darkSpyro

That's right, no longer will the game rating stars be sort of a bit of a star but not quite. Now rounded to the nearest half you also no longer need to click on the stars and then on the stars that appear to rate, you can now just click on the stars. Hooray!

I've also posted the first level of my walkthrough to Dawn of the Dragon on consoles.

And another level on the DS version of The Eternal Night as if anybody really cares.

And if that wasn't enough I've just finished off adding all of the characters from Spyro 2: Season of Flame.

Welcome to the brand new home for the site, www.darkspyro.net. Finally moved from the free hosts that have been vanishing as soon as we're established on them, but we're going to be staying at this .net location for quite a while now.

Since we went offline on the 28th of last month, I've finally managed to complete my Season of Flame guide along with a map showing the locations of the chests and keys as well as all of the eight items to flame/freeze/electricute in each level. I've also gone over a few of the older guides and spruced 'em up a little, there's not much new in them, but still. The Character Guide additions were put on hold just before the site went offline, but I'm going to start doing that again from Wednesday onwards. Oh, and a new small website has been setup to host all of my guides, see that at darkFAQs.

Some Spyro reviews are in, and it's not looking too good for Shadow Legacy if you're to believe them. IGN give it a 4/10, Eurogamer also gave it the same, Nintendo Power have apparently given it a 6.5/10 and Planet Gamecube gave it a 5.5/10. Check out some user reviews at GameFAQs and GameSpot as well to see their views.

For no particular reason other then I woke up this morning and decided to do this, I've added a comment system to each of the Games pages. I also fixed a few minor problems with the forums too and added a few new basic features. I also brought in a new avatar system. Completely optional of course, with the default as being off. Go to your Profile and click Edit Profile, there in the bottom box put in the web address of your desired picture, please go for a square picture of 100x100 dimensions as that is what it will be squashed to. The restrictions of this web hosting means that I can't upload pictures to host here, sorry. Use ImageShack or similar to host your avatar.

Also added this update are all of the text versions of my walkthroughs, just in case you feel like downloading the whole thing in one piece rather then several. They should be identical or newer then the versions at GameFAQs so don't worry about that. I will get around to finishing the Season of Flame guide, sometime.

Please let me know it you find something wrong or an error crops up.

I am now starting to do random updates again, as I have a little more time on my hands and have an easier time updating the site now. While they will generally be more frequent, they won't be as large. Here's today's anyway:

Season of Flame
Again, another level completed for the guide. It's the delightful Shamrock Isle just in case you wanted to know. Overall the guide is 20% completed, not too much to go eh?

Story
I've completely re-written the Spyro Story so that it gives a much better account of what happens in the games. Be warned though as it's all one big spoiler ridden story, nothing there will spare you the plot-lines of any of the games (bar A Hero's Tail, of which the story is not currently completely known).

Character Guide
I've now completed work on preparations for the character guide and have started actually making the bulk of it. Currently through the first world of Spyro the Dragon, it all seems to be going well so far. Expect an actual release within a month or two now.

Actual News
Brand new Spyro game announced recently. It's called Spyro: Ripto Quest and will appear on mobile phones.

Ripto and his army have attacked the worlds of Ice, Grass and Fire. They've damaged the machine that protects the worlds from the diabolical Ripto. Help Spyro and Sparx recover the 4 damaged machine parts and return them to the Professor. Breathe fire, cast spells, teleport, jump and fly around 3 magical worlds and 7 levels of game play. Interact with characters along the way to find out mission objectives and battle Ripto's army of re-spawning Rhino troops.

Visit the site for that game by clicking on the image. There you'll find a few more pictures as well as a short moving video of the game in action. Apparently to be released December 2004, though GameFAQs has it being released on the 22nd of November.

And, as if by chance, there's also a brand new video trailer for the game at VUGames. Clicky here to get to it *goes to borrow some nice looking screens out of it*.

Strangely enough I've found that I had a little extra time on my hands then I usually have and found enough time in that to do some stuff:

Season of Flame
It's been a while now since I first started this guide, and there hasn't been an update since. However today I bring you another level and the finalisation of the first.
Also, I've updated the World Map a little with some info from that very level that I did. Nothing special, just the key and locked chest. I might at a future date add in the locations of all of the things you need to flame, however this is not decided yet.

Character Guide
I've finally gotten a small bit of work done on this, with a couple of dragons from Spyro the Dragon in the guide now. While you still won't be able to view the character guide until I've completed work on at least Spyro the Dragon's characters, I thought that I might remind you about it and the fact that I'm still 'working' on it.

And as per usual, next week's update is sketchy. Whether or not I will have time to do anything is down to several factors. None I will mention here though. I'll just say that there is more of a chance of an update then there was a few weeks ago. I'm starting to get back into this business and I really want to get my Season of Flame guide finished before A Hero's Tail arrives in November (around a month and a half away!).

Oh, and there's very little chance of a new Season of Ice map for a while either, it's just very boring making them. However I'm not abandoning the project altogether, just postponing it until around Christmas (however it is likely that I may not have much time then either, thereby postponing it until either Easter (once again very little chance of time) or the Summer (a lot higher chance of time)) so it will most likely be a long long wait for them. Sorry, but I really can't be bothered with them at the moment.

As you might have guessed from the really pointless title to this update, I've finished off the Season of Ice guide, and started the Season of Flame guide. Read on for more in depth info.

