily.

This is what I liked about the sequels back then - they have more minigames and content that are replayable.

Looking at the game now, I realize that this is what it's like to play a collectathon game, that the game is like DK64 but with a more focused design.

[TiKi]

Wizard Peak was really satisfying of a level to watch. There's a lot of differently designed places you can explore to keep collecting treasures.

I remember when playing the game that although it was very fun, at the time I felt that its main weakness was its lack of replay value for its levels: as soon as you get a gem it's gone forever and save for starting a new game, you can never re-experience the level the same way again. You may wonder why you would replay a level you've beaten but back then I liked playing levels just for fun, or even if I didn't actually replay something, I appreciated that you're able to do so. I was used to games where you could take that for granted (and particularly those like Crash games you have explicit reasons to go back), so it was a bit different playing a game where the levels permanently deplete content so easily.

This is what I liked about the sequels back then - they have more minigames and content that are replayable.

Looking at the game now, I realize that this is what it's like to play a collectathon game, that the game is like DK64 but with a more focused design.

the spongebob movie game for ps2 does this. it was a good game but that type of thing is awful like... why give me reasons to play the game less

[KobaBeach]

You may wonder why you would replay a level you've beaten but back then I liked playing levels just for fun, or even if I didn't actually replay something, I appreciated that you're able to do so. I was used to games where you could take that for granted (and particularly those like Crash games you have explicit reasons to go back), so it was a bit different playing a game where the levels permanently deplete content so easily.

the spongebob movie game for ps2 does this. it was a good game but that type of thing is awful like... why give me reasons to play the game less

I actually enjoy the more playable Sonics for the fact I can start any stage and just have fun, especially Adventure 1, since all of the stages have their specific flavor and special gimmicks or enemy pool, especially in the 2D games. Other platformers I just. Start from scratch because replaying already cleared levels that are all the same outside of level design is boring as shit.

Some Mario hacks, especially Japanese ones, have some fun ASM gimmicks, hell even some SMW bosses (i.e. Japanese and Korean ones and like. Kil's Rumia?) are actually fun to experience because of how unique they are, but other than that it's like... Why would I replay the same Mario or Kirby level if I'm getting nothing from the experience.

Like I'm enjoying SIG World 13 (remake of 1) a ton but like. I'm not gonna replay most of these stages, no disrespect to SIG's craftsmanship though, this is better than most western standard hacks. Hell, when I play Kirby, I always start a new file or continue an unfinished file. And I love Kirby to the point that I've played every mainline game outside of Return to Dream Land (I'll get to it soon).

How badly is it showing that I don't really like official Mario outside of the RPGs lmao
Just platformers in general, really. The Donkey Kong Country series and Yoshi's Island rule though, I love them dearly

[Zephyr_DragonLord]

Yeah, I definitely enjoy this more chaotic style of progression. Makes this playthrough quite fun to just sit down and watch.

The dragon in Blowhard is actually my favorite in the whole game. Just... forgets Spyro's name on the casual. And then Spyro's just not having any of it. It definitely gives me a chuckle every time. And yeah, the boss levels are typically a fair bit less challenging, despite not having fodder. Except Toasty. Toasty is quite the climb in comparison to the rest of the Artisan world. The main threat in Blowhard are those electric wizards and falling in the water in the indoor segment with the moving platforms. Other than that, it's really just a straight shot through the level.

As for Sunny Flight, they definitely expected you to come to it after Crystal Flight, and it's definitely a bit more difficult to route. By the time raocow had the winning attempt, I believe that routing was pretty much spot-on, minus the failures in detouring for the planes. And yeah, the planes are definitely finicky to burn down, you have to be pretty close to them. It's more lenient in Reignited, once again due to the increased flame range in that version. I definitely had trouble routing this one, and takes me a bit, even to this day. But it is fun flying around. Just feels good to do.

