The second
Spyro the Dragon game, released on the
PlayStation in 1999. Known as
Spyro 2: Gateway to Glimmer in PAL territories.
Spyro and Sparx, weary of an ongoing storm in Artisan World and eager for sunshine, head through a portal to Dragon Shores for a relaxing vacation. Meanwhile, in the world of Avalar, the Professor, Elora the Faun, and Hunter the Cheetah tinker with their own portal, seeking a fearsome dragon to oppose Ripto, an evil sorcerer with a grudge against dragons determined to take over Avalar. Unwittingly pulled into this new world, and eager to resume his sunny getaway, Spyro sets out to rid Avalar of Ripto and his minions.
Not to be confused with
Spyro 2: Season of Flame.
This game contains examples of:
- Gotta Collect Them All: Gems, talismans and orbs.
- Green Hill Zone: Summer Forest.
- Guide Dang It!: The orb that's hidden behind two doors in "Summer Forest". You had to look up a strategy guide online to figure out there's a hidden window to get the orb, didn't you?
- Harmless Freezing: The Icebuilders don't seem to be harmed from being frozen in blocks of ice.
- Heel–Face Turn: The idols in Idol Springs in the closing cinematic.
- Holding Out for a Hero: The team in Avalar is completely convinced that only a dragon can stop Ripto and is reduced to giving tutorials to Spyro or providing the odd minor backup. Elora tries doing so to Hunter as well, but he's far worse at it.
- It Amused Me: The Water Workers who invade Aquaria will sometimes attack other creatures hostile to Spyro even when Spyro is within their range, just for giggles.
- Hula and Luaus: Hula Girls in Idol Springs whose dances can bring rain.
- Infernal Retaliation: The Cloud Temples trolls were hit by fire much more powerful than Spyro's, but it proved unable to kill them and unable to be put out, leading to perpetually flaming trolls running around said temples.
- Irony: Robotic farmers love biological bees (ironic enough on its own), but a fourth of the Robotica Farms pests are bee based.
- Jerkass Gods: The Idol Springs idols turn against their makers and lock them out of their temple.
- Just Eat Him: The dragon-eating bushes in Fracture Hills.
- Kill Enemies to Open: On each level you need to defeat a certain number of enemies before special pedestals with powerups become active.
- Kung Fu-Proof Mook: The large Earthshapers are resistant to Spyro's attacks and have to be pushed into certain areas to be defeated.
- Ledge Bats: The party horns of the Magma Cone lava monsters do no damage but will likely knock Spyro into lava, which does.
- Lethal Lava Land: Magma Cone and Canyon Speedway.
- Levitating Lotus Position: The elder turtle royals of Sunny Beach float with this pose.
- Manchild: Agent Zero.
- Mecha-Mooks: The Gear Grinders employ rolling robots.
- Minecart Madness:
- One of the orb challenges in Breeze Harbor requires you to ride along a track collecting gears, whilst avoiding various pitfalls.
- In Dragon Shores you can ride a roller coaster, destroying things along the way.
- Mix-and-Match Critters: The snail-elephants, snail-rhinos, and puffer-platypodes of Mystic Marsh.
- New Game+: If you get the Superflame Powerup in Dragon Shores, then it carries over to a new game. It allows for some Sequence Breaking in certain levels (mainly those that need a certain skill to complete, like Glimmer).
- The Napoleon: Ripto, even referred to as such in his manual bio.
- Never Say "Die": Averted. Ripto says the word "kill" at least twice in the game's cutscenes. Then there's the guy in Colossus who says kill but has torch written in the subtitle box.
- Nintendo Hard: Collecting all of the Skill Points in the game, to the point that Year of the Dragon made collecting them easier.
- Nice Job Breaking It, Hero!: Hunter messing around with the superportal caused Ripto to invade in the first place.
- Nigh-Invulnerability: The shield power up lets Spyro walk across molten lava.
- Not Quite Dead: Ripto, after seemingly falling to his death at the end of the second home world, comes back not long after to stop the superportal's completion and take over the last home world. His ultimate defeat has him falling into lava and burning as he sinks under it, but then the epilogue shows he's still alive.
- One Of These Is Not Like The Others: This game has several traits that aren't present in both the first and third game: it has no eggs to collect, quiet and atmospheric music for the worlds (of which there are inexplicably only three), specific trinkets at the end of each level as opposed to eggs or treasure, a weird fakeout after the second boss, a permanent power-up as a 100% Completion reward, Supercharge being triggered using the same method as the other power-ups (walking though a pylon) and intro/outro cutscenes for each level with a lethal sense of humor. It's also a weird halfway point between the first and third games feature-wise: unlike in Year of the Dragon, minigames take place in the level proper instead of being sequestered into their own zones, and Winter Tundra introduces the concept of having to get enough special items (orbs/eggs) to proceed as opposed to the earlier Talismans.
- The Overworld: Summer Forest, Autumn Plains and Winter Tundra.
