Submission #5441: Fog's GC Spyro: Enter The Dragonfly in 02:28.68

An actual, serious game? Shocking!

Spyro: Enter The Dragonfly is a platform/adventure game released in 2003. It's the first Spyro game not to be developed by Spyro creators Insomniac Games (instead being developed by Check Six Games and Equinoxe Digital Entertainment). Compound this with the rushed development forced by publishers Universal Interactive, and what you get is a buggy, glitchy mess of a game, panned by critics and fans alike. The game is so buggy, it's possible to bypass the entire game, go straight to the final boss battle, and complete the game in just over a minute.

The TAS itself is nothing too spectacular, but that's more so lends to how devoid of content the any% run of the game really is. Despite the lack of exciting content in the game, a new movement mechanic was discovered that allows faster movement while gliding in the air (which is only seen once in the run). Unfortunately for those who are interested in a TAS which shows more of the game, Dolphin currently does not emulate the game accurately enough to use some of the major tricks normally used in other categories of the game. For now, this TAS will have to suffice.

Normally, when Spyro glides through the air, his speed begins at 1600 units per second, before decreasing to 800 units per second after a second of gliding. However, if Spyro breathes out fire while gliding before the speed decrease occurs, his speed remains the same at 1600 units per second. Over long distances, this can potentially save a lot of time. However, the relatively short glide saves only about a half second in this TAS compared to normal movement.

Because of the rushed nature of the game, one of the many bugs and glitches of the game allows Spyro to directly go straight to the final boss battle. There is a seam in the base of the portal leading to Ripto, which makes it possible with proper positioning and a ground pound through the seam to hit the loading trigger to go directly to the final boss battle with Ripto.

We're not in the overworld long enough to really talk a bunch about it. Instead, I'll talk about the main speed trade-off between this TAS and the current RTA world record. In regular RTA runs of the game, there is a setting in the options menu to disable help tips/prompts, which is used to avoid unnecessary cutscenes describing gameplay mechanics. Because disabling this would take too much time to do in a TAS, I must instead avoid collecting any gems, going near any sheep, or generally interacting with other possible triggers for help dialogue. This means there is some time that is lost by avoiding collectible gems instead of going straight for the clip. However, most of the time is possibly made up by avoiding the speed decrease while gliding in the air.

Here we are, after countless seconds of playing through the game, we get to the final boss battle against Ripto. The whole point of this battle is to melt all of his ice shield to defeat him. I'm not sure why he has an ice shield, or why we're facing him in a volcano, or even why I'm even playing this game, but we're already this far into the game, might as well beat it. There is some quirky things to look out for with the final boss battle in terms of Ripto's AI. While the boss battle itself is relatively easy, it's the AI's movement which causes some issues with optimizations. Get too close to Ripto, and it may delay his movement from one spot to the next, leave Ripto too early, and he can just stay in place. Other than dealing with the AI movement, there is really nothing special about this battle.

Fog: Replaced submission with a roughly two second improvement.

Noxxa: Claiming for judgment.

Fog: Replaced submission yet again with another one second improvement.

Noxxa: What little gameplay is left in the run was received well and is, after the revisions, optimized well enough. Accepting for Moons.

Fog: Processing.