[XionGaTaosenai]

Alright, now that Sunny Flight's done I can talk about this without spoiling anything: It's really gotten on my nerves how whenever someone streams or LPs Spyro 1, you get a ton of watchers trying to get the player to 100% clear everything in Artisans, including the flight, before moving on to Peace Keepers. Not just for "grr backseaters" reasons, but because the difficulty curve gets thrown way off if you do it that way: Sunny Flight is not a good level to be a new players first flight level, at all. Putting it between Night/Crystal flight and Wild flight, which is about where you'll run into it if you wait until you get the hint at Wizard Peak, is just about right difficulty curve wise, but some people get so hung up on doing things in the "right" order that they insist on doing them is what is for practical purposes a very wrong order, and people playing Spyro for the first time get pressured into hitting their head against a wall that's soundly above their skill level, all for doing things in a way that only makes sense if you're a veteran trying to 100% speedrun the game.

The developers knew what they were doing - those rocks don't light up until you free the dragon at Wizard Peak. Although I think in the remake they forgot this and have the rocks light up right away, making it way easier to stumble into Sunny Flight before you're ready. I'm generally part of the "remake good" camp, but I very much think that this was a mistake.

[Leet]

I would say that is the target the remakes are hitting in general: the kind of player who just wants to get every gem in order to fill up the meter and then go to bed. And rather than "the kind of player", I mean "that's what's considered good game design now and the remake sees it as the Objectively Improved thing to do", for a variety of unfortunate reasons. Having to return to Artisans? That's backtracking, and that's a Gaming Cinema Sin.

[Catabo]

So here's the beauty of the Artisans puzzle: it doesn't actually give feedback until you've seen the dragon tell Spyro about it and Spyro knows about it in-universe. Before that, the stepping stones don't light up or make sounds. But you can still unlock it with your knowledge as a player beforehand if you want to anyway!

... But if you do this, you're likely to just go around thinking it's purely a word-of-mouth thing (you're gonna remember about how you stumbled upon it more than you'll remember an individual collectable telling you about it). I wonder how many watchers were shocked that there's feedback at all? I was in my most recent playthrough, when I just didn't bother to unlock Sunny Flight until way later because I was in no rush to play it!

Musical element of the day: kinda the ride bell, but mostly just the constant sense of "you are fighting a boss" rhythm you can feel in the Blowhard theme. Yes, Toasty has the arguably more menacing/mysterious theme, but to me Blowhard is the quintessential "boss music" of Spyro. The main theme leitmotif in the song feels like it's hustling to keep up the pace, and you've got to do the same.

Yes, I'm really overselling things in a game where bosses are just "hit them and they run away". What of it?

[ano0maly]

I would say that is the target the remakes are hitting in general: the kind of player who just wants to get every gem in order to fill up the meter and then go to bed. And rather than "the kind of player", I mean "that's what's considered good game design now and the remake sees it as the Objectively Improved thing to do", for a variety of unfortunate reasons. Having to return to Artisans? That's backtracking, and that's a Gaming Cinema Sin.

Well, the game is inherently designed to allow that. You have everything you need to complete a level or world when you enter it (

aside from knowledge of these waterfall steps, and if that's the only exception in the game it just feels awkward

). It's not a game where you need to obtain new abilities or even keys to return to past worlds.

Sunny Flight is not a good level to be a new players first flight level, at all. Putting it between Night/Crystal flight and Wild flight, which is about where you'll run into it if you wait until you get the hint at Wizard Peak, is just about right difficulty curve wise, but some people get so hung up on doing things in the "right" order that they insist on doing them is what is for practical purposes a very wrong order, and people playing Spyro for the first time get pressured into hitting their head against a wall that's soundly above their skill level, all for doing things in a way that only makes sense if you're a veteran trying to 100% speedrun the game.

I'm generally part of the "remake good" camp, but I very much think that this was a mistake.

That just sounds like Sunny Flight shouldn't be in world 1, though. The original game devs should have moved the level (or its design while swapping the aesthetics/themes) or designed it to be more introductory.

[Leet]

No