- Painful Pointy Pufferfish: In the "Mystic Marsh" level, there are all sorts of strange fusions of animals. One of them is a cross between a platypus and a pufferfish. When they're in their platypus form, they can be defeated without an issue, but trying to attack them while they're puffed up will hurt Spyro.
- Palmtree Panic: Sunny Beach.
- Percussive Maintenance: The elevators of Metropolis require a bashing to get started, due to budget cuts in the wake of insurrection and invasion.
- Perpetual Frowner: Spyro himself during gameplay. Cutscenes avert this.
- Prehistoria: Skelos Badlands.
- Production Foreshadowing: The robots in Metropolis have designs that look suspiciously similar to Clank's.
- Ptero Soarer: The "pterodactyls" from Skelos Badlands, which get tamed by Elora to defeat Gulp.
- Racing Minigame: Vs Hunter in Ocean Speedway. You don't have to actually beat him, simply keeping up suffices.
- Rewarded as a Traitor Deserves: Moneybags sells Ripto some bombs to take over Winter Tundra. Ripto's first act after stepping into the castle is to kick him out.
- Rhino Rampage: The snail-rhinos from Mystic Marsh.
- Rib Cage Ridge: The bones of giant creatures are scattered throughout Crystal Glacier and Skelos Badlands.
- Robot War: In Metropolis there is a rebellion against the robots, and it's the robots you're helping to put it down.
- Rock Steady: The purple things in Cloud Temples can produce rocks that usually are only found by lava pools.
- Sequence Breaking:
- There's a small bit of sequence breaking in the first level. One of the three orbs is only accessible from the top of a high ledge that can be climbed. The player is supposed to reach the second world and buy the climb ability from Moneybags, but some careful gliding and skilled use of the superfly powerup placed in the last area of the level give you just enough distance to reach the ledge early.
- There are several instances where you can use the extra height you get from charging and jumping at the same time to sequence break. In Colossus, for instance, it is possible to skip the last two gates and still get 100% on the level by using this trick to get on top of a pillar.
- Shifting Sand Land: Scorch.
- Size Shifter: The Hippos of Shady Oasis can temporarily increase their size by eating berries.
- Snow Ball Fight: The Ice Wizards of Crystal Glacier throw snowballs at each other if left alone.
- Shovel Strike: The penguins of Sunny Beach try to flatten Spyro with them.
- Star-Crossed Lovers: Private Romeo and Juliet on opposite sides of the Land Blubber Breezebuilder conflict of Zephyr. Doubles as Interspecies Romance given one's a blob and the other is a bird.
- Stealth-Based Mission: Chasing Agent Zero in Cloud Temples
- Steam Punk: The machinery of Breeze Harbor is powered by steam, which means the Land Blubbers only need water buckets and hoses to make it useless.
- Stepping-Stone Sword: The Icebuilders use their spears to help Spyro progress through Crystal Glacier.
- Super Not-Drowning Skills:
- Gained in this game, even before learning to swim, though the water you can swim in is different than that of the previous game. If you find a pool of opaque water like ones in the last game, Spyro will still be unable to swim in it and take damage.
- Hunter's swimsuit doesn't come with a breathing apparatus of any sort.
- Super Spit: Spyro can spit rocks further than Gem Cutters can throw them. The Breezebuilder chicks also spit ammunition at him.
- Taken for Granite: The Earthshapers have trapped the satyrs of Fracture Hills in stone.
- Tomorrowland: Robotica Farms, Metro Speedway, and especially Metropolis. Although there are many modern elements in the other games of the original trilogy (the industrial sites of Gnasty's World come to immediate mind), these areas are much more in-your-face about their advanced technologies compared to nearby areas.
- Top-Heavy Guy: Agent Zero can jump pretty far with his tiny legs.
- The Unfought: The Colossus Yeti. Though you do get to knock him into a dunk tank as a minigame later on in Dragon Shores.
- Throw Down the Bomblet: Ripto before stealing the power crystal and an ox in Metropolis, though it butts them rather than throws.
- Unexplained Recovery: Following Gulp's defeat, Ripto falls out of his throne, presumably to his death. In the following cutscene, he is alive and well, and effortlessly takes over the castle at Winter Tundra. All three bosses also turn out fine even after Ripto's supposed defeat (which had him fall into lava), appearing in the epilogue and returning in several later games.
- Wings Do Nothing: Crush and the Lava Lizards have wings but they don't seem to serve any purpose. The latter are dropped from eggs carried by flying creatures, so they might be juveniles. Also, the hippos of Shady Oasis have them, for some reason.
- Wrench Whack: The most common Gear Grinder will squash Spyro with a wrench, if given the chance.
- Your Princess Is in Another Castle: After you defeat Gulp (the second boss) you see Big Bad Ripto fall off a ledge and into an abyss. Elora congratulates Spyro for freeing the various worlds and collecting all 14 Talismans, the game's standard reward for completing the worlds. Then, just when it looks like Spyro might finally return home, Ripto comes back and there's a whole new home world with five new, Talisman-free levels.
, especially Magma Cone's