Our Favorite Anti-Piracy Tricks

Spyro the Dragon on the Playstation 1 has brilliant anti-piracy features: PAL copies of the game will switch between English, French, German, Spanish and Italian. The ability to Pause will be removed. Various enemies will not give Gems, and various Gems found on the ground will be removed. Whilst playing the game, or after resetting the system, various Eggs will be reset to being uncollected, particularly those awarded for reaching a level’s Exit Portal. Sparx will be unable to get to Blue and Gold colours, limiting Spyro’s health. Sometimes the player will be lifted off the ground and returned to an earlier point in the level for no apparent reason. Various areas in levels that require the use of a side-character will be locked off, even if you freed that character. Sometimes the game will return you to the wrong Home World or level when using the Return Home Portal. The game will randomly kick you from the stage as if you used a Return Home Portal. This compounds with the above note where you can be returned to a completely different level. Returning to Sheila’s Alp will require you to pay Moneybags to free her again. Using the Transports to other Home Worlds will be disabled if the Egg awarded for completing the local side-character’s world is reset, requiring it to be collected again. Sometimes using a Transport won’t work at all. Once the Rocket is completed in Evening Lake, it will force you to fight in Buzz’s Dungeon again before getting to Midnight Mountain. After getting to Midnight Mountain, the Rocket will take to you a random option on the list rather than the one you selected. All the Midnight Mountain Portals send you to Sunrise Spring levels instead. After spending some time in Midnight Mountain, the Rocket will have only Sunrise Spring available in the menu. Using this will then replace the Rocket with the original Balloon when you land. In the middle of the Sorceress boss fight, the player will be sent back to Sunrise Spring with all their save data wiped. The “payback” with Moneybags in Midnight Mountain won’t return all of the Gems you paid him.

Adam C.