Season of Ice
After three horrendous weeks of work non-stop on this guide, I've finally completed it all the way through collecting all 100 fairies. Yes, there is no more to the guide, all is done and it can rest in the archives, except for those two levels I screwed up before, I'll have to go back at a later date to sort that out. Ah well. Also the cheats are now on the site too.
And as usual, I've completed yet another of the maps. Click here to see it along with the other two that I've already completed.

Season of Flame
Finally I have begun work on the second best Spyro game to ever grace the GBA, the best being Adventure. So far I've managed to complete only the first homeworld and nothing else but a tedious intro to the next level Country Farms. So far so good though as with the much better Atlas in-game, I've been able to provide the guide with a bit more colour then any of the others. Check it out so far here.

Downloads
And so with the Season of Ice guide being completed, I now have the full text version of the guide ready for download on the downloads page. I have also removed the .zip files from the site as they are just taking up space and the amount they compress is pretty pointless, plus some people might not trust the site enough to warrant a download of a .zip file, therefore I've removed all doubt and gotten rid of them completely, you'll just have to save the text files as you open them.

Enter the Dragonfly
My apologies for not supplying the contet I said I did last week. I never actually got round to writing it and I still haven't. The links remain dead until I do so sometime in the future.

Future Updates
While I will probably be able to get an update to you for next week, the weeks after that may start to become less and less fruitful from a lack of updates as I'm gonna be quite busy from Thursday onwards. Therefore updates might become a lot more scarce and not happen every week. I'll try to do something that's worth updating the site for, but I can't promise it. I might start the character guide and do a bit of that each week just to tide the site over until A Hero's Tail arrives in November when I promise to try to write a full guide for as soon as possible, although obviously only after I complete it for myself. Sheesh. See you next week then, probably.

Today's the day we get content under every game heading. Finally. And here's a roundup of what's been done over the past week:

Year of the Dragon
Amazingly enough, I finally got round to completing the whole of the Spyro: Year of the Dragon guide. It's now fully completed all the way through, all 150 eggs collect, all 20,000 gems collected. Wahey! I've also completed the Skill Points and Cheats pages now as well, thus completing my work on Year of the Dragon forever.

Spyro: Adventure
Amazingly within all that other work I've done, I managed to create a brand new map system for Spyro: Adventure. Found here you can see the work I did on the 19 in-game maps (yep, I found another one that I'd missed) which now shows you where all of the coloured chests, Sgt. Byrd air vents, Agent 9 air vents, Moneybags vaults and Phoenix Footprints are. Quite useful if I do say so myself. I've even got a link to it on the sidebar now.

Season of Flame
Slightly less useful at the moment, I have made a similar map system for Season of Flame. While it is still incomplete it might be slightly useful for you if you like looking at maps. I do plan on adding things to it in the future such as the locations of the fireflies as well as actually putting the locked chests and keys onto the maps. Found here you should take a quick look.

Season of Ice
And in wake of that, I've gotten ahead and started up my guide to the first GBA Spyro game, Season of Ice. I am also planning to make a map system like the other two games but it will take a bit longer as I will have to make the maps myself from scratch. I've currently only made one so far, click here to see it. While not as cartoony as the ones for the other games, it does give you an overview of the level.

A Hero's Tail
I've taken the time to write up as much info as I know about the game, along with a bit of guesswork, and several images to go with it. Click here to take a look. It introduces the game and several of it's new features.

Character Guide
I said I'd try to work on it, and I've done just that. I have now begun filling it in with all of the characters from the original game. When I get it filled full for that game, I'll release it to the world. That should be done in a couple of weeks, so prepare yourself for that too. However progress has so far been a little slow, as I've only managed to do the pages for Spyro and Sparx at the moment. No matter though. All shall be done one day. Also note that every character to appear in the guide will have a screenshot of them, so no wondering who I'm blabbering on about it the profiles.

Hmm, well it had to happen really. I haven't yet had the chance to play either of the games through the whole way and because of that I am unsure as to whether or not I will actually be able to write a useful guide for them. Hopefully I will be able to, but until I get 100% (or however much percent you can get) in either game there won't be a guide for them at all.

In Year of the Dragon news, I have done a slight bit more of it, now going through the Midday Garden Home. Very slow progress at the moment as I've been working a bit too hard on the guides really. I may take a day or two off in order to be able to get back on track afterwards rather then going really slow for a long time. Therefore any prediction for completion of the guide is going to be most likely incorrect and I don't expect the guide completed this week. However, just so you know, the guide is currently about 20% completed at the moment.

Oh yeah, and as you might have noticed, I've altered the top of the site a little bit. It's no longer black, but rather a nice purple colour. I have also added several different characters from the Spyro games over on the right instead of the Hero's Tail logo. I did this as I was a bit bored. Hopefully it should make the site look a little better then it did previously. And as before the title bar still fits into the 800x600 size window so that shouldn't be a problem for anyone using that setting.

I've finally finished off the entire guide. With the whole of Winter Tundra now written up it is done. I have also added content to the Skill Points page, as well as to the Cheats and Codes page. With Glimmer out of the way, I will soon be able to start my guide on Spyro: Year of the Dragon. The first bit of that guide should be here within a few days, or at the most a week.

And after completion of the Year of the Dragon guide? Well the two GBA games that I have yet to do obviously. The only problem there is that I have yet to play either of them so I don't really know how long it'll take to write the guides for them.