Spyro: Enter the Dragonfly - A History

Spyro 1 history -    • Spyro the Dragon - A History  
Spyro 2 history -    • Spyro: Ripto's Rage!/Gateway to Glimm...  
Spyro 3 history -    • Spyro: Year of the Dragon - A History  


It’s time for another dive into the magical world of Spyro the Dragon, and today we’re going to look into the history of the most notorious game in the series – Spyro: Enter the Dragonfly.

If you know your Spyro history or watched my previous Spyro video, you’ll know that Enter the Dragonfly was the first in the series not to be made by Insomniac Games. Instead, Universal Interactive hired Equinoxe Digital Entertainment and Check Six Studios to make the first Spyro game on the Playstation 2 and Gamecube.

The game was originally going to be about the return of Gnasty Gnorc and Ripto, who would team up to bring about the downfall of the dragons by stealing their dragonflies. The game would feature 120 dragonflies to collect, 25 realms to explore, and due to the power of the PS2 and Gamecube, a steady 60fps for the NTSC version and super-fast loading times.

Instead of featuring those 120 dragonflies and 25 realms we were promised though, the developers only managed 90 dragonflies and 9 realms, even if you include the boss arena. Needless to say the game was considered a failure, and it ended up being the only game Equinoxe Digital Entertainment and Check Six Studios would ever release.

The story of Enter the Dragonfly begins shortly after Year of the Dragon. A party is being held to celebrate the giving of dragonflies to the baby dragons which were rescued in the previous game. Spyro, Sparx, Hunter, Bianca and a number of baby dragons and dragonflies are in attendance, when suddenly a crack of lightning hits the ground and a portal appears. Out comes none other than Ripto, the antagonist of Spyro 2. He’s even brought his minions, Crush and Gulp. After a little speech, Ripto wastes no time in poofing away all the dragonflies, including Sparx.

Luckily, he’s not a very good sorcerer, and Bianca realises that Sparx hasn’t gone far and guides Spyro to him. Bianca then comes up with the idea of empowering Spyro with different breath abilities that will help him in retrieving the lost dragonflies. Unfortunately she seems just as hopeless with her magic as Ripto, and while Spyro can technically use different breath attacks now, she explains he’ll have to find particular dragon runes to enable each one. It’s then that the plucky purple dragon and his sparkly sidekick set off to find the dragonflies and collect all the magic runes.

In terms of controls Enter the Dragonfly plays more or less the same as Year of the Dragon, with a few extras thrown in. It’s still circle to breath attack, square to charge, X to jump and again to glide, and triangle to hover at the end of a glide, look around while stationary and of course headbash. The newest abilities Spyro will learn are his various breath attacks and Wing Shield. These are taught by finding and collecting various runes scattered about the realms.

To cycle through all of Spyro’s different breath attacks you’ll need to hit L1. R1 is used to show the inventory but the most you’ll carry at one time is a rune or key, not exactly difficult to remember. And apart from Sparx’s ability to spot treasure by holding down the L3 and R3 buttons, that’s it in terms of controls.

Sale wise Enter the Dragonfly actually did rather well, but I guess that’s because it was riding on the success of Year of the Dragon. Just like its predecessor, the PS2 version of Enter the Dragonfly received a Platinum sales award from the Entertainment and Leisure Software Publishers Association for selling over 300,000 units in the UK.

High sales don’t indicate high quality though, and reviews for Enter the Dragonfly ranged from mixed to negative. While critics praised the wonderful soundtrack and some even liked the graphics, others were not impressed by the pace of the game, boring story and how there was nothing particularly new brought to the table.